A few questions before I begin

[racermx187]

I will be starting to set up my Amahi HDA in the next few days and had a few questions I thought I would ask first.

First of all I will be using a Core2Duo powered machine with 4GB DDR2 RAM. I plan on using the 320GB HDD it has now and adding in a 1TB drive for extra room. I will be using the HDA for media purposes mainly, transferring all of my DVDs onto it as well as all of my music. Along with this I will be using it to backup the different windows and mac machines I have in my house.

What is the best format to rip DVDs in and what syntax is best to use for saving the files? I want something that will allow any media apps to pull in movie data/cover images. (recommendations on media apps would be good too)

Next, what is the best TV capture card to use with Linux/Amahi? I want to be able to use the HDA as a DVR and schedule recordings to be pushed to all of my TVs.

Lastly, does anyone have any experience using a secure VPN service along with CouchPotato or a setup similar to this?

Thanks for all of the help and I am excited to get the project started.

-Kyle

[stern88]

I will be starting to set up my Amahi HDA in the next few days and had a few questions I thought I would ask first.

First of all I will be using a Core2Duo powered machine with 4GB DDR2 RAM. I plan on using the 320GB HDD it has now and adding in a 1TB drive for extra room. I will be using the HDA for media purposes mainly, transferring all of my DVDs onto it as well as all of my music. Along with this I will be using it to backup the different windows and mac machines I have in my house.

Just to note:
there is as far as I know a special app for time machine

What is the best format to rip DVDs in and what syntax is best to use for saving the files? I want something that will allow any media apps to pull in movie data/cover images. (recommendations on media apps would be good too)

I dont know the best format (mybe mkv?) but use H.264 for compression
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Vi ... les/Movies

Next, what is the best TV capture card to use with Linux/Amahi? I want to be able to use the HDA as a DVR and schedule recordings to be pushed to all of my TVs.

Hmmm... ask someone here if there is an app called mythtv. As TV-card this one has many recommendations at ubuntuusers.de:
http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/WinTV ... 14_REV_B1M

---------
http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-T_PCI_Cards

Lastly, does anyone have any experience using a secure VPN service along with CouchPotato or a setup similar to this?

What?! Didn't you need a "secure VPN service" for CouchPotato

Thanks for all of the help and I am excited to get the project started.

-Kyle

Have fun
stern

[racermx187]

Lastly, does anyone have any experience using a secure VPN service along with CouchPotato or a setup similar to this?

What?! Didn't you need a "secure VPN service" for CouchPotato

Thanks for all of the help and I am excited to get the project started.

-Kyle

Have fun
stern[/quote]


Thanks for all of the info and links. I will do some reading. You don't need one, but some ISPs (mine) really crack down on some downloads so the more anonymous I can stay the less likely I am to recieve more of those pesky "delete this file now" letter.