Building an HTPC- need software suggestion

[jamesah]

My friend and I are quite tech savvy and have been into the hackintosh scene for a while and we are looking at building an HTPC for my aunt and uncle for their home theatre set up. They have a nice plasma 720p television but will be upgrading to 1080p soon...

 

Sooo my question for this thread-Is there an application that can rip and compress video with one click? I'm talking something super simple that has a great compression rate(DivX?). It will need to compress HD videos as well... Insert dvd. Press GO! and BAM! The movie is already put into the media folder They have at least 800 dvd's and I'm sure their collection will only grow.

 

Also, anyone have any suggestions as far as a way to make sure they don't lose all their data once they get it loaded? I'm thinking 2 2TB drives in Raid?

[poofyhairguy]

My friend and I are quite tech savvy and have been into the hackintosh scene for a while and we are looking at building an HTPC for my aunt and uncle for their home theatre set up. They have a nice plasma 720p television but will be upgrading to 1080p soon...

 

Sooo my question for this thread-Is there an application that can rip and compress video with one click? I'm talking something super simple that has a great compression rate(DivX?). It will need to compress HD videos as well... Insert dvd. Press GO! and BAM! The movie is already put into the media folder They have at least 800 dvd's and I'm sure their collection will only grow.

 

If you want compression, the best option is Handbrake. It will turn DVDs into nice mp4s with x264.

 

If you want straight rips, nothing beats the newest (3.x) MactheRipper and its chapter extraction mode.

 

Neither of them are as simple as you profess to need (aka will work without using your brain) but they work great and are the best on the platform.

 

Once you have the HTPC, nothing beats Plex for a player.