How to play dvd from DVD image

[chuckzoch]

What, if anything, can i do to be able to actually play an imige of a dvd?
By this i mean that i have an external shared hard drive that i share with all of my pc's in the house. I want to store images of DVD's on that drive and then be able to just click on the individual folder and watch the movie without having to physically have a DVD disk in any drive.

I know that i can just place a DVD in a drive and share that drive and then go anywhere within my network and play that dvd. But what can i do, or how can i go about creating movies/ images on a hard drive and just watching them without having the physical dvd.

May be there is just no way to do it. yet im sure that with all the talent out there that someone has already come up with an easy way to do it...

Sure would appreciate any assistance on this. Might end up being a fools journey.