Totally agree, you must be reading my mind. This whole thing is a leadup to doing just what you suggest. I've got 3 2TB externals now and these things just keep getting cheaper. There's 4.5 TB internal in the machine I'm using now. I also have well over 100 blank BluRays, and this is why: I have my collection in Collectrz and make it available to my friends, family and neighbors, sort of the local BlockBuster. I have, over the years, learned that it is a bad idea to loan out the original, as it may not come back in the best of shape. I usually don't even use the originals at home, but rather, backups. Been doing this for years, first just DVDs, now getting into BluRays (I haven't bought a regular DVD in a couple of years, just BluRays). So what happens is a friend will go online, locate a movie that they want to borrow and call to see if they can pick it up. Since most of the desirable movies are now BluRays, I loan them the original. I'd rather not do that, hence DVDFab BluRay Copy and I loan out the backup. All legit, I own the originals, I'm free to make backups of personal property and as long as the original and the backup aren't being viewed at the same time, no copywrite infringement.
The problem I was having with 11 hour backups seems to have been solved with your suggestion to lower the burn speed to 1/2 the rated media speed, which is 2x . I just burned a copy of "Man on a Ledge" and it copied to hard drive in 20 minutes, then burned a 50 GB disk in 40 minutes. I can live with that. Good advice, thanks!
Back to your Media player suggestion. I foresaw copying my collection to hard drives, and then thru some 'black box' (the media player?) driving the projector in my home theater. As of right now, the way I watch a movie is to select one from the bookshelf, walk to the equipment room, insert the disc in the DVD player and then return to the theater to watch. At this point, control of the equipment is by wireless remote. A real PITA. I can't get around the single disc DVD shuttle. It'd be much nicer to just pick a movie from a hard drive directory and start that feeding the projector.
At this point, I'm not really sure what a media player is, I assume a quality single purpose computer with an HDMI out from a high quality video card. Is the file that would drive an HDMI output an ISO file or something else?
Thanks for the interest and help!