Putting DVD's on a Hard Drive

Is there a good way to put non commercial DVD's on a auxiliary hard drive in a fashion that makes it easy play them on a TV?

Thats a very broad question given we have no idea what device/s or software you are using. So I can only give you a broad answer;
You can play the DVD direct from your computer if its a portable device via cable if you have a HDMI outlet or you can record the contents as a file convert it to AVI format if you have the software and copy it to a USB drive that can be played though some TV's and some DVD players. Or you could use Apple TV or you could just play them on a DVD player.
A little more info please.

Is there a good way to put non commercial DVD's on a auxiliary hard drive in a fashion that makes it easy play them on a TV?

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Use Handbrake. It will give you an mp4 video file of the dvd.
https://handbrake.fr

To clarify, is there a way to load DVD's on to a the type aux. hard drive you would use to back up your Mac without paying them allowing them to be selected & played? There must be a common way to do that or they would not be selling so many large H.D's for people to save movies on. I'm just behind the times & have a massive collection of homemade DVD's of movies I've made over the years. I'd like to be able to put some of the DVD's on a H.D. without having to play the DVD to record it on the hard drive. Years ago recording movies became an addiction I fear. I have to find a charity or senior's home to leave them to when my expiration date arrives. I hate to see about 1500 movies go to waste! Some of them will likely never come to Netflix.

I'm aware of using a HDMI cable connected to the Mac.

Handbrake and similar software doesn't require you to play the entire movie to get it onto the hard drive. The software reads the video files from the DVD and saves it in a form that can be played on the computer. I think the last conversion I did with Handbrake converted roughly 90 minutes of movies in about 30 minutes or so.

When I first started using Handbrake I found the interface a bit daunting but it's not as confusing as it appears to be. There are several other pieces of software to choose from if Handbrake drives you nuts.

I also use Handbrake to convert movies into files that I can add to either iTunes or iMovie.

Mr.D, as stated Handbrake will do the job you want to do admirably and the default settings seldom need to be altered other than choosing the type of device you wish to replay the movies on. The files will be converted to mp4, a format that is compatible with all Apple devices. This will preserve them in a digital format.
The question is what do you want to be able to replay them on?
The reason I ask is because you have so many and you suggest leaving them to a charity or retirement home.
The vast majority of commercial devices that can replay digital movies will not read a Mac formatted medium. So your external hard drive will need to be formatted as MS-DOS, ExFat or FAT32.
Let me give you an example of what I occasionally do.
My son sent me a link to a movie he had downloaded. The Movie was in MKV format. I wanted to play it on my TV via the USB port on the TV. I had to format a USB thumb drive to ExFat (a windows format) then I used a third party app to convert the file to DivX a codec of AVI format. This plays happily on my Samsung TV.
I had to use a thumb drive because the USB port on a TV is not capable of providing the electrical power needed to run an external USB HDD.
So really the best and most flexible form of stored movie is still a DVD CD because it can be played on many devices but I accept it is not the best long term storage option.
So if you wish to simply archive the information by all means use Handbrake but bear in mind that the data may need to be converted to another format for others (not using a Mac device) to view them. Otherwise others will be limited to watching them on a computer or via a computer using say VLC player.
As for the time required that is a huge job in itself. The time it takes to transfer a movie on a DVD to digital format is dependant on the coding required and can be as much as 50% of the time required to play the file.

Thanx for the responses! Appreciated!