Re: Mini-ITX PC's a the future of HA

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Dean Roddey" <droddey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:l83lg.68272$4L1.3773@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > "Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> > news:eN2dnUguUO_oDwnZnZ2dnUVZ_qmdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxx
> >
<stuff snipped>

>>> I can't see how you could ever leave a media server
>>> "alone enough" to keep it protected.  You're always adding
>>> new media and if you're running "street legal" you need
>>> constant updates to various players and intermediate software.
>
> BTW, I think that you are confusing a media server and a media
> player. A media server just serves up data.

It all depends on how your system is configured.  You can certainly have a
combination server and player, which is what I believe many people do.  The
machine that stores that files also outputs them to an LCD TV or other
attached device.  My point was and is that there's far less reason to mix
media with security than there is HA with security.  HA/S are inherently
more related to each other, functionally speaking than entertainment is to
either HA or security.

> It's very much what servers are made to do. It is completely
> possible to also have it do multi-channels of playback
> if you want. This does not require constant tinkering at all,
> and plenty of folks do it.

We're having a definitional problem here.  You just can't have a media
server
and not be constantly interacting with it, even if its only to load new
MPG's, MP3's or whatever.  I contend that with a Windows server, that's
enough to stop you dead in your tracks if you by chance load too many songs
and run out of diskspace.  While no one in their right mind would load the
media files on the same partition as the OS files, running out of
diskspace can blow up even the hardiest server if it's not configured
properly.

On the other hand, there's very little that an HA/S server needs in the way
of new files so that any I/O issues are minimized.  That's why I think
it's a bad idea to combine the two.  The HA/S server belongs in the wiring
closet, the entertainment PC (server or player) belong in the media room or
where the display device can be located nearby.  IIRC, a lot of people have
place their media servers right near their expensive displays because the
greater the distance between the two, to more problems you're likely to
experience, at least in my experience.  :-)

> But it can also just be a server. It provides access to
> metadata for browsing and when you select something (from a local touch
> screen), that invokes a local player that sucks data off the server for
> playback.

The data didn't just appear on the server magically, correct?  Someone had
to have an account, user permissions to add it, someone has to have proper
rights to access it.  People are likely to even use that server to rip DVD
and AFAIK, there isn't any MS program certified to do that, so they're
obviously using programs like DVDDecrypter or DVDShrink to get them there.

Again, my point is that joining entertainment to HA/S on a single server
seems like a very bad idea if you've got other options.  How many new songs
would you ever have to load on your HA/S?  How often would you have to
access the HA/S machine compared to the entertainment server?  That
differential in access, as well as the difference in overall function seem
to cry out to me for separate boxes.  That's saying something, at least for
me, considering my goal is to *reduce* the number of PC's that are running
in my house.

> In our system, at least in the upcoming 1.7 release, for just music (which
> is the only media that can be legally ripped to disc right now), we will
> upload the data to the server from wherever you run the media repository
> manager client program. So you never have to go fiddle with the client to
> get media onto it. It's still just acting as a server. Serving music
doesn't
> require anything more than a couple of 300MB SATAII discs in a RAID1
> configuration, nothing fancy.

Well, that's nice, and it's true of CQ, but I really suspect that most
people have home-brewed setups and must directly access the server to load
it with files.

> If you are going to do movies, then that may or may not be stored on the
> actual automation server. It may be in a NAS or some other separate
machine.
> It depends on how you want to do. But still, it's just acting as a data
> server, not a player.

Again, it all depends on your setup.  I suspect a lot of people do what I
do.  Have a ATI card in the media server that turns the MPG's into a video
signal that's distributed through the house via RG6.  There are lots of
reasons to do it that way.  Modulated caller ID onto the video signal, using
conventional TVs, easy integration with video modulators, etc.  There are
also reasons to rip DVDs directly onto the server.  One is to avoid clogging
the network by not have to send them to the server once they're ripped.

Again, your points are all valid, as I believe mine are.  It's just a matter
of choice as to how the pieces are all plugged together.   When small touch
screen LCD's become a commodity item, I will be sorely tempted to move to a
system like yours.  But until then, the tendency is to simply extend what
I've been using and that works fine, so far.  Better, in fact, now that
there's the XTB!

--
Bobby G.