Ok, I like being able to watch movies on my hard drive with the click of a button ,but 4 and 5 gig ripped dvd fill the hard drive up fast. I like Nero recode 2 ,but it seems to merge all files 2 one mpeg4 file and you can't switch chapters like on a dvd. I heard rat dvd compresses your dvd decrypted files to about 1 gig and gives you all dvd features, but i haven't had time to try. Has anyone tried or have a better solution for keeping movies on your hard drive? I have 60 gig and plan on buying 200 or 300 gig hard drive. P4M266 DDR512 VIA Mainboard Windows Xp sp 1

Compressing the files in general means lower quality. A DVD player with a remote is faster than booting a computer. Having 300 Gigs of movies seems a waste. How often do you replay each movie.

DVD with a remote is much slower. Lets see we have to turn the tv on dvd player on, find the remote the kids might of had, your wife, family or friend last had, find the correct input button. Lets say your played with remote or wife hit who knows what button and did what (Maybe you see my point). Oh yeah wheres the move out of 300 movies. Computers much faster. Nero showtime lets you skip through movie previews completely. That a dvd player will force you to watch and not all functions will work. I am going to learn how to deleat the previews and add functions. So if I want to burn a new copy i want have to suffer through them again. Honestly I can't see that much big diffence in quality. Also, don't you think it would be awesome to have 300 movies on a 300 gig hard drive catgorized so you don't have to search for them or wondered who borrowed your dvds. I could go on and on. P4M266 DDR512 VIA Mainboard Windows Xp sp 1

Sorry I still disagree, To add function you have to do serious editting. Cutting a 4G DVD to 1G is serious quality loss. Usually I don't lend my DVD's and I have my own player and remote and the DVD is always on the same input select and surround sound is already set up. The computers already have more important functions.

You probably have a better entertainment center than i do, too. When I finally catch up todate, I may see what you are talking about. P4M266 DDR512 VIA Mainboard Windows Xp sp 1

Another thing i heard about is tivo and some of there competors are switching to mpeg 4 compression. So I don't think it is that bad. P4M266 DDR512 VIA Mainboard Windows Xp sp 1

My biggest consideration is the size of teh viewing screens: 19" flat panel on the PC versus the 27" or the 31" TV screens available in my home. Viewing on the TVs I can lay on the couch at either end. The PC is on the desk and I pretty much have to sit in front of it at the desk. I really don't believe that the PC can render the video as good as the TV can either. I have watched DVDs on the PC but just for the fun of being able to and the fact that I paid for it to be able to do so. Bryan