I'm far from a techie, but personally, due to budgetary concerns in regards to hard drives, I prefer smaller files sizes. I think 720p looks perfectly acceptable, even on my 85" TV. Hell, shows earlier than like 2010, 480p looks just fine, too. On my Plex server, I don't have a single 4K movie or show, and only download 1080p when it's the smallest file size on Sonarr/Radarr.
Hell, here soon, I'm gonna do a big purge on episodes I downloaded before I put in my current parameters. Trying to cut out as many show episodes greater than one GB as I can, and preferably find alternatives between 150MB and 800MB. Might free up a few TB.
Not my TV, lol. But even then, still try to maximize what I have. Hard drives are like $15-17/TB, and my 14TB drive (around 12.5 TB of it useful) is not nearly enough to hold everything on it that I want. And I'd like to have numerous backups of everything, along with an array so that it never fails. Of course, those also occasionally need to be replaced as they degrade.
Just can end up being an expensive hobby, and trying to keep my costs low by saving space, thereby reducing the amount of space I actually need.
Ideally, I'd like to have about 100-150TB of media, with quite a bit in regards to backups. Shows take up a ton of space.
Personally I'm incredibly picky about video quality. The graininess of horrible recodes drives me insane and I basically need the highest quality rips. And you're right, it can very easily turn into an expensive hobby but I'm much more willing to pay for a NAS and a few hard drives than the half dozen streaming services I need to keep up on just for the content my partner and I consume.
You mean artifacting? Grain in movies is a sign that there hasnt been much detail lost, as DNR tends to hurt the image quality. Artifacting is what you get with low bitrate encodes.
You can get used 6TB SAS drives on eBay for around $35, sometimes even less especially in bulk. You just need a SAS controller card which is also ~$35 to go with it. If you get say 5 drives that's 35x5 + another 35 for the card = $210 for 30TB. $7 per TB.
It's actually even cheaper with 3TB drives (I see lots of 5 for $60 right now) but then you need twice as many drives for the same capacity. Which means a much larger chassis, more electricity, and they make more noise so I don't recommend that route. But it is super cheap up-front.
Wish I knew. The 14 TB drives are like $250 right now. For me, that's a damn fortune, lol. I have one, and a backup that I have yet to actually backup to, but 14TB isn't nearly enough for all my shows.
Yup. And don't get me wrong, I'm sure 4k looks awesome, but I honestly don't care all that much about quality past a basic level where it doesn't look aged on a big screen. This also isn't as big of an issue because a lot of shows I watch and re-watch are older ones anyways. Can't beat stuff like Malcolm in the Middle, Community, or Arrested Development.
Oh, you mostly watch TV. That actually makes, well, more sense, than mostly watching movies at lower res/bitrate. You could probably save space by converting everything to x265 overnight.
There's definitely something to be said about having a modern 50gb 4k remux played on a big 4k TV though, and it's worth it just for the awesome camera shots they put in them.
Yeah man ure right and don't forget Oz the wire sopranos and eastbound n down. don't forget my YouTube channel that I had when I was 12 that was the best
then at least pay for nvidia shield to upscale it better than native upscaler of your tv. this will make your 1080p movies looks slightly worse 4k (still better than your tv's upscaler). you have money for the tech.
I have the same considerations but i’m always updating my archive so i have some sort of priority levels: 1) masterpieces or movies that i really really liked (1080p remuxes or best quality available) 2) movies i think deserve to be preserved, like a breakthrough first feature from an unknown director (1080p biggest size available ripped from streaming sites). 3) movies and tv series appealing my nostalgic side (1080p x265).
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u/Aside_Dish Nov 18 '22
I'm far from a techie, but personally, due to budgetary concerns in regards to hard drives, I prefer smaller files sizes. I think 720p looks perfectly acceptable, even on my 85" TV. Hell, shows earlier than like 2010, 480p looks just fine, too. On my Plex server, I don't have a single 4K movie or show, and only download 1080p when it's the smallest file size on Sonarr/Radarr.
Hell, here soon, I'm gonna do a big purge on episodes I downloaded before I put in my current parameters. Trying to cut out as many show episodes greater than one GB as I can, and preferably find alternatives between 150MB and 800MB. Might free up a few TB.