Is Working With Blu-ray Worth It?

Author	Post
Goldstein All-Star Member "You have sacrificed nothing and no one." 3689 Posts 8/10	Posted - Jul 20 2012 : 1:21PM Specifically, working with Blu-ray on your own computer to make movies and/or data disks. For the most part, working with porn videos, and making your own edits and comps, is mostly going to limit you to "DVD quality" source material anyway. Also, I question whether I would consider Blu-ray disks you burn yourself to be "archive quality" (as compared to single-layer DVD-/+R disks), at least as far as stability goes. Obviously, backing-up huge data disks on Blu-ray holds a great deal of appeal -- as opposed to endlessly burning 4.7 GB DVDs. Anyone have some real experience here and/or informed opinion? [Link]
cubesnake Senior Member 3858 Posts 10/02	Posted - Aug 7 2012 : 2:18PM i guess everyone with huge amount of data seeks a medium for storage. The problem with DL BR discs is ... they are willingly keept expensive due to fear of being used as backupmedia for commercial BRs. I guess the only logical thing that makes a little sense is to have multiple NAS devices Cube [Link]
Goldstein All-Star Member "You have sacrificed nothing and no one." 3689 Posts 8/10	Posted - Aug 7 2012 : 2:35PM ^ Do you feel the same way about single-layer Blu-ray disks? My concern is regarding long-term stability for archival purposes. Followed by easing the repetitive burden of making DVD back-ups. Finally, with costs (which I believe GB-for-GB Blu-ray is competitve with standard DVDs). FYI, I don't trust anything other than single-layer optical media where long-term stability is concerned (i.e. no dual-layer media as far as I'm concerned). I'm already backing things up to "NAS devices" (i.e. external hard-drives). But, my practice is dual backups -- both to an external hard-drive and burned to DVD. [Link]
BYOB_Kenobi Senior Member “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Kierkegaard 2684 Posts 8/09	Posted - Aug 8 2012 : 2:47AM cubesnake wrote: I guess the only logical thing that makes a little sense is to have multiple NAS devices Cube Click to expand Exactly. Or you can go with the ultimate backup type that is reliable and tested. Tape. But I've always wanted a Thecus and used one for a job I had once 4-bay. It was bad ass. However, I realized the only real advantage of a Thecus or NAS (they are really expensive for what you get) is small form factor and power. Instead of buying a Thecus, I just start buying parts for a really small case to make a NAS with more than 4-5 3.5" bays. Oh yeah baby. There it comes. If you have a Thecus you don't want like N4200 PRO (this is the one I've used). +I'll be happy to take it of for you. But the NAS wave is coming. [Link]
cubesnake Senior Member 3858 Posts 10/02	Posted - Aug 8 2012 : 10:46AM Goldstein wrote: ^ Do you feel the same way about single-layer Blu-ray disks? My concern is regarding long-term stability for archival purposes. Followed by easing the repetitive burden of making DVD back-ups. Finally, with costs (which I believe GB-for-GB Blu-ray is competitve with standard DVDs). FYI, I don't trust anything other than single-layer optical media where long-term stability is concerned (i.e. no dual-layer media as far as I'm concerned). I'm already backing things up to "NAS devices" (i.e. external hard-drives). But, my practice is dual backups -- both to an external hard-drive and burned to DVD. Click to expand To be honest ... the whole BR thing is beyond me. I decided not to go that road. Not with regular movies not with backup. It´s simply a digital nightmare all those different media types. As time goes on we all may get problems when we want to access our beloved DVDs + or -. A new drive may be suitable for them but if you had the joy of discovering that your "new" DVD/BR drive won´t read your "old" DVDs then you really have a problem. I´m still glad that my 5+ years old (personaly burned) DVDs (random choice of picking one out of my stack) can still be read. In the beginning i was a big fan of DVDRAM but to be honest ... since only Panasonic makes those "Caddy drives" it´s useless to buy (9.4GB) caddydisks and always have to pull them out of their housing in order to read/write them in a non-panasonic drive ( i had 3 dead ones already) I´m not so familiar with todays "Tape" storage stuff but i´m not a friend of non-optical storage systems other than NAS etc. You are right about dual-backups but the problem is we (or at least a lot of people) are collectors. Most of us probably deny the fact that we will not access the burned media as much as we thought. I have so much pending stuff to burn (TV shows, movies,etc) that i may as well delete all that once i´ve seen it once. regarding double layer media ... never used them either ... maybe paranoia but i stay with single sided right now i´m struggling with myself ... i want to by a new NAS with "no need to worry about low space" for quite some time but it´s not only the initial costs that make you think twice. What about "Thunder and lightning" in the summertime ? A NAS is usually a 24/7 device. Won´t even wanna think about a total malfunction Cube Edited by - cubesnake on 8/8/2012 11:05:36 AM [Link]

Goldstein All-Star Member "You have sacrificed nothing and no one." 3689 Posts 8/10	Posted - Aug 8 2012 : 1:53PM The thing with single-layer standard DVDs (4.7 GB) is that, as compared to all other optical media formats, I expect them to be the most reliable -- not only in terms of stability for archival purposes, BUT also in terms of optical drives supporting them for a long time into the future. I don't have all that much confidence in Blu-ray support. For that matter (don't laugh), I think it's entirely possible that support for standard DVDs just may outlast support for whatever flavor of Blu-ray you are working with. Bottom line: I expect that I will reliably be able to read standard DVD formats (i.e. not being cut-off by technological obsolescence), due to the fact that I have many computers and drives that can read them. Even if standard DVD support were dropped tomorrow, I still would have no problem in transferring my backups to a new media format. Blu-ray is very consumer unfriendly -- and is this way by design. BTW, my penchant for redundancy is even worse than you could imagine [Link]
cubesnake Senior Member 3858 Posts 10/02	Posted - Aug 8 2012 : 2:34PM Goldstein wrote: The thing with single-layer standard DVDs (4.7 GB) is that, as compared to all other optical media formats, I expect them to be the most reliable -- not only in terms of stability for archival purposes, BUT also in terms of optical drives supporting them for a long time into the future. Click to expand Somehow, the average "consumer" is usually fucked anyway. Only because he/she buys blank DVDs of a certain company doesn´t mean he get´s the same quallity any time. I have cakeboxes of blank DVDs all suposedly burnable from speeds of 1 up to 16. Every now and then one or all my drives say 8x is max. So the company selling them is not the one producing them. I don't have all that much confidence in Blu-ray support. For that matter (don't laugh), I think it's entirely possible that support for standard DVDs just may outlast support for whatever flavor of Blu-ray you are working with. Click to expand nothing to laugh here, i wouldn´t be surprised either :) due to the fact that I have many computers and drives that can read them. Click to expand substitute can with should :) Even if standard DVD support were dropped tomorrow, I still would have no problem in transferring my backups to a new media format. Click to expand Well, i would have a huge problem :) BTW, my penchant for redundancy is even worse than you could imagine Click to expand well, the problem however is ... you can not have a "backup" of yourself :) Cube Edited by - cubesnake on 8/8/2012 2:35:00 PM [Link]
BYOB_Kenobi Senior Member “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Kierkegaard 2684 Posts 8/09	Posted - Aug 9 2012 : 6:47AM Not to derail, but since we are talking about NASes, LubeNLuv and I were talking on a post a while ago here about NAS. We wondered why they are so expensive since all they are are weak CPU, mini motherobard, small amount of soDIMM RAM, 1000Mbps NIC (or 2) and SATA controller, plus plastic little boxes with 3.5" bays. As opposed to buying the same components (Intel Atom chip or low power CPU, small soDIMMRAM, and a good small case that can hold 6 3.5" SATA drives. This system would cost much less than the NAS above plus perform faster. BTW, my dream NAS! Edited by - BYOB_Kenobi on 8/9/2012 6:49:15 AM [Link]
cubesnake Senior Member 3858 Posts 10/02	Posted - Aug 9 2012 : 10:15AM BYOB_Kenobi wrote: Not to derail, but since we are talking about NASes, LubeNLuv and I were talking on a post a while ago here about NAS. We wondered why they are so expensive since all they are ... Click to expand I wondered the same a lot of times ... the question is what kinda Software would you run on a "custom build" NAS and how userfriendly would it be ? my Dream ==> this<img src="/graphics/icon_smile_drool.gif" border="0" Cube Edited by - cubesnake on 8/9/2012 10:16:46 AM [Link]
BYOB_Kenobi Senior Member “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Kierkegaard 2684 Posts 8/09	Posted - Aug 11 2012 : 10:16AM Christmas is coming Cube and I would love nothing more than this. You buying? [Link]
cubesnake Senior Member 3858 Posts 10/02	Posted - Aug 12 2012 : 2:53AM BYOB_Kenobi wrote: Christmas is coming Cube and I would love nothing more than this. You buying? ... Click to expand Maybe i´m blind but i couldn´t find anything about the size of the harddrive it can handle. Assuming it can handle 4TB drives that would be then ... in raid 6 mode ... 32 TB if i´m not mistaken :) I guess i was not that brave for getting something like this for Xmas :) Cube [Link]
Magician9 Member 14 Posts 8/12	Posted - Aug 18 2012 : 3:31AM Does anyone else use hot swapable hard drive caddies? Hard drives are relatively inexpensive and you can get reliable ones for reasonable prices. I get about 200 DVD quality movies per drive and can have 3 mounted at once in my current machine. For me, this is cheaper than NAS, and also, less wear and tear on the drives because all of them are not always mounted and running. [Link]
BYOB_Kenobi Senior Member “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Kierkegaard 2684 Posts 8/09	Posted - Aug 18 2012 : 2:03PM Magician9 wrote: Does anyone else use hot swapable hard drive caddies? Hard drives are relatively inexpensive and you can get reliable ones for reasonable prices. I get about 200 DVD quality movies per drive and can have 3 mounted at once in my current machine. For me, this is cheaper than NAS, and also, less wear and tear on the drives because all of them are not always mounted and running. Click to expand Do you backup and encode your DVDs or do you do just an image (referring to your 200 DVD per/drive)? Yeah I have 6 mounted at once. No not hot swappable (I dont' think) but just turn off and use glider mounted already on and stick it in. [Link]
Goldstein All-Star Member "You have sacrificed nothing and no one." 3689 Posts 8/10	Posted - Aug 18 2012 : 5:18PM ^ "stick it in" Finally, language we can all identify with [Link]
cubesnake Senior Member 3858 Posts 10/02	Posted - Aug 19 2012 : 2:49PM Magician9 wrote: Does anyone else use hot swapable hard drive caddies? Hard drives are relatively inexpensive and you can get reliable ones for reasonable prices. I get about 200 DVD quality movies per drive and can have 3 mounted at once in my current machine. For me, this is cheaper than NAS, and also, less wear and tear on the drives because all of them are not always mounted and running. Click to expand Actually, i tried this in the "IDE" Age and even though i used it only once or twice within 2 days it didn´t really make me happy. I tried several different vendors but they all were not good. If you are lucky with them good luck. Since you don´t seem to have a Backup of your "movable" drive you know that once it fails to work you are fucked. Back in the days i lost several GIG this way ... thats when i decided to only buy NAS Cube [Link]

Magician9 Member 14 Posts 8/12	Posted - Sep 5 2012 : 4:29AM I DO have a backup of my removable drives. That's why I use them. You can do an old fashioned brute force copy or you can use rsync. The strategy that I came up with this was to make it easy to have multiple back up drives, storing some away from my house just in case. Antec makes a fairly good inexpensive caddy. Generally, I don't do much encoding as an image suffices for me to watch the movies. Viewing with VLC, I have the same menus I would playing the DVD, but I can click everything with the trackball. This is not sophisticated but it's easy and works for me. Also, I learned a lot about Linux doing this and I recommend it as a way to have multiple, inexpensive and easy backups without spending a lot of money on poor quality NAS devices. [Link]
Magician9 Member 14 Posts 8/12	Posted - Sep 5 2012 : 4:35AM Cubesnake, I'm not saying that your NAS is poor quaility. I just think that in general, a lot of consumer NAS devices are seriously overpriced for lowest bidder parts. Stipulated, I don't think this would be so easy to do with Window$, but I would be interested to know if someone does something similar with M$ software. [Link]
cubesnake Senior Member 3858 Posts 10/02	Posted - Sep 5 2012 : 6:50AM Magician9 wrote: Cubesnake, I'm not saying that your NAS is poor quaility. I just think that in general, a lot of consumer NAS devices are seriously overpriced for lowest bidder parts. Click to expand i guess we can call it "affordable quallity" :) Even though they cost a good amount of money too i wish i would have bought something bigger in terms of CPU /RAM and space Maybe i could have build one with the needed hardware from scratch but i was sick and tired of always building something and then life with it´s ... moods of not doing what it was build for :) Cube [Link]
BYOB_Kenobi Senior Member “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Kierkegaard 2684 Posts 8/09	Posted - Sep 6 2012 : 9:52PM Cube, this one is for you buddy. THey go a little overboard in my opinion, but the project idea is great. I'm actually got some parts to make my own NAS, not pre-made, from scratch using small microATX case and mainstream PC parts. Wish me luck for my file server/NAS project. It has 6-7 3.5" internal bays but is small! Edited by - BYOB_Kenobi on 9/6/2012 9:53:16 PM [Link]