Dirt cheap Russian option

You have to fill up Your huge media server with music. How? One option is iTunes, billing 1 € (U$ 1,2) per track. Another option is www.gomusic.com ,they bill just U$ 0,10-0,15 per track. Ten times less, one album for one track from iTunes.

Gomusic in the nutshell:

• > 31 000 albums
• > 25 000 artists
• fast download
• U$ 0,15 per track

It is mad to make U$ prepayment to russian internet company, selling online music? For most people it is. Still, this service has been reliable and fast. I have used it over 2 years. They claim,that legally is all correct with "Federation of Authors and Rightsholders for Collective Management of Copyright in Interactive" - so it's not pirate site.

DVD economics

How much is one DVD on Your digital home media server HDD in $$$? In VOB form? Lets take 5 GB Movie (The Matrix for example).

one 250 GB HDD = U$ 80.00
one Matrix = 5 GB
one HDD can home 50 movies

So, 1 movie occupies U$ 80/50= U$ 1,60 worth of hard drive.

In reality, You tend to have RAID, so multiply it by factor 1,25 (in 4 disk configuration)

1 Movie occupies U$ 2.00 worth of RAID5 disk system :) Not cheap, heh!

Geisha is Ripped

Today I sarted ripping DVD-s into my Half Terabyte Media Server (HTMS). Filling server with DVD-s is easy. Geisha was about 5 GBytes! I have 390 GB free, it can handle about 70 DVD-s only!!!! Shame...

I used DVD Decrypter for ripping. Later found from Wikipedia article, that this program is illegal. Is it so?

My ripping hardware is dell Optiplex 620 Dual Core 3GHz Intel Pentium D, with 2GB RAM. I ripped all DVD at 10x speed. So, 100 minute movie is in Your server in 10 minutes. Satisfactory!

Bad news is that olny first VOB file played, all the rest hanged my DSM-320. Have to play with options.

Good news is that TwonkyMedia server can handle huge VOB files, Windows Media Player 11 can't, too slow.