Floppyhead – Digital Media and Streaming

The lure of media centers is having all of your movies, music, and pictures on your computer’s hard drive and have them available throughout your house. With the impending increase in the availability of high definition content, hard disk space is becoming a significant bottleneck in the overall performance of HTPCs and media centers. High definition movies and television require approximately 10 GBs of storage per hour of content. Ideally, a media center would have 3-5 TBs of data storage space if high definition television or movies are a priority. Right now, that is a lot of hard drives in one computer (and a lot of noise).

Network area storage offers an easy way to store, back-up, and share digital content throughout your house, and offer the following advantages:

1. Accessibility for all computers. Record TV from a computer in the living room and watch it in the bedroom.
2. You do not have to leave a computer on 24 hours a day
3. Add more storage space anytime

There are a lot of options for network storage that should interest media center owners, especially Western Digital’s My Book World Edition. Here are some suggestions for buying network storage:

1. Western Digital’s My Book World Edition – 1 TB network storage that is accessible over the internet as well. It s based on a Linux file system and requires driver installation for a computer to access it (which may be a drawback for some). The 1 TB version of the My Book retails for $499. (via eHomeupgrade)
2. Buffalotech’s Link Station – Buffalotech’s network storage solution is more expensive than the My Book but requires no drivers to be installed on your computers. the 750 GB version retails for just under $600.
3. Plextor’s PXEH40L – Similar to Buffalotech’s Link Station, though more expensive at $450 for 400 GB.

At a cost of 2 GB per dollar, Western Digital’s My book World Edition appears to be the best buy at the moment. 3 TB of storage space would cost $1,500. That equates to over 300 hours of high definition video content. Buffalotech’s Link station would cost $2,400 for 3 TB while the Plextor’s PXEH40L would cost just under $3,400.