Media center upgrade

[eyemfedup2]

i realize this may be a stupid question but i need your help
to start: my daughter is multi handicapped and watches DVDs allot
has done miracles in teaching her social skills memory etc...
anyway she has over 150 DVDs that require regular maintenance
she wears the labels off of them let me tell you and sometimes ruins them from over use
my desire is to build her a small compact computer
then copy all DVDs to hard drive for easy replay
maybe DVDs will last longer this way

purchased a asus m2n-mx se plus mobo
amd 5200 dual core cpu
2gb ddr2
500watt power supply
1 tb hdd
19" hd flat panel TV with computer input as well as regular inputs

is this feasible
if so do i need vista xp media center or what
thanks

 

[martine737]

In my opinion, you don't necessarily need XP Media Center Edition to back-up or play the films. I would suggest you back up the DVD's to hard drive using any software freely available to do this (DVD > avi/mpg) something like DVDShrink - converting to hard disk as oppose to recordable media.

The process (although time consuming in conversion) is pretty simple, I would suggest you apply some logic in storing/naming the files/folders and you also use a separate partition from the operating system. Please also note you don't necessarily need a huge 'like for like' hard drive, you can shrink the conversion data size without too much picture quality loss .

Once the DVD's are on the hard drive they can be played from there. With 150 films you may need a/some sizeable hard drives so it might just be worth converting just the favourites at the moment..

 

[eyemfedup2]

to back-up or play the films

i had wondered about that
one of my considerations was using a raid configuration
maybe 500gb sata hdd's
they are cheap enough right now
i really wanted the ease of using desktop icons to simply click
and play downloaded recordings as grandma with have to use it for her sometimes
and she is a little computer impaired not to bad though
nothing is to good for my baby so let her rip with the ideas people
your not only helping me you are really helping out someone special
ps with here they are all favorites
thanks all ideas welcome