10 September 2008

0,5 TeraByte mark hit

So, I lately crossed the 0,5 TeraByte milestone of movies, music and images on my 2,5 TB media server:

1100 Videos, 475 GB
6800 Music tracks, 44 GB
25 000 Photos, 42 GB

As You see, most of the digital data today is movies.

Dlink really weak in HD

I have been the patriot of Dlink products in media streaming. Currently I have 2 pc of DSM 520 and one DSM 320 streaming off my 2,5 TB Dell PowerEdge quad-core media server. Mostly I watch TV-shows like Friends, Top Gear etc and lot of MPEG4 movies. But more and more movies are coming out in HD, ripped off from blu-ray or recorded from the HD cable/terrestial. In most of the cases these are in .TS format, .MKV Matroska containers, H.264 whitch is pain in the a.. for Dlink. Converting is really a lottery and not really an option. Also, high bitrate (more than 20 mbit per second) 1080 has been problem for DSM-520, despite of wired ethernet.



Now I look something more capable. Most probably I'm going after Popcorn Hour A-110 streamer. Looks like just for me, HDMI 1.3a, supports the latest high bitrate video formats (MPEG2 MP@HL, H.264 HP@L4.1, VC-1 AP@L3 in TS of at least 40Mbps) to give you up to 1080p high-definition videos.

Another option is Buffalo Linktheater HD On the paper its H.264 AVC capable, but MKV container is not clearly notetd on their spec sheet?!