# I need help with HTPC



## MJKonopka (May 13, 2009)

I want to build an HTPC that will not lose any picture or sound quality. I have been looking at the Axonix MediaMax system and am very impressed with it. I would love to build something just like that but I dont know if I can. The main thing I am worried about with building my own HTPC is the loss in audio and video quality. I need both to stay at DVD quality. Any help would be greatly appreciated.


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## eugovector (Sep 4, 2006)

As long as your TV/Video Card are connected via HDMI/DVI, you'll be getting the best video quality you can get. On the audio side, most DVD player software will properly transmit Dolby/DTS over optical/co-ax, and will do just fine decoding if you want to use your analog outputs.

Honestly, AV quality won't be a consideration as long as you have recent parts.


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## MJKonopka (May 13, 2009)

I dont mean with the internal components. I am refering to the software that is used to rip the DVD. I dont know if a ripped dvd will look as good or sound as good as a real dvd.


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## Harpmaker (Oct 28, 2007)

MJKonopka said:


> I dont mean with the internal components. I am refering to the software that is used to rip the DVD. I dont know if a ripped dvd will look as good or sound as good as a real dvd.


While it can depend on the settings of the software used, in general, the answer is yes. That is the reason behind most HTPC's and other players talked about on this forum that use external hard drives for storage of music and video. We don't want to have to sort through individual DVD's or CD's to find and play the media, we want it only a few button pushes away. :bigsmile: 

Most here have similar feelings as you do, no compromise in audio and video quality. Many, if not most, here have higher-end audio and video systems which show any degradation of either. You don't see too many posts about playing Flash video from places such as YouTube... I can only imagine how bad that would look on a 100" diagonal screen! :yikes:


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## eugovector (Sep 4, 2006)

If you rip the DVD without recompressing it, it will be exactly the same. All the 0 and 1 will be in the same place. If you recompress to, say h.264 using handbrake, you likely will not notice a difference as long as you keep audio track intact and Vid bitrates high.


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## bobgpsr (Apr 20, 2006)

With the current very low cost of terabyte hard disk drives, it no longer makes sense to do a video codec re-encode of a DVD for saving space on a hard disk storage target. I don't even bother re-encoding the video of high def blu-ray or HD DVD discs when storing on hard drives. So the video quality is just as good as the original. The many hour, lengthy amount of CPU time needed for doing a video re-encode is not worth the effort for most of us.

Now audio is a different issue for the lossless tracks on high def media. Many are now re-encoding the lossless LPCM, DD TrueHD or dts-HD MA audio tracks to lossless FLAC format for ease of playback and a little space savings. The free EAC3TO and MKVMERGE software application combo make it easy to do this resulting in an easy to playback .mkv package format. And re-encoding the audio does not add much time.

Slysoft's AnyDVD HD is a practical necessity for a HTPC that can use high def blu-ray discs as an initial source.


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## MJKonopka (May 13, 2009)

If I do an exact copy of the dvd, video and audio, what software would be the best for the ripping? What software would be the best for the storage and organization of the movies? I have over 2000 dvds too.


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## eugovector (Sep 4, 2006)

If you're doing an exact copy, the only format you can save them in is a disc image such as .iso or a folder with .vob

As for organization, folder structure is the only way to do it, unless someone knows of a media organizer that indexes iso and vob

As for software, a quick google search should give you plenty of options. I use the tried nd true dvd decrypter myself.


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