[mythtv-users] transcoding/exporting to xvid and winff on Mythbuntu

[Yeechang Lee]

Rafael Moslin <rafmoslin at gmail.com> says:
> Hey now that is an interesting question that F. posed, and that is
> what is everyone's archiving strategy?

None for me.

> I currently struggle with constantly increasing storage space
> requirements

Note that, other than the occasional move to a new broadcast regime
such as what you have seen with BBC HD, it's not like the space each
hour of recording time grows in size over time; in some cases, the
space requirement declines, as in my case once I deploy my Hauppauge
HD-PVR.

You are running out of space because you are saving more and more of
your recordings, period.

> to the point where I now have 1.5TB and I just added another 500GB
> to that figure this weekend as I had run out of space yet again,

Disk space is cheap. 1.5TB drives are now US$190.

> What I am doing to help a ltlle is to edit out lead in/out and
> commercials then doing a lossless mpeg2 transcode,

This does help a little bit, yes. I often do so on TV shows I keep
after watching.

> what I have toyed with is using the Myth archive function to create
> an iso I can then either burn to disk or store on my server,

100 single-sided 4.7GB DVD+Rs sell for $25-30 at Amazon, or $0.25-0.30
each. One 1.5TB drive equals ~300 ~5GB DVDs, so it's $75-90 for DVDs
or $190 for a hard drive. I.e., a hard drive costs 2-2.5X the
equivalent price of DVDs.

Am I willing to pay such a premium for always-available access to my
recordings without having to laboriously write to each DVD (you said
so yourself that you don't like the quality or speed of transcoding,
so you'd better hope every recording fits on a DVD; note that 8GB
double-layer DVD+Rs cost more than double the price) or shuffle
through stacks of DVDs every time I want to watch something I recorded
2.5 years ago, all from one unified interface? Absolutely.

-- 
Frontend:		P4 3.0GHz, 1.5TB software RAID 5 array
Backend:		Quad-core Xeon 1.6GHz, 6.6TB sw RAID 6
Video inputs:		Four high-definition over FireWire/OTA
Accessories:		47" 1080p LCD, 5.1 digital, and MX-600