Fun thing I discovered: A lot of DVDs check which region the player is from and play a different warning at the beginning. VHS is analog and linear so that FBI warning is just baked into the video but DVDs can shuffle video on the fly. Fun fact: That’s how they got the theatrical edition and the extended edition on one side of one DVD, if you play the standard edition it just skips the added scenes on the fly.
Way back when I still lived at home, my family had a little game, someone would put in a movie and the first one to guess which movie it was “won.” I could often do it from the previews. DVDs spoiled this with their menus. Well, most of them did. Some of them do just start playing the film (or start at the previews).
I recently ripped my whole DVD collection to my NAS because, well, optical drives are going extinct. And I noticed some patterns. DVDs of contemporary movies from early in the format’s history were often special events. They had specially designed one-off packaging, lots of extra features, extravagant menus, etc. As you went later in the format’s run, packaging became standardized, and especially older pre-DVD movies that were being re-issued on DVD would often just auto-play the movie when inserted. They often had menus that had no animation or music so you could chapter select or toggle the subtitles on but you’d have to stop the movie to see them. Also, TV shows on disc suffered way more from disc rot than movies, I’m guessing the discs themselves were cheaper/worse.
Minor suggestion: Do it in winter. Transcoding video like that is a CPU intensive workload, if you’re going to pump that much heat out of your PC case you might as well want it.
Not so sure the difference ripping a disk would make unless you have a super insulated room, but CPU heat is very much a consideration. Each summer I keep contemplating moving my rack with ~100 cores to the basement only to be dissuaded by the dampness and cable runs.
A lot of things made it a Winter project for me: wanting to assist my furnace rather than fight my air conditioner in the Carolina heat was one thing, also my work slows down a lot in winter, not as many projects to do, so I had plenty of time to mess with it over winter. Plus, in summer I keep my house at 74, in winter I keep it at 70, It’s amazing how much that makes a difference in CPU temperatures.
Fun thing I discovered: A lot of DVDs check which region the player is from and play a different warning at the beginning. VHS is analog and linear so that FBI warning is just baked into the video but DVDs can shuffle video on the fly. Fun fact: That’s how they got the theatrical edition and the extended edition on one side of one DVD, if you play the standard edition it just skips the added scenes on the fly.
Also not so fun is you couldn’t skip the DVD ones. I played a DVD and couldn’t skip the previews (remember those?).
Way back when I still lived at home, my family had a little game, someone would put in a movie and the first one to guess which movie it was “won.” I could often do it from the previews. DVDs spoiled this with their menus. Well, most of them did. Some of them do just start playing the film (or start at the previews).
I recently ripped my whole DVD collection to my NAS because, well, optical drives are going extinct. And I noticed some patterns. DVDs of contemporary movies from early in the format’s history were often special events. They had specially designed one-off packaging, lots of extra features, extravagant menus, etc. As you went later in the format’s run, packaging became standardized, and especially older pre-DVD movies that were being re-issued on DVD would often just auto-play the movie when inserted. They often had menus that had no animation or music so you could chapter select or toggle the subtitles on but you’d have to stop the movie to see them. Also, TV shows on disc suffered way more from disc rot than movies, I’m guessing the discs themselves were cheaper/worse.
Okay, who downvoted this? The MPAA?
This reminds me, I really need to start ripping my DVD collection & getting a jellyfin server setup.
Minor suggestion: Do it in winter. Transcoding video like that is a CPU intensive workload, if you’re going to pump that much heat out of your PC case you might as well want it.
That’s an excellent point. It’s amazing how fast it’ll heat up a room!
I just learned there’s a company that takes advantage of this by using render farm nodes to provide hot water or something?
https://www.heata.co/render
Genius idea. Render farm as space heater. Don’t see why compiling / transcoding would be any different. 😂
I’m definitely gonna have to wait until next winter. It’s foolishness to be running the GPU that hard when it’s 100⁰F+ outside!
In a few French cities they use the heat from data centers to heat up public pools
Not so sure the difference ripping a disk would make unless you have a super insulated room, but CPU heat is very much a consideration. Each summer I keep contemplating moving my rack with ~100 cores to the basement only to be dissuaded by the dampness and cable runs.
A lot of things made it a Winter project for me: wanting to assist my furnace rather than fight my air conditioner in the Carolina heat was one thing, also my work slows down a lot in winter, not as many projects to do, so I had plenty of time to mess with it over winter. Plus, in summer I keep my house at 74, in winter I keep it at 70, It’s amazing how much that makes a difference in CPU temperatures.
That is very interesting. Thank you for sharing.