Seinfeld Season 5 compressed from 20.1GB to 12.1GB. Now...to build a 5500 GB server...

URL: Amazon.com: Seinfeld - Season 5: DVD: Seinfeld

I know it's late in the day, but I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I enjoyed mine with my grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousin, brother, and parents. We missed my other cousin who recently moved up to Washington and yet another cousin who was in Utah for a wedding this weekend. But when all was said and done, it was a great get together and as my cousin who just started her first year at UCSD said during grace, "Let us remember to give thanks every day for our blessings rather than just on Thanksgiving."

Amen to that. Have a great weekend!

URL: The History Channel - Thanksgiving

While searching for a way to store a couple of terabytes on the cheap (not really possible I know, but I'm seeing how low we can go), I ran across the product linked below. While it currently only works with IDE drives and I'd much rather use SATA drives, the SATA device is coming soon and should cost about the same when it does come out. The beauty of the system is that you only need one parity drive across all 12 drives. So, instead of losing one drive for every 4 drives as my RAID is set up now, you lose one per 12. A much better ratio.

Also, you can add drives at any time without problem. For example, to start, let's say you want 1 TB, just buy three 500 gig drives, plug them in and you have two drives of storage with one drive for parity. Then, if you want another TB, just add two more drives. All the way up to 12 total drives for 5.5TB of storage. That's pretty damn cool.

$1299 for the case + 12 x 370 = $5739 or $1.04/gigabyte. Now that's damn good.

Just for illustration, let's go cheap and get a $150 enclosure for 4 drives. With one drive for parity, you have 1.5 TB. Total cost: $150 + 4 x 370 = 1630 or $1.08/gigabyte. Well, not quite the difference I was expecting, but to get to 5.5 TB, you need 4 enclosures and 15 500 gig drives ($1.11/gigabyte - adding the sixteenth drive gets you to 6 TB and back to the $1.08/GB).

I'm not quite sure how you'd hook up those 16 drives to your home theater system - maybe you can find a 4 drive network attached storage system, but that'll run you more than $150 for the enclosure, or maybe you want to put 4 PCI SATA adapters in your system and not many boards come with 4 PCI slots any more (plus, you'd need a PCI slot for the TV tuner, so it's getting even harder to work out).

There's a great thread over at AVS Forum on the Lime Tech box as well. I'm only on page 5 out of 22, but it's provided a wealth of information. The box is pricey, but seems to be worth it. Easily scalable to 5.5 TB is awesome. Even though it's not as slick as the 8 drive system from A-Tech, since the Lime Tech machine is accessed through GigE, it can be placed out of sight and out of mind. Very nice.

URL: MD1200/IDE

Now...to take those 300+ Criterions and back them all up to hard drives. Assuming an average size of 6 gigs uncompressed, 300 would take 1.8 TB while 400 would take 2.4. Not quite sure how I could pull that off, but 4 500 gig drives in RAID 5 would be 1.5 and two of those would easily hold 500 DVDs (though I just ripped My Life as a Dog at 8 gigs).

Cost? Home theater storage cases: 2 x $375 (4 drives each). 8 x 500 GB Hitachis, 8 x $370. $3710. Damn. Guess I'll just have to wait for those 1000 GB drives.

URL: BB ~ Blade's Blog

Every so often, DeepDiscountDVD.com has a sale where they give 20% off their already low prices. When this happens, it's the one time I splurge on DVDs. And...they're usually Criterions. When they have a sale, I stock up on DVDs I missed when they were released and I was in college. I get the ones to fill the gaps and get ever closer to completing the collection.

This last sale was no different. My order was a bit large, but well worth it as I got some great films that I had been meaning to purchase for awhile. Including; Mike Leigh's Naked, Samurai Rebellion, Saumrai Spy, & Kill!, and Lasse Hallström's My Life as a Dog. I also purchased a few (about 15) others and my collection is getting dangerously full.

Still missing: 183, 184, 186, 187, 188, 191, 194-198, 200-207, 213, 214, 215, 217, 218, 219, 223, 225, 227, 228, 247, 286, 290, 309, 311, and 314 and up (most of which aren't released yet). So it'll probably take two more big DeepDiscountDVD sales to get the collection full, but since I own every out of print Criterion DVD, I'm in no hurry. I'm a bit disappointed they're re-releasing some DVDs that went out of print, since I paid a premium for them, but it's all good since great movies will be available again from Criterion.

Now if only I could find my safe deposit box key so I could get at my most prized DVD...an authentic copy of Salo - probably the most sought after DVD because of its rarity. Yes...it's in my safe deposit box in the bank.

URL: Browse the Collection

I'm just not sure it could get any more jaw-dropping gorgeous than this...



Zenview Powerscape HD: Five-Screen Display with 30" Primary LCD Screen, 20.1" Perimeter Screens