[mythtv-users] Cost of running devices 24/7

[Mark Wormgoor]

Hi,

> Replace the unit of watts with dollars and that how much it costs to 
> operate the device per year if the device uses that power rating 24/7.  
> So if you have a device that CONSUMES 5W nominally, its costs close to 
> $5/year to operate that device 24/7. If your whole mythbox uses a 
> minimum of 50W, it costs at least $50/year to operate.

Sounds about right. I did the math here locally and it came out to about 
€1 yearly per Watt for a 24/7 server.

> <OT> The reason for the thought process, I'm trying to figure out what 
> my options are for photo and video sharing with family and backup. 
> 1. I could poke a hole through the firewall and share them via my 
> mythbackend...but I don't usually worry about security as a whole on 
> that box...
> 2. Try to find an uber efficient computer to serve up a web page and act 
> as a local file server for that media.
> 3. Pay to use sharing services.  I haven't found any free services that 
> offer unlimited storage for this media, and yet allow others to download 
> full res content.  Currently I use google picasaweb due to its easy 
> integration with picasa, but I'm constantly having to cycle through and 
> delete albums due to a 1GB limit.
> </OT>

It all depends on what you need it for. The mythbackend you can shut 
down and have it wake up for recordings so it doesn't need to be up all 
the time. It's often quite heavy (read: expensive in power use) to run 
24/7. Instead, there's plenty of NAS's out there with custom firmware 
that will allow you to run LAMP on them. You can even hook up your 
printers to these. They often consume as little as 10-15Ws and even have 
standby modes going under 10 (excluding disk power usage that is).

Kind regards,

Mark Wormgoor