Solved! Why Rip DVDs for Home Theater?

[kms3333]

I have been experimenting with ripping my DVDs for use in my home theater. After a lot of testing with various settings on Handbrake, I can’t rip a DVD without having at least some quality degradation. I’ve read several postings and articles indicating there will always be some loss of quality when encoding a video copy. The fundamental question is then, if we pay all this money for high quality 4K+ TVs that give a phenomenal picture, why would we rip a DVD only to watch a degraded copy? I know some people may rip DVDs for convenience in travelling, etc, which is fine, I’m asking about home theater use. Streaming from a network drive is probably more convenient, but if the main goal is to watch the highest quality version of a movie, why rip it? Am I missing something here?

 

[T2Jock]

Try DVD Ripper Pro, you may see better results. I stopped using HandBrake a couple of years ago. But you bet bet is actually just streaming from whichever service you prefer.

 

[SHaines]

I suspect it varies by user. I don't think anyone is burning video files to DVD for the best quality presentation. As you mentioned, folks will burn the DVD for traveling, but they may also just want to have a physical backup.

Not all large mechanical drives are ideal for streaming high quality video, especially if you need the drive to be portable, so it may just be the convenience of being able to quickly take all your content with you.

If you do find a person posting here who prefers DVD media specifically for quality, hopefully they'll be able to shed some light on this.

 

[americanaudiophile]

If you are trying to get the best picture and sound then a Blue Ray disc is still the best source.
You might be able to make a perfect copy of the entire content of the disc to a hard drive but that would be a very large file.
A high quality disc player can render the content better than most computers but high quality (expensive) BD players are a dying breed. That's why the last generation of Oppo players are selling at above retail prices for used ones. Pioneer still makes a high end player and there are probably some made primarily for the Japanese home market.
With sales of BD discs and players dropping you may be stuck with streaming down the road.

 

[hang-the-9]

I have been experimenting with ripping my DVDs for use in my home theater. After a lot of testing with various settings on Handbrake, I can’t rip a DVD without having at least some quality degradation. I’ve read several postings and articles indicating there will always be some loss of quality when encoding a video copy. The fundamental question is then, if we pay all this money for high quality 4K+ TVs that give a phenomenal picture, why would we rip a DVD only to watch a degraded copy? I know some people may rip DVDs for convenience in travelling, etc, which is fine, I’m asking about home theater use. Streaming from a network drive is probably more convenient, but if the main goal is to watch the highest quality version of a movie, why rip it? Am I missing something here?

A DVD even not converted to an MP4 of AVI or some other compressed file, will not look very nice on a 4k screen, although there are good DVD players that will do a really good job with making DVDs look nice on new TVs.

For me, not having to go find a DVD, have a DVD player hooked up, having to open it, play the disk, take out the disk, put it away, etc.. is worth losing a bit of picture quality. I think it has been several years since I touched a DVD in my house. You get a DVD into an MP4 file, you can run it on any device in the house without being tied down to a single player. I have things on my phone, on my tablet, some on my laptops, I can grab files to use on work trips in airports, planes, taxi rides, hotels, etc... I'm not sticking 30 DVDs to pick from in my suitcase LOL

As far are DVD quality, it is why most of my movies are now Bluray not DVDs but are still in files on my shared storage not on disk. Or through streaming services.