Another $100 streaming media player, this time from Asus

[shmokes]

Yeah . . . that's just too much space.  At 20GB a pop I'd need at least 16 terabytes to store just what I have now (~400 movies and enough TV shows to take up at least 1.5-2x as much space as the movies), and my media library is always growing.  I know hard drive space is always coming down in price, and not nearly all those movies and TV shows I have are even available on BluRay, but in principal 20 GB for a single movie is just too much for today's hard drive cost and capacity.

As for the box . . . it's definitely awkward, but Boxee is still an open system so there will be other options.  For example, this upcoming $300 box.  Or you can always use an IR blaster to hide the bastard. 

[boykster]

Sure its a lot of space, but like I said before - if you have a display that will benefit from uncompressed full 1080p content, and can swing the storage, it's totally worth it.  I currently have a 10Tb RAID5 storage array that cost me just under $2k to build (12 1-Tb drives on a 3ware 9500SX sata RAID card in a Norco 4020 rack mount chassis).  It would probably cost closer to $1k to build that same setup today.  I've filled nearly 8Tb of that space with ~ 700 movies and TV shows.  I'd say I have probably 30% BD rips in MKV format, and the rest are DVD rips (also uncompressed) with a smattering of compressed BD / HD-DVD rips, also in MKV format.  I have room to add a second 8 drive array, and am planning on building that out early this year with 8 1.5Tb drives in RAID5 (approx another 10Tb after the RAID is built) - I already have the drive bay space and the RAID card, just need the drives

My critical viewing display is a 92" 1080p front projector - a panasonic AE4000 - and I can easily distinguish a compressed 1080p source from a native BD rip.  There is also a very distinct difference between a DVD version and a BD one - hands down the uncompressed BD wins every time.  XBMC in linux using VDAPU handles these full 1080p BD rips without missing a beat on my ION based systems.  Good stuff!

[shmokes]

Well, more power to you.  If money were no object I would surely do something similar.  Someday (not that someday money will be no object, but that such a setup will be perfectly affordable ).

[Edgedamage]

Yeah . . . that's just too much space.  At 20GB a pop I'd need at least 16 terabytes to store just what I have now (~400 movies and enough TV shows to take up at least 1.5-2x as much space as the movies), and my media library is always growing.  I know hard drive space is always coming down in price, and not nearly all those movies and TV shows I have are even available on BluRay, but in principal 20 GB for a single movie is just too much for today's hard drive cost and capacity.

As for the box . . . it's definitely awkward, but Boxee is still an open system so there will be other options.  For example, this upcoming $300 box.  Or you can always use an IR blaster to hide the bastard. 

Nuu made a smaller version:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/08/nuu-player-runs-boxee-on-atom/

[Ed_McCarron]

My critical viewing display

Critical?  If you miss an episode of Chuck, the world may end?

Wanna watch boykster cringe?  Mention Divx.

[boykster]

Wanna watch boykster cringe?  Mention Divx.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!