Hu Yoshida speculated in his blog that most folks would rather outsource their home media storage than keep terabytes of storage in their home. Sure, he was speaking for HDS, which has no home storage ambitions, but I respect him and can understand his point. I already outsource my personal email because I can get better features, access, and reliability that way. But there’s no way I would outsource my media, and this is the real storage king in my multi-terabyte home.
Back in the 1990’s, I marveled at the fact that every PC I bought had more storage than all others I had ever owned, combined. But then came the Nomad Jukebox and its hard drive hack and suddenly my portable personal music player had more storage than everything I owned. My AT&TiVo easily eclipsed that, especially once I added a second drive. And the majority of the 320 GB in my home PC is used for media files too. My new HD TiVo promises to soon become the first terabyte-in-a-box computer in my house.
These files are big. Want to watch Lost or Heroes whenever the mood strikes? Compressed MPEG4 episodes are 350 MB each, but a .TiVo file takes 2 gigs! This is my home storage hog, along with 35 GB of mp3 files. And I just don’t see myself paying a service provider to host them… Keep your video on demand and IPTV. I’ll keep my media at home, thanks.
Now how do I back this stuff up?
Update: Check out the storage anarchist’s similar home setup and superior post!