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A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

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Re: A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

#31

Post by ttol »

What you're looking for is Windows Home Server. It's amazing. Stores all the media you need, plus has streaming capabilities over the net. Able to expand perpetually -- no need to reformat or anything like that. I have it running with 10TB of space. It has a great front-end UI, and as close to zeroconf as you can get with this type of service. See exampel screenshot: http://ivivo.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/windowshomeserver_2...

EDIT: Forgot to mention one of the biggest pluses. Microsoft pioneered a special file system for WHS called Drive Extender. There are no drive letters, just folders, and it spans across all your hard drives and future hard drives. No more "oh that video is in H:, oops I mean K:", it's just "It's in the video folder." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server#Drive_Exten...

The best thing is that WHS is tightly integrated with Windows, so it has things like autobackup (selective and not), health monitoring (if any of the PC's hooked up at your home springs an alert, like virus found, or low disk space, etc, it notifies the other computers through dismissable systray popup), central user/password management across all your machines, and other cool things. Many companies have also developed plugins for WHS as well (useful things like PerfectDisk for defragmentation). It also works/integrates with Mac environment.

For playback of media content, I have two HTPCs connect from two different rooms as well as some Xbox 360's (yea, the xboxes just found the folders and was able to play the content. it just works). Also, I installed Air Video to stream videos to ipad/iphone.

And since it needs to be always-on, I hooked up a UPS battery to it. It's headless -- just the machine is needed, which is great for a server in the closet. You'll manage the WHS through remote desktop/web ui. You'll also want to get the Rosewill RSV-S8 -- you will need more and more space! (Some people have gone the "octopus" -- lots and lots of external hard drives hooked up through USB. I initially went this route but the throughput became a bottleneck so I got the Rosewill - See: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132...).

Some use-cases: I've got private directories for myself, then I've got public directories such as Photos and Videos, with Photos being writable by certain members of the family. This means I can create a folder, say "07.04.10 July 4th in Boston", and each of us can upload our iphone/camera images to that folder. Now we have a global picture folder for the event we shared together. With Videos, since WHS supports Windows Media Center as well as just normal file streaming, I outfitted my WHS box with 1GBit ethernet card and the machine can stream out files to each of the HTPCs and other consuming devices.

Oh yea, the new Windows Home Server release coming out later this year is going to be even better. If you've got an MSDN subscription, download it and mess with it. You won't be disappointed. It's one of the best products Microsoft has put out.

Re: A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

#35

Post by jsz0 »

brianwillis wrote: post #30
johnfn wrote: post #24

This sounds a lot like Opera Unite, which was sadly totally ignored 5 seconds after it came out. http://unite.opera.com/ (As a totally tangential rant, I've been using Opera recently for no particular reason, and it's been frustrating me how left-behind it's been, even by the tech crowd. The latest version is both faster and more responsive than Chrome, which had been my browser of choice.)

I've had similar feelings. You would think that products that are superior from a technical standpoint would be enough for them to get some traction in the technical community. I can't quite put my finger on why, but Opera always seems to get ignored.

My longstanding theory is it's totally the name. What do most people think of when they hear the word opera? Lame, annoying, outdated, slow paced, inaccessible, old, boring, etc. I'm hard pressed to think of a worse name for a web browser.

Re: A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

#36

Post by paul9290 »

Does anyone else find downloading and organizing digital media to be time consuming? If so wouldnt u prefer to just be able to stream everything from the cloud to ur Internet devices (iphone, apple tv, pc, etc..)?

I use to download now i find myself streaming what I want from the cloud. I.E. Im not hyper on quality so listening to music/songs and playlists using youtube on my iphone suits my needs.

Re: A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

#37

Post by uptown »

jsz0 wrote: post #35
brianwillis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had similar feelings. You would think that products that are superior from a technical standpoint would be enough for them to get some traction in the technical community. I can't quite put my finger on why, but Opera always seems to get ignored.

My longstanding theory is it's totally the name. What do most people think of when they hear the word opera? Lame, annoying, outdated, slow paced, inaccessible, old, boring, etc. I'm hard pressed to think of a worse name for a web browser.

I completely agree. Part of their problem is absolutely a branding thing.

Re: A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

#38

Post by ttol »

jackowayed wrote: post #12

I think you really want this to be 2 pieces: something "in the cloud" and a local cache. When you're accessing from your phone (at least when not on your home WiFi) or a computer that's not at your house, it would access the one in the cloud, which would make it faster and not rely on your home Internet working. Most importantly, if your house burns down, you're not totally fucked. So the local device interfaces with…

When you're setting up a central storage for all your home content, 100GB is nothing -- you need to start speaking in terms of TB's. So, for now, the best thing is to do local=realtime, and cloud=selective backup/cache.

I've set it up like this using Windows Home Server. I use a few backup services to point it to some of the folders on the server that are important to me (my work folder for instance).

WHS has the ability to stream remotely, and I haven't found any speed issues doing so from my local network. I would like what you're describing, which is local=cache and cloud=realtime, except technology isn't there yet -- disk space in the cloud is still too expensive and ISP home bandwidth still too slow/throttled/capped.

Re: A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

#40

Post by asnyder »

uptown wrote: post #37
jsz0 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My longstanding theory is it's totally the name. What do most people think of when they hear the word opera? Lame, annoying, outdated, slow paced, inaccessible, old, boring, etc. I'm hard pressed to think of a worse name for a web browser.

I completely agree. Part of their problem is absolutely a branding thing.

Yep, the problem with their brand is that it's not Google or Apple. If Apple or Google were to release a clone of Opera tomorrow it would have significant higher usage stats and buzz.

Lets face it, as much as we would like to believe we judge technology based on it's merits, the truth of the matter is we're just in High School 2.0 and what really matters is that we're hanging out with the cool kids. In this case Opera isn't a part of the in-crowd, a real shame.

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