Vortexbox

Since we've come back from the USA, we made the decision not to have a TV in the house.  We feel it causes too many behavioural issues with our kids so it's better just not to have one so obviously present and demanding attention.  (That's not to say that they never watch the "TV", we just use a tablet instead, which gives us much more control over what exactly they watch and when.  You can put the tablet or laptop in the cupboard, something that's more inconvenient to do with a TV.)

Laura and I have amassed a small DVD collection in multiple regions.  Since we don't have a TV, there's no way for us to play our DVD collection, except on the laptop.  I was looking for a (cheap) way to view our DVDs on our various other devices (phones, tablets, etc) and hit on using a vortexbox as a media-streaming solution using an old Dell PC we had lying around. Vortexbox is a Fedora linux-based automated CD/DVD ripping and media library solution.  It supports Logitech Squeezeboxes, DLNA and Samba out-of-the-box, and you can install Plex media server to round out the solution.  The current Vortexbox version is 2.2 and based on Fedora 16.  There is also a new 3.4 beta version out on Fedora 20.

As usual, the project turned out to be a little more expensive than expected - the PC didn't have enough RAM, big enough HD or a wireless network connection!  So after a RAM upgrade, new 2TB HD and powerline network adaptors, I got it running.

The Vortexbox software more-or-less automates the CD/DVD ripping process.  It takes about 30 minutes to rip a DVD to disk for later viewing, at a cost of around 4-7GB for each feature.  Add the Plex media server and you've got a very nice solution that even does transcoding on the fly (although the CPU on this box only has enough grunt to handle transcoding of one stream at a time)

Now, if I feel like it, I can watch a DVD on the tablet or phone anywhere in the house.  We can both watch different things on different devices at the same time, which is good for "marital harmony" :-)