BDXL (BD-R XL) for archival?

[dilettante]

Background a.k.a. Blah, Blah, Blah

Lately I've been working on "cutting the cable" at least in terms of television. I plan to keep cable Internet and between that and my DVD/Blu-Ray library and OTA television I should be set.

I've already cut back the service tier for cable TV and lost things like SyFy and the handful of other channels I watch. Luckily I've been able to scrape new shows like Defiance from Hulu though using PlayOn/PlayLater. I'm a little worried about getting Falling Skies though since TNT has no free outlet.


I already have a Roku box that delivers streaming content from multiple sources. I use quite a few free services that way, as well as Anazon streaming since I get a lot free there via Amazon Prime. This also gives me Hulu+ or Netflix as options though I don't want to pay another $8/month.

I'm testing PlayOn & PlayLater and might keep those and pay the piper to do so. At least that's a one-time cost. This gets me Hulu (non-plus) along with numerous other streaming video sources as well as the ability to record from them for time shifted viewing. These are running on a WHS 2011 box I may add an OTA tuner and software DVR to as well.

If you don't have a Roku you can get one as part of a PlayOn or PlayOn+PlayLater bundle deal. I think they provide this as an Amazon gift card for the price of the Roku though, so if you already have one you could almost treat that as a good sized rebate. Your mileage may vary, buyer beware, etc.


In addition I have a small NAS and Streaming Media box that can be used for computer backup as well as a local streaming source for music and video. I recently added a 1TB USB drive to double its storage.

So leaving out a few things like my laptop and the cable TV box, DVD player, and VHS videotape deck connected to the TV set, here's a rough idea of the entire "media network" here:

The Android tablet is handy since its IR blaster lets it serve as a remote control for the TV, Roku, etc. as well as starting up streaming music or video from the NAS/Streamer box using Twonky Beam. Of course it can also stream music and video itself as both a source and a player.

PlayOn has a Roku channel (app) that provides direct access to PlayOn and PlayLater on the WHS box. I tend to move PlayLater recorded video over to the NAS though.


Backup and Archival Question

My concern is that as I build up a media library using the NAS/Streamer's new 2nd 1TB drive as a backup device things are simply going to fill up on me before long. I can add one more USB drive to it and then that's it.

To use this server as a backup device for computers as much as possible I need to consider throwing away saved media files or else look at archiving them to offline storage.

CDs are out of the question, and even DVDs end up piling up really fast though at least they're a cheap solution now. And I'm ignoring the headache of labeling them and storing them in some organized fashion.


About the best answer I can find would be to consider the newer "BDXL" format that can store 100 to 128GB on a 3 layer disk. Drives supporting this are quite reasonable now at well under $100 even for an external USB unit. However the media cost is up there, something like $30 to $60 per blank disk!

This almost suggests that a better answer might be another or a larger NAS server supporting a number of 1TB and larger hard drives. But that's a bit closed-ended unless one plans to keep replacing smaller drives with larger ones over time, and then you have the leftover drives to dispose of.

I have enough 5 to 100 GB drives laying around as it is, typically with older interfaces making them almost useless to sell off. In 4 years there may not even be any market for old 1TB SATA drives as things change!


What are you doing for mass data archiving? I suppose the BDXL media will get cheaper over time, but by then who knows how much more data I'll have to archive? I gave up bothering to rip DVD and BR disks of purchased video, they waste too much hard drive space and how often do you watch the same thing over and over again?

I'm not half the video nerd as some people I know. They have big Home Theater setups and spend way too much on storage because they want every BR disk ripped for access over their network, multi-tuner cablecards, etc.

[dilettante]

BTW:

Be cautious buying drives. Lots of "combo drives" may look like a deal but many are cheaper stripped versions which can R/W CDs & DVDs but only read BDs! Often a manufacturer has another model that may look identical but it costs more and can fully read and write a Blu-ray BD-R Disc.

[Lord Orwell]

i know this is off topic but did you have any luck at all with playon? i couldnt get a single pre-loaded channel to work except for netflix and amazon, and both of them gave me "you must purchase a license to stream this" error.

[dilettante]

Sorry I missed your post until now.

I'm running PlayOn & PlayLater just fine with some limitations. I don't subscribe to NetFlix so I can't say much about them. There is a trick you may have to do to get Amazon working properly (it involves IE settings) and this can be found at their support forum site... but you still have to have an account.

Others that annoy me are the "channels" that no longer work. This is usually because the far end (provider) has either changed their page layout drastically and/or gone to a "sort of pay" model that requires a logon using TV content provider (cable, satellite, DSL) credentials. I suspect PlayOn updates will fix some of those, but it does limit PlayOn's value to "cable cutters" (you still need the pay TV service to get in).

The best experience is with Hulu (free) programming right now, but (a.) that's limiting in terms of content, and (b.) Hulu is liable to be killed off one way or another any day.

For example my cable TV service tier no longer provides SyFy to me. There's only one thing there I want to see right now and that's Defiance, but Hulu carries episodes the day after airing at the present time.

So it isn't hassle-free and may be an ongoing battle as changes occur from time to time. PlayOn certainly isn't something I can recommend to Aunt Tillie or Grandpa Jones.