Off Topic. Computer Stuff

[ShiFu]

Yep, this is a distilling forum and so this is way off-topic.   
I beg your patience as I try to muddle my way through the twisty bits of owning computer hardware. 

My business ventures, such as they are, require that my data be safe and secure. Mostly it means that I don't push a button and delete critical files. But also that we need access to files that are very old, easy to find, cannot be contaminated by bitrot or other maladies such as a hard drive failure.   

Right. In for a penny, in for a pound. Either setup something robust or do not.   

Lord help me, I did my due diligence and decided on a FreeNAS server with 4 x 6 TB drives in a Z1 configuration giving me about 11 TB of storage space with one drive of redundancy. Any one drive can fail and the data is still secure. I have a few extra WD 6 TB NAS drives on hand should the server drives go south.   
The system has 32 GB of ECC RAM and only server grade bits and Intel GB NICS touch the drives.   

It was a learning experience and cost about $1,200? USD so far not including the spare hard drives.  But the server offers protection from a single hard drive failure out of 4 drives and other benefits of the ZFS filesystem, namely protection from bitrot. 

Currently I'm building my collection of videos. TB's of them and mostly from bit torrents. Some files, like the entire series of every Star Trek of any flavor ever made (movies, TNG, original series, Voyager, Deep Space 9, etc... ) can take totally a week to download them all (upwards of 300 GB and counting) but since I have the time, the bandwidth and the storage space then what the heck, right?   
Ditto for anything that I want to collect. I have the space to store it in excess of my business needs.   

The server runs Plex Media Server (I paid the lifetime subscription), with both Plex Player and (my preferred) Kodi as the front end on the computer or appliance to view the files. Kodi is very, very cool.   

No way possible for me to cheaply backup the FreeNAS server, it is too big. My core business data - only a few GBs - is on its own dedicated server for now with external 2 backup drives for data redundancy. As I get more comfortable with FreeNAS I'd like to port the critical data to it and have it backed up to local and cloud backup storage. That's the plan at least, has not happened yet.   

To tie this all together would be a TV projector to display these movie files on my bedroom wall instead of on my little computer screen. Laying down in bed on an evening after a hard day to relax to a video while munching M&M's is the ultimate goal. 
I'm way over half way there!   

[ShiFu]

Oh, and after a short while of downloading torrents at a total of about 2MB per second, my bandwidth allotment, I realize I can download faster than I can possibly watch the videos so I can be choosy. Mostly I'm after collections and complete series now.   
I get only a precious few minutes each day to actually watch vids but the downloads can process 24/7 in the background.   

Ripping off software is not my cup of tea but I don't mind trying it for a little while before deciding to shell out hundreds of dollars to buy it or not.     

It seems I can download 400 to 600 GB a week easily at 2 MB per second. Being in China I must connect to the torrent peers via SSTP VPN and that has a little throughput overhead but totally its much more than I have time to watch. Just building my library of English TV and movies for those occasional times when I'm able to pop an M&M 

[Waxer]

Streaming in kodi go fast enough there? For those you dont need on hand?

I used to use a roll down 100" projector screen. Had two hooks from ceiling that it permanantly hung from. Really compact and offers good quality.

[Zuliero]

It seems I can download 400 to 600 GB a week easily at 2 MB per second.

Well, that hurts reading that in the morning when I actually have to pause my 115kb download to even read the board... Way to remote for DSL tech 

[ShiFu]

Streaming in kodi go fast enough there? For those you dont need on hand?
I used to use a roll down 100" projector screen. Had two hooks from ceiling that it permanantly hung from. Really compact and offers good quality.

 
Streaming in Kodi is often sluggish with frequent stops to refill the buffer. Its more pleasant to view the video from a file. For the last week or so, I have kept 6 torrents actively downloading with another 6 in the queue. Some take only a couple of hours to download while others can take days. Just the luck of the draw with how many seeds are supporting the share.  Some files D/L at 1 MB/S while others drag on forever at 4 or 5 kB/S.  But sometimes I can stream from Kodi and avoid the need to download the file.     

I have a very smooth white wall that I was planning to project on. That should be OK?   

Well, that hurts reading that in the morning when I actually have to pause my 115kb download to even read the board... Way to remote for DSL tech 

 
I hear ya. My internet speed is dependent on several factors and can change quickly from really fast to slo-mo. When it rains the speed seems to slow down for some strange reason. But mostly it depends on the time of day or if its the weekend. The more people that are on my supply line (for lack of knowing the proper terminology) the slower the speed. Its sometimes like getting stuck in rush hour traffic. 

[stillwater]

My "collecting" is limited to Film Noir . . . .  but as you say; there's no a lot of opportunity to watch the stuff.

[Waxer]

Im sure a white wall will go fine. But proper screens reflect correctly and mine had a black border to help look contrasty. this time of year getting daek early here ive been contemplating getting a 2nd hand projector for the garden. Put my screen up outside on the back fence. Bit cold but family would have a blast.

[stillwater]

Years ago I worked in photography. I was really impressed with the Silver projectors screens setup for slide shows in daylight . .  .  matter of fact they might have been call "daylight screens". The silver reflective colour really boosted the colours and contrast.

[YHB]

 
I have a very smooth white wall that I was planning to project on. That should be OK?   
 

I used  a light coloured wall and it was OK but I eventually used projection screen paint and the difference was amazing. From memory the paint was called Goo, expensive but it made a big difference, I put a matt black border round the projection area but that was a bit of a disaster. Every movie I tried to watch was in different format / size and could never get the picture to match the frame, it may have been my projector.

I have just looked up the Goo - it is even more expensive than I remembered - and it is difficult to take with you. There are many other brands.

 http://www.projectorshop24.co.uk/en/projection-screens/installation-screens/screen-paint.html?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=1.%20Screen%20-%20Type_bing&utm_term=%2Bprojection%20%2Bscreen%20%2Bpaint&utm_content=Screen%20%3E%20paint

[Eucyblues]

I bought a motorised 120" matt white one from eBay for about $100AU - remote control - works fine - made in China ShiFu..
The only problem is light bounce from the screen and adjacent light coloured walls and ceilings reduces contrast- need matt grey ceilings and adjacent walls for best effect

A grey screen also helps- screen goo is light grey for that reason- it's all about intensifying the black levels

[ShiFu]

Thank you all for the information and suggestions.   
The first step of my nefarious 3 part plan is to actually get a projector past the finance committee.   
Almost there but not quite. We were both wowed by the demo at the computer market.   
I'll need to start planting the seeds for the silver screen, the second part.   
The final step is the easiest and the cheapest, a decent little surround sound system to tie it all together.   

The projectors are all over the place here, price wise. And most are brand names that I don't recognize. 
I don't want to screw up the most important part, the projector, by being too cheap so it helps a lot to show her the ultra high end model and "settle" on one that costs much less.  The high end demo that we saw cost $700 so that's the baseline that I have to work under.   

Almost 2TB of video files, so far, are waiting for this grand scheme to bear fruit. 

[YHB]

The final step is the easiest and the cheapest, a decent little surround sound system to tie it all together.   

It is very easy for a large picture to overpower the sound. A large picture with a set of squeaky loudspeakers is not fun. When the tanks rumble across the screen they need to shake your glasses on the table.

I do not know if you already have them or you have missed another essential part of the setup - 2 lazy boy chairs

[Eucyblues]

He only needs one Lazyboy YHB, Tan will be too busy serving beers to sit down   

[Waxer]

Due to the appartment i imagine a very large soundsystem is out of the question. There is an alternative though in tactile transducers. I used to love mine. I just got a cheap sub that speaker was broken and hooked it up to its amp. Cut off at lowest frequencies so voices dont come through.
Im sure one each side of bed 1/3 way down from head end would give interesting results. Vibrating bed haha as long as matress doesnt dampen to much.

[oldfella]

With all that data, and drives that will fail over time what are you planning for backups ?
Movies and such are not worth backing up, loss is not an issue, but any actual data on the freenas box?
YOUR DATA must be backed up, no matter what sort of raid system is in place. Disks fail all the time, system configurations fail, hardware fails, sometimes they get stolen, smashed, burnt, water, whatever. Backups should be not connected or sitting beside the data all the time either, think cryptolocker type virus hits all your shares....

As for screens and projectors, seen some good ones and some shocking setups.
Depends on the room, location and projector matching, lights make a huge difference, some of the pricer units are really worth the money as long as they can be used in the right environment otherwise a cheap drop down screen and projector is no worse or better than a large lcd tv.

A good movie and a good sound system and a good glass of homemade scotch,  is like nothing else matters, stuff up one of the three and its like crap.

oldfella

[ShiFu]

Good stuff y'all. Phase one of nefarious plan complete. The projector is on order, about $400 or so.   
Tan, during her research and due diligence before granting funding approval, suggested that a silver screen was needed. "Good idea, I think you are right", says I, "but lets set up the projector for a few days to make sure we buy the right size". Phase two, the screen, is a cinch because it was her idea and I put the breaks on buying it for now. And just today I heard her say that she wished the projector was here already so she could play with it.   
Phase three, the sound system, really shouldn't be so difficult. I figure any low end computer with a decent 5.1 sound card will be adequate for my needs. A nice, mid-range set of speakers should probably do?   
I've used a setup like that before and I had to be careful or my ears would buzz for days. Just too easy to crank that puppy up.   

@oldfella, I agree about backups. Onsite and Offsite. I only have a few precious GB of core (critical) data that can easily be put on a thumb drive but I have at least two times triple redundancy on that core data. Two 1TB external drives that back up the core data. At midnight on one and 2 AM for the other. Then a mirrored 2 TB WD NAS gets a copy a few hours later. 
At the moment the data is stored and served on an older computer and that data is currently being fully backed up to the FreeNAS box. I know its time to make the switch to serving from the FreeNAS and backing to the older computer but I just haven't done it yet. 
I also carry a thumb drive copy of the core data everywhere I go and try to remember to keep the data fresh on the thumb drive and on DropBox. I can't guarantee automatic backup to DropBox since I must use a VPN to access DropBox from China. Its something I have to remember to do manually. When I travel, I put a fresh copy of the core data on my travel notebook.     
There are better solutions for offsite backups. But when I fully make the move to FreeNAS serving all my data - something I look forward to as it easily pushes 4 to 6 times more MB per second over the same network hardware - the complications of retrieving that data from a secure offsite backup service, should my FreeNAS box be lost, is a daunting prospect. At the very least I'd need to securely store the encryption key and be able to retrieve it after a catastrophe to access the data backup. Offsite backup for a couple of GB is cheap, TB is not. 
The movie files are huge and getting bigger. They are protected only by the FreeNAS ZFS RAID and can suffer only one hard drive failure out of 4 drives. Should another drive fail before resilvering the replacement drive then all of that data is gone forever. I'd love to cluster two FreeNAS boxes together but at some point you have to decide if the data is worth the cost. The hardware is not very expensive, really its the hard drives that cost the big bucks. I'm told my FreeNAS box consumes less than $100 per year for electricity but only because I have it set up to never spin down the drives (less chance of drive failure that way) and I never turn off the machine. In power saving mode the drives tend to fail sooner but electricity costs would be closer to $30 to $40 per year - the 8 core Intel processor draws a bit less than 24 watts except under a heavy load which is not very typical for me to do. I'm told 1 watt roughly translates into $1 per year if the load is 24/7/376. My electric bills are WAY less here than anything I ever paid in USA so its probably cheaper per watt than that.   

@Eucyblues, in my dreams. Her Grace, Princess Tan fetching a beer for me? Where is the ROTFLMAO emoticon?

[ShiFu]

The projector arrived yesterday and Tan and I dove into it. Thinking she was more excited about it than me! 
We soon realized that mounting it on a tripod was the way for us to go. And haven't quite got the whole 3D thing worked out yet. 3D on my computer works like a charm and maybe after some time I'll work my way through the Chinese setup instructions that I cannot decipher. 
The white wall looks so good and a pair of computer power speakers sounds great to us, so we may not upgrade the screen or sound system. 
If the room is really dark then the colors are vivid and the image is crisp and clear - not washed out at all.   
You have to remember that we have not owned a TV in our apartment for quite a few years so this is far more than we are used to.   
Got the wifi working on the projector last night and we watched the live news this morning. We both said, at the same time, that its like being in a hotel    

So far so good and I think we'll be happier with the projector than a large flat screen TV.   
Time to cook some popcorn!   

Just connected a one TB external drive to the projector that's completely full of movies.