Well, the whole point of running a movie server is to store movies on hard drives. It's pretty hard to justify the convenience of a server if you still have to load disks every time.
Also, say you have 100 high definition movies. To back those up to optical disk would be conservatively $1500(100 * $15/blank). Now you can buy a terabyte drive which holds say 25 movies (at 40Gig/movie). For your 100 movie collection, you need to spend $1000 (4 drives * $250/drive). Now if you run a RAID 5 setup which has redundancy, you need to buy another drive for the parity data so the cost is $1250, still less than optical disk.
Now you might argue that hard drives break down, but optical disk are forever. Well, optical disks aren't forever and hard drives have warranties. The Seagates that i run my server with have 5 year warranties and i'm running raid 5 which will automatically rebuild the array once i get the drive fixed. What i've decided to do is keep a hot spare so that when one does break down, the array rebuilds using the hot spare and then there is no down time while i get the broken drive fixed, which then becomes a hot spare.
Also, i haven't mentioned that hard drive prices come down much faster than blank disk prices. 1 Terabyte drives were around $500 when first on market about a year ago+ and now you can get one for around $200 if you look hard enough. Dual layer disks much less high definition blanks are still relatively expensive for the length of time the've been out. So within a year or so, i expect to be able to purchase a terabyte drive for under $200 while i'll still be paying $15 to $20 for a blank.
So i'm not trying to knock your alternative, I just think doing hard drive storage as opposed to optical disk is more cost effective in the long run even if you just save movies to drive and put the drive on a shelf.
your miss interrupting what I said to some degree,
yeah what your saying is cheaper then blanks for now.
but my point was,
you have your hard drive copy 1 Time so there for you have your server copy, you have the original disc in case your drive goes out.
if your looking to flip a switch and bang theres all your movies just click and go, well in a collection the size of what I got and will continue to grow fast, you'll need more then one server box, theres in this case more then one expense meaning the 250 bucks for the hard drive it don't end there
if your gona do rack mount servers you gain more flexibility but still even more cost.
now if your looking to use 1 TB hard drives external, then you would have cost effectiveness. but not a true server box unless your going to power all the externals at once witch again you have limits with all this in your house.
let me stop giving examples and let me just ask if I wanted to build a 100 TB server. in my house mind you witch would be 25 % full now after only 8 or so months of buying these things. how would I do that. and not have more into raid copies and hard wear power consumption noise heat ? this server would be 1 volume have all my movies ready for action a true server that wont be full after 2 days lol maybe after a year. oh yeah gotta buy all these movies on top of that storage cost guess that be one major bill from newegg lol if they could even fill my order assuming i wanted to build it all at once now. I'd probably buy drive to plug as i go but how does one do it? this server buys a hell allot of BDs at 8-35 a peace most I get for 15
meaning, less money duplicating what I already own and more into new copies witch is what I'm doing for now
100 or so discs is not really a collection to me 1 k up then yeah I'd call that a bad a$$ collection.
I'm not knocking people who have smaller collections or who have the want for a server like that I'd like to do it too but all that work makes me just wanna burn the dang thing to a disc, and don't call 100 TB a big space it is but not for this use. especially long term.
and above all that I have nothing but problems out of powerdvd playing these and you know there going keep screwing around with it till nothing works. rendering all this a waste anyways. I have had 0 issues out of my standalone far better quality far better playback and it plays all burned rips, there also seams to be no attention drawn this way toward stopping BD_R playback of ripped discs they will eventually come up with away to stop ISO playback eventually, they have made it possible to burn your own BDMV discs and a ripped ones no different then a home build. in short this with standalone will be no different then DVD providing sly-soft keeps cracking the drms on these things. and the cost is going to go down rather fast on the blanks
and no offense but the server is kinda more hassle since powerdvd cant get well anything right with BD and no I don't blame them, I think its cause they keep changing things with every BD they release then again maybe they are that bad. and usually when a rip don't work the original don't ether, but my standalone always does.
I do find it kinda funny they have a harder time making these things play from originals then it is for sly-soft to crack it. I mean anydvd is updated so fast and accurately that you can copy the dang thing before they get them playable in a comp lol
:agree::
for now I mainly test and play with this stuff don't really build much of anything yet, but if I was going to I'd get 750 GB externals cheapest per GB at newegg right now slap a number on the drive fill it add the movies on it to my movie data program (collectorz.com) base with a drive number and just plug and play and keep my original disc for back up, well not that you could sell or give it away cause like i said in the post before that would be no different then renting and ripping them witch is the part that I didn't get before in the previous post about mange copy allowing you to buy and copy your disc to your comp and sell your original cause you don't need it.
also I see more activity and demand for BD discs now particularly blanks keep selling out every wear, and the way the cost is going down is to buy them in 25 packs for SL ones