Fred - re room to room, everything is accessible thru every room as everything's on the same network, wired and wirelessly. So we can have movies watched in every room if need be, all from the same main PC. As to hard drives, you rightly point out that it would be a killer to lose the contents from a huge hard drive, i try to offset that risk by having two, separate hard drives for each movie/TV series or whatever. I'd like to have a 3rd hard drive for each internal hard drive but it's too expensive for now. edit- ..what Sam said
Fred, When you see a BD ripped to a DVD or CD size it is normally stripped and compressed but with compression you lose quality (detail). So a 30GB movie compressed to 1 GB wouldn't be the greatest in my mind, even though it is done all the time. If I'm watching that movie on my iWhatever or any small hand held devices I'll probably not notice the poor quality, but who would want to do that unless it was your only option. Remember transistor radios? We are in the transistor radio age of people who think they are in to quality and Hi-Fidelity but are really into poor quality and low fidelity. I personally don't like compressing below BD25 although I have done BD9's and if the movie starts out around 17GB it not bad but I wouldn't do it for a 40GB movie even as Movie Only.
I don't want to turn this thread further into movies but BR and BD Rips of DVD-size and less can and do have fantastic quality. I'll leave Sam to write a more techie description if he wants but that's as easy as i can explain it. 480p and 720p BR/BD Rips when properly encoded can be very crisp indeed.
Oh I forgot to mention, sammy said something about this popcorn hour thingy, no pc needed, I need to check that out.
I do remember you guys mentioning, back up your HDD's, if you have 25 2tb hdd's, than need another 25 to back that up? that's pushing it don't you guys think?
It would be, but as hard drives keep increasing in size it's still less drives to have to have a copy of. But yeah, at some point it gets silly. It's a good way to store data for now, but what i can tell you for sure is that i'm not falling for any of that 'Cloud' nonsense, where big corporations store all your data for you so that you don't have to. I wouldn't want that for my own data nor for a company's data. So for now big hard drives for me are the best method, but in future, who knows what we'll do as the big coporations want all of our data to be theirs.
We'll see how those compressed HD flicks look on a projector! I prefer to keep BD backups, not DVD-9. But I don't have a projector, YET! So I can't prove if they lose enough quality, when blown up to say 100Ft wide. I'd sure like to see BD projected to huge sizes like that
Nothing wrong with older tech or older methods, my main linux box is a lowly Athlon 2800, and a good portion of my thinking/ways and tech are olde worlde. I only go modern in things i need to, i'm a firm believer in "if it still works, keep using it"
Nothing wrong with that Creaky I have a friend that causes himself nothing but headaches as he is always tinkering with his stuff instead of getting it working and leaving it alone. So what happens is through his tinkering he screws thing up and then starts blaming MS and all other manufactures when in fact he screwed it up. I just sit back and laugh, shame on me, but it is too funny and I try to instill in him that it would be better not to mess around always but he can't keep his fingers out. As you love to say "To each his own".
eSATA is the least reliable interface of all, it's true. It's just quick. Having to replace the hardware and the cables every few months is a real pain.
I haven't had any trouble with my eSATA card, or dock. The front eSATA port on my HAF932 and the front port on my brothers card reader is obviously cheaply made. Disconnections happen Otherwise I love the interface. Excellent transfer speeds externally. Manufacturers simply need to make them better!
I'm using an external port on my P55A-UD4, and the front port on my NZXT Whisper, since the front panel of the HAF doesn't work. I've had to replace a couple of cables, the first dock still works, the second one seems a bit dodgy.
Since my cable and dock work well on the eSATA card (virtually zero hiccups), I'm forced to believe that the ports of the ones I mentioned are faulty. I don't take coincidences lightly I sure hope my dock doesn't go bad :S I love it. I suppose it is possible, that the port on my brothers card reader simply doesn't like my cable. In which I could attempt to find one that fits more snug
I've only ever replaced one s-ata cable. and that was in my brothers machine Who knows though. A current bug I have may be attributed to a bad cable :S
That's about how often they fail... :S By which I mean I have to replace one a month, not every cable every month, but still it's annoying.