Since I’ve gotten serious about converting my DVD collection over to an all digital format, I’ve been trying to limp along using the DVD player on my 2008 laptop to do the ripping and converting. Lets just say that it was not as efficient as one might like. Since Apple has decreed that no one using one of their Minis needs an optical drive, that pretty much left the option of picking up an external DVD/RW and doing the ripping and compression on the much more powerful Mini. In the space of a couple of hours this afternoon, I ripped and loaded into itunes five movies using the new drive… while at the same time ripping three TV episodes using the laptop. That’s not exactly a 1-to-1 speed comparison, but it’s a pretty good indicator that the external drive will prove to be money well spent.

If I can do one or two disks a day – usually one before I leave for work in the morning and another before I go to bed – I can have this done sometime in the early part of the new year, instead of sometime about a year from now using just the laptop. Sure, I could use the laptop to get the job done, but why put an otherwise reliable and perfectly serviceable machine through a year long stress test when I can use the faster option for $40? So far, I’ve converted hald a doze random movies, all four seasons of The Tudors, and the first three seasons of Buffy (Yeah, I know. Stop smirking out there.). When I get this little project finished, I promise I’ll envite everyone over for movie night. Based on early estimates, we should have about 200 days of interrupted viewing ready to stream to every TV in the house.