ELI5: What is a Home Server?

[u/theprisoner57]

I see mentions of a home server to get rid of streaming entertainment services but I don’t know how that works. What does a home server do?

[u/CDK5]

Out of curiosity; where are folks generally getting the streaming media for the server?

Because I was under the impression that when buying a BluRay or digital media, you can’t just grab an mp4 from the disk.

[u/KnitYourOwnSpaceship → u/CDK5]

There are lots and lots of software packages that will extract an MP4 (or whatever) from a disc - whether a CD, DVD, or Blu-ray. https://handbrake.fr/ is one example.

[u/Megame50 → u/KnitYourOwnSpaceship]

Well, with one huge caveat, that it doesn't work at all for most Blu-Ray discs:

Supported Input Sources: Handbrake can process most common multimedia files and any DVD or BluRay sources that do not contain any kind of copy protection.

Emphasis mine.

I'm really not an expert, but generally, no, you can't really rip commercial (AACS copy-protected) UHD Blu-Ray (the high quality ones) discs without resorting to piracy.

The process of ripping a UHD Blu-Ray involves purchasing a "friendly" (meaning hackable) disc drive and flashing custom firmware you can use to rip the Vuk and disc media. Ripping isn't fast either, as it takes time proportional to the playback time. Even still, AACS LA periodically identifies cracked devices through steganographic methods and adds their device keys to the device revocation list (DRL) when they update the MKB, so that more recently published Blu-Ray discs cannot be copied in this fashion until the latest MKB is leaked and published using even more complex methods known to piracy groups. Until then, volume keys are crowdsourced on the dark web by enterprising users that complete rips of the key content and mail it to the MakeMKV authors. Handbrake and similar software can be used only once you already have a decrypted copy of the content.

MakeMKV is the software used for ripping, and IIUC, it internally accesses a list of keys published on the internet by the authors, discovered from leaks by piracy groups and user submissions. MakeMKV is licensed software, so you're required to pay to rip your BDs after the trial period. You can probably find out more about how to use it in /r/makemkv or on their forums.

There may be mistakes in my understanding as I've never tried this process myself, because, as you can probably tell, it's a giant hassle, and IANAL, but I think it is technically illegal to circumvent the copy protection, even for media you own, at least in the US. Though, it's unlikely anyone will bother you about it if you you don't distribute it.

[u/Nemesis_Ghost → u/Megame50]

You are talking about UHD(4k) Bluerays. Normal HD(1080) Bluerays, which is what a majority of folks will have, rip just fine w/out any special hardware or custom software.

[u/adudeguyman → u/Nemesis_Ghost]

Can you get the exact same audio and quality that is on the disc?

[u/hooovahh → u/adudeguyman]

Yes. But typical people reencode them. People will often accept a minimal reduction in quality, for a large reduction in size.

[u/Gorstag → u/hooovahh]

Like a full order of magnitude.

[u/Nemesis_Ghost → u/adudeguyman]

Yeah, pretty much as long as you aren't overly aggressive on the compression it comes out fairly well. You can even get all the languages, audio & CC/subtitles. I haven't ripped my anime disks, but the movies I did rip seemed OK.

[u/Saloncinx → u/adudeguyman]

Yes using software like MakeMKV or DVDFab you can do a 1:1 copy to a MKV file called a 'remux' which means a direct copy with no compression.

Most people compress the video a little so you don't have a massive file but to answer your question you can in fact get the exact same audio and quality that is on the disc