hard drive format for movie server
 

I would like to create a video library and play my movies to my large screen tv from my PC or mac if necessary.
I have several large sata hard drives and need to know how I should approach this.
Should I format the hard drives in fat32?
What is the file format I should create/store videos in? (iso,avi)

Thanks,

As long as you are using Linux I would stick with ext3.

If you want to be able to reburn the DVD's stick with the ISOs. If you want best quality for the space use x264.

Look on google for filesystem comparison pages. Ext3 and Reiserfs are more robust but another filesystem like xfs or jfs may be better tuned to serve large files. Fat32 is a bad choice because of a 2 or 4 GB filesize limit. I think that smb also has filesize limit. If the server's store is networked, nfs may be a better choice.

XFS filesystem was created for this particular use.

Use NTFS>4GB save as .iso's. I have a video library that is used between Linux and Windows without issues.

I vote for XFS, JFS. They both perform well in case of directory with many files, large files.

I want to thank everyone for their input here.
I opted for xfs to store .iso files.

Does anyone know of a project/link for this purpose.
I would like to keep it as simple as possible.
I have both Linux and XP but would prefer using Linux if possible.

Thanks again