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What software is best to use for streaming movies that have been ripped to a hard drive?

I have a movie collection larger than 500 movies, and many are not on Apple TV.  I have 2 Apple TV devices, but the content is streaming off Apple servers.

What service/software works best with Control4 on this?

Kalidascape, Plex, AppleTV pointing to a hard drive?

And then what hard drives work well with Control4?

Nas, Synology, Other World Computing Calisto?

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Zappiti is my current favourite.  I’ve been developing drivers for media players for years and this is just plug and play with automatic library management integrated into Control4 for selection on any Control4 navigator.

Supporting almost all video and audio formats, codecs and file containers, including all modern video standards such as HDMI 2.0, Ultra HD 4K, HDR, 3D subtitles and HEVC video codec with one billion colors (10-Bit color encoding), the Zappiti 4K HDR media player range sets an entirely new standard.

The top class Zappiti Duo 4K HDR is equipped with an internal 3.5" SATA HDD bay with hot swap function for huge total capacity (up to 32 TB) and offers powerful Wi-Fi 5G and Ethernet gigabit network capability.

The Zappiti 4K HDR media players are compatible with most audio and video formats such as UHD ISO, BD ISO, M2TS, MKV 4K, MVC 3D with 3D subtitles, BD and UHD menus support, home theater audio (including Dolby Atmos and DTS:X) and high-resolution lossless audio files

Zappiti+Video+Wall.png?format=1000w

zappiti_05.png?format=1000w

http://www.chowmainsoft.com/zappiti-control4

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11 hours ago, 7thheaven said:

What software is best to use for streaming movies that have been ripped to a hard drive?

I have a movie collection larger than 500 movies, and many are not on Apple TV.  I have 2 Apple TV devices, but the content is streaming off Apple servers.

What service/software works best with Control4 on this?

Kalidascape, Plex, AppleTV pointing to a hard drive?

And then what hard drives work well with Control4?

Nas, Synology, Other World Computing Calisto?

Right off the top take out Kalidescape.  It's not capable of doing Ripped movies. That said, I had one, it was awesome (but you do pay for that feature).

Everyone has their favorite solution, so I will share mine 

I use a synology NAS running PLEX server for storage. My end/playing device is typically and AppleTV (both 4k and a couple of previous versions). I use Infuse Pro on the AppleTV instead of Plex for playing and searching. the big difference is the infuse will take the processing away from the NAS and do it on the AppleTV.  Infuse also seems to do a much better job of playing 4K.

Easy to set up with C4. In fact, if you already have the appleTV, there's no additional work on the C4 side. 

 

 

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13 minutes ago, c44me said:

Are you guys able to do these with the lower end 2 bay NAS models?

Yes, but....

If you have a lots of movies you're going to want RAID better than mirror. I have an 8 drive unit, run Synology SHR Raid with 2 HOT Standby drives.

Back in the day, my Kaleidescape drives failed, and I had to get a 2nd system, new drives and pray they'd recover. Never again do I want to go through that feeling.

 

 

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6 hours ago, C4 User said:

There are multiple threads on this forum covering this topic that describe all of the better options. But, I recommend the InFuse Pro app that you can download on the AppleTV. Pay for the Pro version of the app.

I’d second Infuse Pro as it just works.  That said Zappiti looks great (and Alan’s Driver looks cool) if you want more hardware...

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7 hours ago, 7thheaven said:

Nas, Synology, Other World Computing Calisto?

In terms on NAS - if you are comfortable rolling your own server you could use unRAID and run the Plex server in a Docker container.  Then you can easily run other Docker containers as well, like Unifi, OpenVPN, AirVideo, PiHole, etc.

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7 hours ago, ekohn00 said:

Right off the top take out Kalidescape.  It's not capable of doing Ripped movies. That said, I had one, it was awesome (but you do pay for that feature).

Everyone has their favorite solution, so I will share mine as I have a 1500+ripped movies, including 4K/UHD

I use a synology NAS running PLEX server for storage. My end/playing device is typically and AppleTV (both 4k and a couple of previous versions). I use Infuse Pro on the AppleTV instead of Plex for playing and searching. the big difference is the infuse will take the processing away from the NAS and do it on the AppleTV.  Infuse also seems to do a much better job of playing 4K.

Easy to set up with C4. In fact, if you already have the appleTV, there's no additional work on the C4 side. 

 

 

Can you please share how you rip your movies eg ripping and storage process?

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4 hours ago, zaphod said:

In terms on NAS - if you are comfortable rolling your own server you could use unRAID and run the Plex server in a Docker container.  Then you can easily run other Docker containers as well, like Unifi, OpenVPN, AirVideo, PiHole, etc.

Could try FreeNAS and us native Plex vs docker.

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But what do you do when the day comes that all media is digital? As I understand it some 4K titles are digital only now.  I stopped ripping a long time ago. Man those were frustrating times. It’s expensive but Kaleidescape has almost all of the studios now and it couldn’t be any easier to use. And nothing is as reliable 

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Another vote for Zappiti and Allen’s driver.  I’m in the process of ripping a couple thousand discs and I’m going to clean the data up for Zappiti.  I haven’t found anything the player itself can’t handle and the video wall / library is awesome.  I’d like to see more capability in the driver, but that’s a Zappiti API issue.

 

If I win the lottery, I’ll convert to Kaleidoscope  But for now using My Movies collection management and a Synology NAS to manage the ripping.

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Kaleidescape is defiantely the best by a long shot but as everyone has already mentioned it is pricey.  You do get what you pay for and if you have a cinema with masking and different projection modes i highly recommend getting Kaleidescape as with our driver you can automate the masking / projection modes to suit the movie it is playing.

Our current recommendationas are Kaleidescape if you can afford it and Zappiti for everyone else.

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I use Kodi for 7 years now with PVR/DVR and movie. It has proven to be reliable - I tried Linux ans windows, however Windows turned out to be more reliable in the end.
My movie backend is Emby. It has served me well, is stable and works flawless in Kodi.
Alans Kodi driver works perfectly with Kodi.
Since Kodi can now do HDR I see no reason to look anywhere else...

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I’ve been using Synology NAS, Dune HD Player and Plex (also MyMovies but getting C4 interface on every TV is not important to me anymore). It works really well except for subtitles. I need to get a new NAS as the existing one is too old and does not have enough processing power.

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34 minutes ago, achoudhary said:

I’ve been using Synology NAS, Dune HD Player and Plex (also MyMovies but getting C4 interface on every TV is not important to me anymore). It works really well except for subtitles. I need to get a new NAS as the existing one is too old and does not have enough processing power.

What Synology box are you using and what does it not have enough power for?  I didn’t think serving video was that taxing.

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What Synology box are you using and what does it not have enough power for?  I didn’t think serving video was that taxing.

I have a DS411+. It doesn’t have enough power to process subtitles in real time when streaming with Plex. I don’t have local subtitle files and the playback is severely affected when streaming with subtitles on.
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Yes, subtitles have a serious impact on streaming off a Plex server. At least when transcoding is required.
To what device are you streaming? If direct play is possible, subtitles are not an issue since they are rendered on the player, not on the server.

Yeah. I think the issue is that Plex server is running on the Synology NAS. I was in between homes for the last 6 months. Gonna have to redo this part. I should probably run Plex on a different server - maybe an Apple TV or Mac Mini/PC or such.
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