I have about 200 DVDs that I want to digitalize and be able to access using Plex. I have the modem/router from Xfinity shown in the link below. I have a Mac laptop, but there is not enough free storage on it to store all my movies. What is the cheapest and simplest way to digitalize my movie collection so I can get rid of the physical DVDs? Please include links to what I should buy (DVD burner, external HD, etc.) I’m thinking of just plugging an external HD into the router, but I’m not sure if that is possible with Xfinity routers. A step by step process (along with what hardware to buy) would be very helpful. I’m not super tech savvy, but I’m not completely clueless either.
Cheap - who knows what cheap is or if you can afford it.
Here’s what you need - in a nut(hatch)shell:
Server - something to run Plex on.
Storage - plugs, or is installed in… See Server.
Media - held in… See Storage
Devices/Clients - watch material delivered by… See Server.
There you go.
Research some stuff to do that and don’t spend any more money than you have.
PS - while you’re buying stuff - buy a modem and a router and tell those thieves to come pick up their stuff and stop charging you for it.
(you’re gonna need control over your router - and good luck getting any when they own it).
I’m looking at spending less than $200. So it is impossible to do this with an Xfinity router?
You’re not going to get Plex running with storage plugged into their router - no. You’re not.
You’re going to need a server machine with storage and it has to have enough horsepower to transcode something if necessary - or whatever you
try to play through it had better Direct Play <—Sounds Easy <—Is Not.
$200
That remains to be seen.
I don’t really have any suggestions, but let’s see what happens.
For a start you should be able to buy a regular external drive with USB3 for your MacBook – before you buy… check what ports your MacBook supports. Newer models might only support USB-C. Don’t go for a WIFI drive.
You can store your media on that drive and run the required Plex Media Server on the MacBook.
Keep in mind… this will require your MacBook to be on whenever you want to stream media to any of your other devices. Also… it’ll most likely mean your server is only connected via WIFI to your home network. That might work for some scenarios but can turn into a pitfall further down the road.
That being said… you should later on be able to shift your setup to a NAS or another mini-PC (e.g. an Intel NUC) to run as a dedicated Plex Server hardware (taking the load off your notebook and having the ability to be connected to your Infinity router via a wired connection.
As for digitalizing your collection… there’s 2 general camps. Users who want to keep the videos as close to the original medium’s quality (e.g. no further compression beyond what’s already compressed on your DVDs) vs. users who want to optimize their media for playback and reduced storage consumption.
- The first group is best served by solely “remuxing” their content
- pro: this will maintain the DVD’s original mpeg2 video stream / no loss in quality
- con: relatively large files (approx. 6-8 GB per DVD)
- con: clients might not be able to direct-play the media, so you need a relatively strong server to optimize the video for a client “on the fly”
- The latter group will try to transcode it to a format that is widely supported
- con: this is usually linked to a loss of quality
- pro: smaller files (approx. 1-2 GB per DVD)
- pro: better compatibility with your phones, tablets or TVs
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Thanks for the info. Are you saying Xfinity routers will work if a NAS or computer are hardwired? Could I just hardwire my Mac whenever I wanted to watch something?
If I used a NAS, any recommendations? These are fairly pricey aren’t they?
I don’t know the model… according to their documentation, it supports 4 Ethernet/LAN ports. So you should be able to wire your devices to that. I don’t think the newer MacBooks still have a wired Ethernet/LAN port – does yours?
As for a NAS… depends very much on your use case.
If you don’t depend on them doing a lot of heavy lifting (video transcoding / optimization) you should be ok with any recent model of the big providers (e.g. Synology, QNAP, Drobo… – I wouldn’t necessarily go with a WD MyCloud as that comes with a number of additional restrictions).
You can find a lot of discussions related to specific models in the NAS section of the forum
https://forums.plex.tv/c/plex-media-server/nas-devices/27
You are correct. My Mac does not have an Ethernet port. NAS options seem like more money than I would like to spend.
I finally got an external DVD drive. I have ripped two movies and successfully uploaded them to Plex Media Server which I am just running on my laptop for now. I was able to successfully play the movies on my TV using Plex app run on my Amazon Fire Stick.
I won’t be able to fit all my movies on my laptop, but if I just buy an external hard drive will that work the same as how things are working now with the movies on my laptop? Assuming the laptop is on and the external hard drive is connected to the laptop.
If so, this seems like the easiest and cheapest way to digitalize my DVD collection.
Any thoughts? Thanks.
that’ll work.
just make sure to uncheck Settings > [Your Server] > Library > Empty trash automatically after every scan. Otherwise this can cause your library to lose its content if the external disc is not connected when you try to refresh that library.
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I got my external HD today and moved one movie to it to test it out. I am getting a playback error. ‘Please check that the file exists and the necessary drive is mounted.’ Anyone know how to fix this?
Are you on Catalina?
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