Media on solid state devices?
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
- Start date
I've done this. Here's a tutorial. It's easy.
I'll note I've done mine with just a standard Raspbian installation (complete with GUI) and a video player with a directly-attached drive and NAS. The tutorial linked above is for Kodi (formerly XBMC), which lets you turn your Raspberry Pi into a full-blown media center you can control with a remote. A bit overkill for my needs, but it's certainly an option.
As for the OP's question, everyone is right about the expense. I don't think the read/write cycles are so much an issue since we're talking about media distribution which is generally going to be read-only. I think it may not be appreciated by most people just how cheap optical media is per byte, especially over solid state (which is still the most expensive option).
A BR disc holds 25-50GB and they cost about $2 per unit to press in a factory. That's about $0.00008 per megabyte of storage, and I'm trying to give a worst case for BR here. A cheap 32GB flash drive is about $9, or $0.00028125 per megabyte. That's the best case for flash. So handicapping BR while going as cheaply as possible for flash still gives you a cost per megabyte in which flash costs 3.5 times as much as BR. In a real apples-to-apples comparison in terms of quality and manufacturing costs, it's probably even worse for flash since it's not like a cheap flash drive is as reliable as a decent pressed BR disc.
Thanks for the info, @Robert Maxwell. I already did all the research and built the server. I also chose Raspbian to run on a Raspberry Pi 3 B and I am very satisfied. I have a 3 TB drive for my movies, a 64 GB for personal photos and videos and a 1 TB for music. I tried Kodi, but did not like it for a variety of reasons. I use OMX player for playing video, Banshee for music and I just stream through the Web browser.
Thank you for that . That was interesting and changed my mind somewhat about my OP.
BR disks are good storage and I do agree. One BR could hold about 3 or 4 standard DVD movies.. So the storage alone would be worth it.
I was approaching my OP from the point of a device with no moving parts therefore with no mechanical parts to consider the device or player could be as large or as small as necessary. Anyway thank you for the informative post. I have added a BR drive to my PC so I am actually using blank BR disks for storage now too and love them.
i agree not only this but a paperback or news paper just has a different fill and most is you never really care about leaving a book or magazine at the beach or on the train and some of the best books i have ever read that i would not have thought to have been left by people on trains : its why i still watch television but i grew up in a time when the news used to tell you what was important not just broadcast what u wanted to see and hear
Just found this out via Reddit:
Yesss. Thank you Western Digital. Glad that they're doing that.
Woot. That 500gb one might be the new drive for my laptop some day if it is compatible.
Yesss. Thank you Western Digital. Glad that they're doing that.
Woot. That 500gb one might be the new drive for my laptop some day if it is compatible.
Interesting.
I might switch if they are any good. I am currently using two Samsun 850 Evo drives, one for my main system and one for junk.
On the subject of newspapers. I imagine that actual paper newpapers could still be a good business model far into the future. Just base your income on advertising revenue and than deliver to people's doors. No subscription needed just hang it on people's doors. I imagine have a physical object there in front of someone would be a lot more effective than trying to get people to come visit your newspaper site.
I have. And it's still cheaper than the price of the advertising to reach the same number of people.
Of course, my calculations were for a twice a month paper, not a daily one.
I assume this is some kind of satire?
You realize magazines are going out of business in droves even with ad revenue and charging for each edition?
I'm not aware of any magazines that have shown up on my doorstep recently, or newspapers for that matter. Perhaps they would get more ad revenue if they actually sent some to my house.
I've done the calculations multiple times. I could run a twice a month, small newspaper off of ad revenue for less than it would cost to run ads to promote a website to the same number of people in the target area. Plus its easy to scroll past an ad on your news feed, or whatever. But having a physical paper on your doorstep requires you to take an action. So I can charge advertisers less and get more action in regard to my newspaper by using a physical format.
My primary calculation was for a 4 to 12 page newspaper with a target of 4000 issues in a county with a population of about 80,000.
But if you can show me a place that would advertise online cheaply and efficiently I'd love to get my newspaper off the ground.
EDIT: Ok I better explain more. As I'm not saying that digital media is worse than physical. It's clear digital news sites are effective. But my criteria is to utilize the fewest number of advertisers possible. That is becasue I'll be starting this by myself and don't want to keep track of and deal with >20 or so advertisers. I think there must be more content than advertising so that is a further restrict which is also determined by the size of paper. I'm just one guy and can't write enough content to fill a huge paper. I did budget for additional writers, staff, etc. but they wouldn't be there from the start. Those were all things that influenced my calculations in determining ad cost.
Now, it may be particular to my situation, but physical papers were cheaper.
I've done the calculations multiple times. I could run a twice a month, small newspaper off of ad revenue for less than it would cost to run ads to promote a website to the same number of people in the target area. Plus its easy to scroll past an ad on your news feed, or whatever. But having a physical paper on your doorstep requires you to take an action. So I can charge advertisers less and get more action in regard to my newspaper by using a physical format.
My primary calculation was for a 4 to 12 page newspaper with a target of 4000 issues in a county with a population of about 80,000.
But if you can show me a place that would advertise online cheaply and efficiently I'd love to get my newspaper off the ground.
EDIT: Ok I better explain more. As I'm not saying that digital media is worse than physical. It's clear digital news sites are effective. But my criteria is to utilize the fewest number of advertisers possible. That is becasue I'll be starting this by myself and don't want to keep track of and deal with >20 or so advertisers. I think there must be more content than advertising so that is a further restrict which is also determined by the size of paper. I'm just one guy and can't write enough content to fill a huge paper. I did budget for additional writers, staff, etc. but they wouldn't be there from the start. Those were all things that influenced my calculations in determining ad cost.
Now, it may be particular to my situation, but physical papers were cheaper.
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Traditional newspapers--built on ad revenue--are dying left and right. That's your evidence, right there.
So, somehow, charging less per ad and having less ads while giving away a free paper, with all of the infrastructure costs that entails, Is cheaper in running costs than a webpage?
Math fail.
Besides, newspaper ads are just as easy to ignore as ads on a webpage (easier in most cases since printed ads don't have moving images or sound to draw attention). I wouldn't call that "getting more action".
Math fail.
Besides, newspaper ads are just as easy to ignore as ads on a webpage (easier in most cases since printed ads don't have moving images or sound to draw attention). I wouldn't call that "getting more action".
I still get a phone book on my doorstep a couple times a year. It goes right in the trash, along with the inch-thick catalogs I never ordered but come anyway.
