Help setting up a Video Server

[William1]

I am thinking of setting up a video server in my home (no external availability), my problem comes when I consider the following:

currently have almost 1000 dvd titles

need an interface to access any movie on any HD on any computer from multiple computers

need to be able to add HDs as needed

what is the best way to add HDs

Thanks for any help in advance.

PS
I build systems for fam/frnds on a regular basis so I'm somewhat familiar with computer systems.

 

[DanielASanders]

You are talking about ALOT of disk space my friend. The kind that would cost you thousands (especially if you want fault tolerance). For that kind of storage solution to buy from a factory would cost a bundle. If you are serious, you should consider a homegrown SAN project. Some things to keep in mind however would be:

If you want to stream this content to any tv in the house you will need a big pipeline for the data to travel (i would say go with a Gigabit ethernet network and remember that switches must be gigabit as well).

You would also need a "media center" type box to push the movie to the tv's audio and video as well.

As far as the actual storage goes, the faster your hard drives are the better. Maybe SATA or even SCSI if you want to splurge

Make sure the case you use for your storage device has enough room to accommodate more drives. If you get a enterprise level SAN device there are drive bays in the front where you can add more drives or take one out on the fly (hot swappable)

You should read up on the RAID schemes and I suggest you use RAID 5 for your fault tolerance.

 

[-Paul-]

if you encode in divx, i think that you can put like an hour down to 300 megabytes... so if you have 1000 dvd titles, and want room to grow, get about a terabyte of disk space.

 

[William1]

Thanks, Lots of good info! I think I need to do more thinking, reading and research.

 

[systeq]

this is what works for me: custom built pc(2yrs ago) AMD 2400XP CPU | ATI Radeon 9700 Pro | 1GB PC3200 RAM | and a little over 700GB of storage spread over 3 7200RPM IDE HDDs | i use vidomi to compress all dvds and turn them into divx format no larger than 1GB(most are between 600MB-750MB). I currently have about 250 movies on one 200GB hdd with room to spare. They look just fine on my 53" Hitachi HD bigscreen.

BTW, I went wired in my house so my roommates could also access the movies and mp3s, never had a hiccup while watching a movie and letting them stream over the network instead of copying to their local pc's...

 

[bilbus]

5x 500gb HDs will get you 2.5tb in raid 5 that should be enough .. should not cost more then $1500

 

[UK31337]

Hmm... thread is 3 months old.

I'll leave it for now.

 

[Toby1]

Hmm... thread is 3 months old.

I'll leave it for now.

More like just under two weeks... Unless the dates are displaying wrong for me...

September 15th, 2006 06:47 AM
this is what works for me: custom built pc(2yrs ago) AMD 2400XP CPU | ATI Radeon 9700 Pro | 1GB PC3200 RAM | and a little over 700GB of storage spread over 3 7200RPM IDE HDDs | i use vidomi to compress all dvds and turn them into divx format no larger than 1GB(most are between 600MB-750MB). I currently have about 250 movies on one 200GB hdd with room to spare. They look just fine on my 53" Hitachi HD bigscreen.

BTW, I went wired in my house so my roommates could also access the movies and mp3s, never had a hiccup while watching a movie and letting them stream over the network instead of copying to their local pc's...

 

[systeq]

More like just under two weeks... Unless the dates are displaying wrong for me...

I think he means from the original poster. However, for anyone that wants to setup a "video server", i felt that my personal experience in my home could benefit them greatly. sorry if posting relevant info to an "old" thread is grounds for a hand slapping

 

[bilbus]

lol