This software will do it but it looks like it might be a pain to set up.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/streamingBoy you’re not kidding hard drive space is cheap. I was in a local Fry’s today and noticed they were clearancing out all their OEM hard drives, so I picked up 4x1TB drives for under $380 including tax. I don‘t know if it was just a local thing because it‘s not in any ad but they were getting rid of all of them. Had to make 3 trips through the checkout line as they were 1/customer and they would only override that once selling me 2 on one trip. Already got them up and running in my NAS.
I just play from my HTPC and NAS connected right now via VGA to the TV and coax to the receiver. PQ is perfect even for HD content and no issues with audio and video going out of sync. Right now I just use either PowerDVD or Windows Media Center depending on what I’m watching, but there are free player solutions available.
If your looking to burn disks and play them directly then DVD Decrypter should be able to do that. +R DL media is cheap and it gives you a more permanent backup than a hard drive(s) w/o the proper RAID array.
Not sure if DVD Decrypter does it but if you are planning to store your movies on the hard drives to always have them available to play then make sure to rip out the stuff you don’t need. You can usually copy just the movie and only the audio tracks/subtitles you want w/o effecting the quality. It saves some space and is nice because the movie just starts, no FBI/Interpol warning or menus.
P.S. just finished copying everything back to the NAS from the HTPC. Only took 6 hours.
