I love my movies. I have a huge collection and a dedicated home theatre in my home – such is my love for enjoying the movie experience in the highest possible quality.
All those discs take up a fair bit of space, so I have decided to get rid of them all.
But not before I rip them all and store them on a NAS (network attached storage) so I can still view them in my theatre.
Before, to watch a movie I would have to locate the disc in one of three packed bookshelves and pop the disc into our Panasonic 4K player.
Now I just need to fire up the system and access an interface – which has my entire library of movies including covers and information in alphabetical order – and start watching in seconds.
THE EQUIPMENT – RVOLUTION NAS AND RVOLUTION PLAYERONE
To achieve this I decided to purchase (yes, I bought it) the Rvolution NAS which has eight bays which I filled with eight Seagate Iron Wolf 20TB 3.5-inch HDDs – that’s a total of 160TB of storage.
Rvolution says 8 x 20TB will be enough room to store 2,000 4K discs, 4,000 Blu-rays and 24,000 DVDs.
In my case I had about 2,000 discs – a quarter of these are 4K discs, the rest Blu-ray and a couple of dozen DVDs.
The NAS has a Raid-5 configuration which means if there is a disc failure I have sufficient backup to not lose any of the movies.
What I also needed to be able to view the ripped movies in my theatre was the Rvolution PlayerOne – a media player that is Dolby Vision and HDR10+ compatible that can act as the translator for the files on the NAS and present them in their original picture and audio quality.
That was important to me.
The NAS was located in my office while the player was in my equipment rack in my home theatre.
There are a few reasons why I have so many discs in this age of streaming.
Firstly, the quality you get with disc will always be better than the streamed version in terms of picture an audio quality.
Discs provides a higher bit rate and better audio when compared to a streamed movie which is usually heavily compressed so it can be efficiently delivered for your viewing.
This compression results in the lower bit rate and poorer sound.
The reason I built my dedicated home theatre was so that I could enjoy my movies in their highest quality.
To me, streaming a movie is like drinking Diet Coke whereas watching it off a disc is like having regular Coke with all the sugar and everything on board.
Physical media is also a repeatable experience that doesn’t rely on your Internet connection.
And if you own a favourite movie on disc, you can watch it whenever you want.
You’re not at the mercy of the streaming services who sometimes chop and change their list of titles.
One week your favourite movie could be there, and the next week it could be gone
When the Rvolution NAS rips a movie, it basically does a full disc copy so I can still access the menus and special features but, most importantly, it maintains the picture and audio quality precisely as it appears on the disc.
Having the Rvolution PlayerOne to read and play the movies from the NAS is like having a 4K disc player to present the contents of the disc in its highest quality.
Rvolution wants you to access the NAS through its player so technically you need an Rvolution player in every room where you’d like to access the collection.
That easy access is why people have a NAS to begin with. But because the NAS is on my network I should still be able to access and play the movie files
Before I could get started the NAS had to be initialised by Rvolution themselves (they are based in France) to ensure the storage and the system was ready to go.
They did this online, so my NAS had to be visible to them on the internet.
This would come in handy later as they were able to look at my system when I ran into some issues.
THE RIPPING
Ripping movies to a NAS is nothing new and it requires a certain level of tech knowledge and expertise to get the job done.
The Rvolution NAS has an ASUS drive and ripping a movie is as simple as inserting the disc and letting it do its thing.
When the RIP is complete, the disc ejects and you can start the next disc.
4K discs took between 40 minutes to more than an hour to rip depending on the movie while Blu-rays needed 20 minutes to 45 minutes. DVD’s could be ripped in about 15 to 25 minutes.
Naturally 4K discs took longer because they had a lot more data than Blu ray and DVD.
As you’d expect, this process took quite a few months, and it wasn’t without its issues.
There were some discs that just flat out refused to rip and I put those aside.
These were a combination of 4K, Blu-ray and DVDs which, I was told, have errors that defy ripping.
To speed things up I decided to add two extra Blu-ray drives and rip three discs at once instead of just one.
Rvolution told me this wouldn’t be an issue and that the system was robust to handle that load.
I also ripped a few favourite TV series that I owned on Blu-ray and DVD as well.
There were times when the NAS needed a reboot and the discs just wouldn’t rip.
Rvolution even pushed out a software update which they thought would make ripping even easier but it actually set me back and I was unable to rip anything.
After a few emails back and forth they decided to downgrade my drive to the previous software and I was able to rip once again.
THE ISSUES
Taking on a project of this kind does come with its issues.
I’ve already mentioned the fact that some discs just refused to rip – The Abyss (4K), Everest (BD), Fast and the Furious (BD) Ocean’s 8 (4K), Ghostbusters Afterlife (4K) to name a few.
But when you consider out of nearly 2000 discs that I only had a one per cent failure rate it actually isn’t too bad.
There were also issues with the NAS itself.
I was able to connect a HDMI cable to a monitor to see what was happening. The Rvolution NAS has a Windows OS and frequently needed rebooting.
The other issue I was having was buffering especially when playing 4K movies off the NAS.
There were moments where the picture would slow down and freeze and I would lose sound.
Basically it was unwatchable and I communicated these issues to Rvolution and they insisted it was probably my network.
I did explain to them that I do know a thing or two about technology and assured them that my network wasn’t the issue.
I was also in touch with the great people at the local Australian distributors Synergy AudioVisual and they also offered amazing support.
In fact, they offered to pick up the units and check them out for themselves.
I took them up on that offer while I was away on my six week European trip.
After some thorough testing they concluded that there were some issues with the NAS and that they would replace the unit and then put all my HDD’s back in so my collection was intact.
My greatest fear was that I would have to start ripping my movies again from scratch.
THE RESULT
I got the NAS and the player back a few days after returning from Europe and immediately plugged them back in again and connected them to my network.
And it worked flawlessly and continues to perform admirably every day.
4K movies play seamlessly at their highest quality and retain the audio tracks whether it is Dolby Surround or Dolby Atmos.
What I really like is the Rvolution R_Video interface which presents my entire collection in alphabetical order with customizable covers and backgrounds.
It’s a great way to view your movie collection.
And when you’re scrolling through each movie, as soon as you stop on one title – after a few seconds the music from that film will start playing.
The system is smart enough to recognise the movie after it has been ripped and brings in the appropriate information and cover which also has a label to indicate whether the movie is 4K, Blu-ray or DVD.
I also love the fact that it is smart enough to organise your movies into collections.
It puts all the Star Wars movies together along with Rocky, John Wick, Batman, Harry Potter, Avengers and many, many other into their own folders.
There were sometimes the recognition didn’t quite go to plan and we had to manually identify the movie which in turn updated the Rvolution database to make it easier for others.
Overall, I would say it has been a worthwhile exercise transferring my entire collection to the NAS
Now all that’s left are six massive tubs full of the physical discs I will now have to store.
I have been told it would be illegal for me to sell the discs. If I duplicate them and not retain the originals that’s against the law so I have to find a large space to store them.
The other benefit is getting space back in my home theatre.
The back wall was dominated by the three bookshelves that were bulging with all my movies.
Those shelves are empty now and I will be getting rid of them and replacing them with glass cases to showcase my movie merch and valuable Star Wars collectables along with all my Lego builds.
I’m satisfied that I can still watch all the movies I owned in their original high quality without having to actually reach for the physical disc anymore.
And I will still be buying discs in the future so that I can rip them into the system as soon as they arrive and then place them into storage.
I’ve decided that I will only purchase 4K movies from now on – and these will only be the titles that I really like.
Lately these purchases have been for movies I only had on Blu-ray that are being released on 4K for the first time.
The rest I’ll just watch on the streaming services I’m subscribed to.
THE COST
Doing what I’ve just done doesn’t come cheap and I would only recommend it to movie lovers in my position who really value the quality and convenience the Rvolution system can provide.
The Rvolution PlayerOne is priced at $1,595 and comes with an internal hard drive bay which can host up to a 32TB of movies, TV shows and music files.
The Rvolution NAS is priced at $7,495 – and that’s not including the drives.
The Seagate Iron Wolf 20TB 3.5-inch HDDs are about $750 each which adds up to $6,000.
It is an expensive move but an investment I plan on making last a very, very long time.
I hope that one day studios will give customers the option of purchasing the file at its highest quality rather than on a disc.
The reason I buy a movie is that I want to own it and be able to enjoy it at its highest quality.
For absolute movie fans like me I’ll still be willing to pay for that quality file.
But delivering such a huge file – we’re talking almost 100 GB – would be a challenge but with today’s high speed connections – I have a1Gbps connection via Aussie Broadband – so that download wouldn’t take too long at all.
VERDICT
The Rvolution PlayerOne and Rvolution NAS has lived up to its name and revolutionised my collection and the way that I enjoy it.
It has maintained the high level of picture and audio quality that I demand while offering an attractive and convenient interface to be able to find the movies I want to watch in seconds.
This isn’t for everyone as the cost of the equipment indicates, but if you’re truly passionate about your movies, and you can afford it, it’s a move you won’t regret.
