How can I stream DVDs from my Synology NAS to my TV?

January 18, 2011 11:22 PM

How can I stream DVDs from my Synology NAS to my TV? I want to keep the extras, so I don't want to just rip it to avi or anything. I assume I need a device that will browse the NAS and mount the DVD and play it, but every streaming device I've found seems to just play simple videos. Commentary is half the value in any DVD, so if it isn't possible to do this I'd need to have some way to rip the DVD to a video file using the audio from the commentary.
posted by HappyEngineer to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

i use XBMC which, in my opinion, is the greatest media center software EVER. I have ripped all my dvd's as .iso files and stored them on my NAS (using FreeNAS). This way, as you also want, I have a complete image of the dvd with the menu structure and all extras. I point XBMC to where all these .iso files are stored, and voila! they just play. XBMC can also pull down covers and movie info and present it all by genre, title, director, etc.etc.
posted by alchemist at 12:02 AM on January 19, 2011

The Boxee Box is based on XBMC, so if you're looking for a streaming device, that may be the one to get. From searching the net it looks like people are playing DVD .iso files on it.

If you don't want the full size and menus of DVDs (which I find mostly annoying), Handbrake can rip to MP4 files with all audio streams intact.
posted by zsazsa at 12:42 AM on January 19, 2011

you need a network HD media player, there's a lot of different brand/models to choose from, see this webiste.
I got one recently (egreat r-1), for less than 50euros, hdmi on one side, network on the other side, and it can play everything I tried until now, including dvd-iso, or a shared dvd drive (with menus and all like a real dvd).
posted by anto1ne at 6:50 AM on January 19, 2011