How do people get HD movies for the Raspberry Pi?

[RoboLancer24]

I am planning a little project where I use network attached storage to stream movies and pictures. The PC side is fairly easy. However, I have a little Raspberry Pi with raspbmc attached to my TV and I would like to stream to it as well. 

 

The only solution that I see is to get a blu-ray drive, rip using make MKV, then use handbrake so the PI can read the file (I believe that raspbmc is unable to read MKV or play smoothly through software playback) and playback smoothly.

 

Does anyone have a better idea or see any flaws in this plan? I only need good 720p since my TV is fairly small and I will be sitting far enough away that I would not be able to tell the difference between 720 and 1080, but 480 is still blurry.

[nsyedhasan]

They either download and play it back via USB or use Netflix.

[RoboLancer24]

They either download and play it back via USB or use Netflix.

Who sells these downloads? I have not found a single legal website that does this. I am in the USA if there are regional options.

[nsyedhasan]

Who sells these downloads? I have not found a single legal website that does this. I am in the USA if there are regional options.

Netflix is the best but some people buy Blue Rays and then rip it from it.

[ejm_110]

I have been there and opted to custom HTPC itx build (build log coming soon!) installed with openelec (stripped down linux with xbmc installed)

 

I streamed from my NAS to RPi before. My RPi was installed with OpenElec, another option aside from Raspbmc. Audio is your worst enemy. About playback, SD resolutions are fine but 720p and 1080p are no go. It is not also fast or snappy enough for menu browsing even if the openelec files are on USB flash drive not SD card. In the end, I failed and somehow regretted it but I learned a lot from that experiment.

 

I will discourage you on pursuing that. You can go on with Intel NUC or custom htpc builds. It seems you are not familiar with xbmc, I suggest that you try that first. Others use plex or mediaportal.

 

if you want to save your time from ripping and just play your bluray discs on xbmc. You must have windows and software that supports bluray playback. There are many guides out there. Good luck on your project!

[nathanhd123]

Install RasPlex on the Raspberry Pi and then install Plex media server on your streaming pc. Plex is able to transcode on the fly so if your streaming machine has some decent specs all you will have to do is rip the MKV and then let Plex deal with making it compatible as you stream.

[Keel]

You can also use 'PS3 Media Server' to transcode files via DLNA, it works extremely well.

Got it running as a service at boot time on my machine currently so it stays out of the way and I don't even notice it once its configured.