Bought an HD-DVD Player
So I bought an HD-DVD player. I know, I know, HD-DVD lost the war, stopped production and all the movie studios dropped out, but... it was $50, came with 6 free movies (5 of them after a mail-in), the remote control for the XBox360, and it functions as a bootable USB optical drive for most computers. How could I say no?
Seriously though, I will go Blu eventually, but right now the players cost way too much, the spec implementation hasn't matured, and neither of those huge problems is looking to be solved this year. I'm frankly surprised and dismayed that HD-DVD lost. Every decision Toshiba made was pro-consumer: they drove the price down fast, they had a solid and stable spec, they had good hardware from good partners, and... well, they're not Sony.
At any rate, I'll enjoy my 6 HD movies, and maybe pick up a couple more when the media goes on clearance, just to tide me over until Blu-ray gets affordable and functional. Personally I'm a big supporter of VoD, having had good experiences with iTunes and the XBox Live Marketplace, but realistically downloaded "HD" isn't quite as nice as what comes off a physical disc -- not yet anyway.
Drobo Looks Good
This thing solves all of RAID's problems, while maintain all the redundancy. If it had built-in NAS, instead of the add-on module that works by disabling local access, I'd buy one today. Even with that caveat, Drobo is how external disc storage should work.
- Watch the demo to see all its features.
Handy RAID Calculator
Have trouble remembering which RAID does which? I sure do! I mean, really a numeric naming system doesn't suggest that much information about which type does what?
Fortunately, iBeast provides this handy RAID Calculator.
Redhat's online documentation provides a good refresher as well.