Hack Vista and Media Center to make the best digital DVD library EVER!

Posted By: Max Zuckerman | Dec 4th, 2007 @ 11:18 AM

If you're like me, one of the inputs on your TV is your desktop or laptop computer. It's one of the best ways to surf the web or share pictures and videos with others.

But my favorite feature, hands down, is the ability to have my entire DVD collection available to me in a very intuitive and slick-looking interface all on my TV. The best part is I don't have to physically insert a DVD every time I want to watch one. I can just browse my collection very easily all on my TV/monitor and hit "play" and I will get this:

So here are the tools you're going to need for this:
1) Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate (these are the versions that include the new Media Center that I am using)
2) A DVD ripping program of your choice, the one I will be using is DVDFab. The free version does everything you will need to make this magic happen.
3) A desktop or laptop with a decent size hard drive (movies are big... 4-9 gigabytes uncompressed)
4) DVD-ROM drive... if you don't have this, you're probably running Windows 95 anyway and might as well skip this guide Smiley

The first thing you need to do is edit the Windows Vista registry so that Media Center displays a "gallery" view of your DVDs instead of just a "play DVD" button. To do this, run "regedit" and navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\DvdSettings and change the "ShowGallery" value to "Gallery."

Once you have made this modification, open Media Center (if it was already open, close it then open again) and it should look like this:

Next, set up the location where you will store all of the DVDs. Personally I like to dedicate a separate drive from my Windows installation to keep all the DVDs uncompressed. It makes it easy to back up or transfer to a new drive if I need a bigger one later. So in my case, I created a folder called "D:\DVD\". Make sure to add this directory to your Media Center Library's watched folders! Otherwise, you'll wonder why your DVDs aren't even showing up.

Now you're ready to copy a movie. Open DVDFab and insert a DVD into your drive. DVDFab will scan it quickly and show you all your options with this movie. Again this is up to you, but I prefer to set it to copy only the "main movie" (option on the right) instead of the whole disc. I also have no need for any language other than English, so I usually uncheck all those on the right that do not pertain to me.

Also, want to make sure you specify the destination directory in your new storage folder you set up.

Once you set up your new folder and hit "ok," hit the "start" button at the bottom right to begin the process. Depending on the speed of your computer and length of movie and options you chose, it should take between 15 minutes to an hour.

Once it has finished copying, it will make a nifty yay-I'm-done-aren't-you-proud-of-me sound and you can eject the DVD and put it away for safe keeping.

Now even though the movie files are technically in your DVD directory, Media Center needs you to do a few things for it to fully recognize the movie and display it in your library: move the files into the root of the movie's directory and create a display image for Media Center to use as the movie's icon. This image MUST be called "folder.jpg" for this to work properly.

Notice that the files are in "DVD\Gladiator\MainMovie\Gladiator\VIDEO_TS\". You need to cut every file in this directory and paste it into "DVD\Gladiator". At that point feel free to delete the directory "MainMovie" and all its contents (should be just empty folders but check to make sure).

To create the movie "box shot" for Media Center, I use the center of the universe: Amazon. Just type in your movie name for the search and should be able to find a good looking box shot within about 10 seconds of scanning the results. I like to click the image I find so that it pops up a larger view and therefore the best quality image I can get. You of course can get the image anywhere you like, but the key is you MUST save this image as "folder.jpg" in the same directory as all the movie files. So in this case, "DVD\Gladiator\folder.jpg".

And that's it! Now when you open up your DVD Library in Windows Vista's Media Center, you should see your new movie addition to your collection.

Click it, hit play, and enjoy Smiley

.

PS: Please let me know if you guys already knew about this or if this was helpful.

Tags: dvd, dvd library, media center, windows vista

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arabisoft

Very cool idea. I was in the process of doing the same thing except unfortunately I copied most of my dvds onto my NAS already but in an ISO standard format. Each .ISO file sits in its own directory but I wonder if Media center on Vista Ultimate can treat ISOs directly as DVDs. I now have to mount them into a drive and then use the "Play DVD" option. Certainly the Gallery view is sweet. ISO -> MC?? Do you think it will work? I'll give it a shot when I get home tonight. I also found that when I use the VOB files in players using the file mode you get a very short break between files. Does this happen to you, or does it play just like any DVD and your progress is from the first minute to the last? Thanks,

Max

In reply to arabisoft

#Dec 4th, 2007 @ 8:35 PM

So unfortunately it won't handle ISOs natively like it will VOB files. There quite possibly might be a 3rd party application to do this but I do not know of one myself, maybe someone else here does??

With this setup, I do not see any jump between the VOB files but I have seen that happen with other players like VLC media player. Are you talking about Media Center or other players?

qodfathr

What's the experience like from a Media Center Extender? If I follow these steps, and then fire up my 360, will I have access to those movies from the 360 as well?

HaveACoke1886

Will this work for HD DVDs as well, or can Media Center not handle those files?

Max

In reply to qodfathr

#Dec 5th, 2007 @ 7:06 AM

I'm actually not sure if an extender will be able to see these movies since we modified the Media Center view specifically in the registry and we can't really do that on a 360... try it, let us know!

Max

In reply to HaveACoke1886

#Dec 5th, 2007 @ 8:27 AM

I haven't tried this with HD DVDs but I assume if you have the codec and Media Center recognizes it, then it should work. Again, if you find out, feel free to share with the community Smiley

Eicos

Very nice post, Max! There is a lot of nice functionality you're tapping into there.

Note about VOBs and ISOs: using free software tools, you can mount the ISO as a virtual drive and then copy the VOBs directly from that drive to your DVD folder. Quick and easy! The best tool to use is probably Daemon Tools.

BaxterTheCat

In reply to Max

#Dec 5th, 2007 @ 9:12 AM

qodfathr : This technique won't work on a 360 extender unfortunately. It will only work on the Media Center interface displayed from a local PC.

(I wish it WOULD work on the extender however, who wants to watch a DVD on a computer monitor when you could watch it on your TV where your 360 sits!!)

RodSpina

In reply to BaxterTheCat

#Dec 6th, 2007 @ 1:08 PM

why don't you compress the VOBs to mpg ? I have done that and it does work. you can use this app to make it happen . Can you comment on the upsides and downsides of doing it ? What about now with the latest 360 "fall" dashboard update suporting some Divx codecs... Any ideas ? I have some 40+ movies sitting on my Windows Home Server and although disk space is getting more affordable, I am almost at 1Tb of usage, mostly due to my DVD library. I wish I had space to rip more DVD's, but I am affraid of "wasting" space on something I might watch once or twice a year, if that often.