Slashdot Mirror

The principle reason to put 2560x1440 pixels on a phone is to further the embarrassment of monitor manufacturers who can only manage to get 1/4 of the pixels into a 19" screen.

Damn right... when will I be able to buy a laptop with 2560x1440 resolution?

What do you mean, I can buy one today? Shut yo mouf!

One example RK-9000 --Cherry Blues
Anything in the RK-9000, RK-9100 series. Actually any Rosewill keyboard, but those are the mechanical keyboards.

As I pointed out before, I know two states other then Illinois are on the list. I remember them to be NY and NC, but could be wrong. Slo if it does ship to NC check with a zip like 60610 ( Chicago ),

The potential answers to your question are "yes" "of course" and "how stupid are you to even have to ask?"

There was no call for such a nasty response. I provided a nice post that I thought you might find useful, and you belittled my points like some arrogant prick. Does that brighten your day? Unfortunately, the future might just make a fool of you.

One would have to be pretty stupid to miss that ARM and x86 markets are converging. Servers are going ARM. x86 is going mobile.

One would have to be pretty stupid not to see that ISA does not dictate audience or sales strategies. Any current association is correlation, not causation. The montetization strategy is driven by the the target market. If ARM and x86 are converging to compete in the same markets ... well, I'll let your figure it out from there. Let me know if you need help.

One would have to be pretty stupid not to see that Porting to ARM, while sometimes tedious, is not nearly as arduous as one might think:

• * Portal, Half-life 2, Brochard, and many other desktop-quality games are already on ARM.
• * NVidia and Valve have ported Source to ARM. URE, Unity, and Uningine are already there, as is SDL.
• * I have compiled numerous "x86" games to my Jetson TK1 (like Xonotic) with little trouble and performance is better than the AMD AM1 chips, including the 5350. The only major problem I've seen so far is hand-coded optimizations like SSE.

One would have to be pretty stupid not to see that porting to Nvidia ARM with great hardware and excellent drivers might be less trouble than trying to get shitty AMD drivers to work with SteamOS. I wouldn't be surprised if folks over at Valve had the same thought, judging by their impression of AMD's drivers. (hint: they are Vendor "B"). Adding weight to this, I have it on good source that a "consumer" variant of the Jetson TK1 board should come to market "soon". Sounds awfully steambox-ish.

Let's not be stupid, ok? You might want to drop $192 and get up to speed on ARM yourself.

Behold, the latest wonder from Asus. UltraHD in a 28" screen for $650 at NewEgg. Limit 2 per customer. (No, they're not paying me to post this. I wish they were.)

Yeah it's a TN panel, but the reviews show it can manage a standard color gamut better than pretty much any TN panel before it, while still benefiting from the TN design in its response time. It claims 1 ms grey to grey transition. Off angle viewing is better than many TN panels as well. And with the DisplayPort connection, it's capable of 60Hz vertical refresh at full resolution, something HDMI can't do until the new HDMI spec is finalized. It has one DisplayPort connector and two HDMI connectors (including one MDL-capable). Full range of display stand flexibility, including height, tilt, swivel and 90 degree rotation. Built-in picture-in-picture using multiple inputs simultaneously, or side-by-side mode from multiple inputs. Those last two being funky features I never even considered, but I'm not complaining.

It's undoubtedly not the last word in UltraHD, but it's a FINE entrant in the race.

1. 1. Omni motion "trackpad" -- $500 (or similar product)
2. 2. Oculus rift headset -- $350 (devkit2 pricing)
3. 3. Razer Hydra or similar -- $140 (priced from here)
4. 4. playstation move motion controller -- $70
5. 5. at least commodity laptop worth of components to power it all -- $450 (based on middle tier notebook here)
6. 6. At least basic surround sound or decent headphones -- $90 (here and here)
7. 7. A decent gaming computer ~$1500

So that brings the overall price to ~$3,100 if you don't already have a gaming box and ~$1,600 if you do. Plus the const of your living room. This is totally in price for a lot of people. It's all available in hardware form now (to varying degrees of "done").

The major problem is what you pointed out: it will eat your living room/den. These costs and tech are also only for one player and you might get interference/tracking issues with more than on person in the same room. Only people who have solo/networked gaming as their primary form of entertainment will be willing to to make this trade off (that still is a lot of people). BUT, it's super affordable from a business aspect. Take a building, divide it into sound-proofed closets. Put one of these units into each of said closets. Have a desirable set of games (could even be one a la LaserQuest) that people want to play (or with telepresence bots: virtual tourism! (project tango?)) and it's really something to get in on. You could also see it used easily in therapies, spas (walk through a beautiful garden), military training (not as good as the real thing, but decent),and whole lot more.

That said, businesses won't be willing to invest in this without content Just like 3D movies and TVs, the life and death of an entertainment technology depends on the content available to it. There are a lot of companies jumping on the VR bandwagon right now. I think there will be a good set of initial IP that launches with these products or it will integrate with previous games (Skyrim, etc.), but there has to be something that makes you throw your money at them.

Overall, it's getting cheaper, faster and better. I think within 5 years everyone will know someone who has VR in their house.

1. 1. Omni motion "trackpad" -- $500 (or similar product)
2. 2. Oculus rift headset -- $350 (devkit2 pricing)
3. 3. Razer Hydra or similar -- $140 (priced from here)
4. 4. playstation move motion controller -- $70
5. 5. at least commodity laptop worth of components to power it all -- $450 (based on middle tier notebook here)
6. 6. At least basic surround sound or decent headphones -- $90 (here and here)
7. 7. A decent gaming computer ~$1500

So that brings the overall price to ~$3,100 if you don't already have a gaming box and ~$1,600 if you do. Plus the const of your living room. This is totally in price for a lot of people. It's all available in hardware form now (to varying degrees of "done").

The major problem is what you pointed out: it will eat your living room/den. These costs and tech are also only for one player and you might get interference/tracking issues with more than on person in the same room. Only people who have solo/networked gaming as their primary form of entertainment will be willing to to make this trade off (that still is a lot of people). BUT, it's super affordable from a business aspect. Take a building, divide it into sound-proofed closets. Put one of these units into each of said closets. Have a desirable set of games (could even be one a la LaserQuest) that people want to play (or with telepresence bots: virtual tourism! (project tango?)) and it's really something to get in on. You could also see it used easily in therapies, spas (walk through a beautiful garden), military training (not as good as the real thing, but decent),and whole lot more.

That said, businesses won't be willing to invest in this without content Just like 3D movies and TVs, the life and death of an entertainment technology depends on the content available to it. There are a lot of companies jumping on the VR bandwagon right now. I think there will be a good set of initial IP that launches with these products or it will integrate with previous games (Skyrim, etc.), but there has to be something that makes you throw your money at them.

Overall, it's getting cheaper, faster and better. I think within 5 years everyone will know someone who has VR in their house.

1. 1. Omni motion "trackpad" -- $500 (or similar product)
2. 2. Oculus rift headset -- $350 (devkit2 pricing)
3. 3. Razer Hydra or similar -- $140 (priced from here)
4. 4. playstation move motion controller -- $70
5. 5. at least commodity laptop worth of components to power it all -- $450 (based on middle tier notebook here)
6. 6. At least basic surround sound or decent headphones -- $90 (here and here)
7. 7. A decent gaming computer ~$1500

So that brings the overall price to ~$3,100 if you don't already have a gaming box and ~$1,600 if you do. Plus the const of your living room. This is totally in price for a lot of people. It's all available in hardware form now (to varying degrees of "done").

The major problem is what you pointed out: it will eat your living room/den. These costs and tech are also only for one player and you might get interference/tracking issues with more than on person in the same room. Only people who have solo/networked gaming as their primary form of entertainment will be willing to to make this trade off (that still is a lot of people). BUT, it's super affordable from a business aspect. Take a building, divide it into sound-proofed closets. Put one of these units into each of said closets. Have a desirable set of games (could even be one a la LaserQuest) that people want to play (or with telepresence bots: virtual tourism! (project tango?)) and it's really something to get in on. You could also see it used easily in therapies, spas (walk through a beautiful garden), military training (not as good as the real thing, but decent),and whole lot more.

That said, businesses won't be willing to invest in this without content Just like 3D movies and TVs, the life and death of an entertainment technology depends on the content available to it. There are a lot of companies jumping on the VR bandwagon right now. I think there will be a good set of initial IP that launches with these products or it will integrate with previous games (Skyrim, etc.), but there has to be something that makes you throw your money at them.

Overall, it's getting cheaper, faster and better. I think within 5 years everyone will know someone who has VR in their house.

Corporations aren't ~allowed~ to consider "the greater good" over that profit,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/... Granted, in retrospect, this looks like it turned into a good marketing move, but going into it, the history of such things would have indicated this was going to be little more than a money pit.

Not terribly expensive if this is accurate.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

Newegg routinely discounts the Kingston V300 120GB SSD to $60 if you watch out for it (currently at $75 as of this posting). Why pay $80 when you can pay $60 for the same size and performance? If this post is an ad, it kinda sucks.

Eh, if I'm going to spend that much for a monitor I'd rather wait till one of these goes on sale and spend a little more (I've heard that it was $600 around Easter, and I'm hoping it or something comparable might be $500 on Black Friday).

http://www.newegg.com/All-Lapt...

Perhaps you should learn how to use the filters at Newegg?

Some of us can use those filters. Try setting display size to be above 15.6", and display pixels to be above1920x1200. No results, nothing available new, nothing available refurb. All their laptops either max out at a 15.6" size display with decent pixel resolution, or max out at 17" size with 1920x1200 pixels. Some of us are in the market for a 17" or bigger size display with 2560x1440 pixels or better resolution. But there is nobody selling them, so I'm not buying the crap they're selling....

http://www.newegg.com/All-Lapt...

Perhaps you should learn how to use the filters at Newegg?

I know it's not a 'residential router', but $180 isn't that big of a price, is it? You'd need a second wireless router if you really want that, and configuration would take a bit more knowledge, but it'd be doable.

Depends on your budget, but that's not really true for most people anymore. You can get a very high performance, name brand 500GB SSD for $259 now.

Sure, but everything I said still holds. 500GB is enough that it would probably cover gaming as long as you don't have TOO many games installed, but isn't really much at all if you're storing video.

For the average person, even 500GB is overkill.

A short stroked HDD isn't anywhere near the performance of an SSD. It's not even in the same ballpark. For a 7200RPM SATA drive we're talking peak sequential reads in the 100MB/s range and around 150 iops. Even bargain basement SSDs have 5 times that throughput and thousands of times the IOPS. And you can get a 500GB SSD for $259.

Depends on your budget, but that's not really true for most people anymore. You can get a very high performance, name brand 500GB SSD for $259 now.

$259 is unreasonable for a 500GB SSD? Seems like a steal to me. My first SSD was a 30GB OCZ that cost $135.

They might as well announce they're getting Yettie insurance. They had their payment system compromised by people that got access to their point of sale system at one of their stores and then used that to gain access to their central system.

That has nothing to do with chip and pin.

It has everything to do with chip and PIN. It would've prevented the security breach entirely because with chip and PIN, getting the card number by itself is useless. You need the smart chip on the card and the PIN to activate it before you can do anything with the card number. Since you can't use the numbers without the chip and PIN, there is no incentive for thieves to steal the card numbers - they are just numbers, not a magical way to access someone else's money.

And ultimately, how would you do chip and pin for online retail? You know, people that literally have to type their credit card number into a field?

You buy a card reader for your home computer.

TLDR... I don't think chip and pin is going to accomplish anything and in so far as I understand the issue it wouldn't have stopped the breach at target in the first place. So i don't know why they're talking about it like its a solution to anything.

I don't get why people keep trying to blame Target's security for this problem. The problem all along has been that you can buy stuff using nothing more than a plaintext sixteen-digit number that "belongs" to someone else. I'm not saying Target isn't at fault for failing to secure their network. But giving your credit card to a waiter at a restaurant makes your card just as vulnerable as Target's network was during their security breach. The current system is like telling your bank to authorize payment if someone gives them "your secret password." Then you proceed to give that very password out to every merchant you visit, so they can tell the bank and collect payment. Well if you're giving your password in plaintext to every merchant out there, it's not very secret is it? And anyone who steals the plaintext or overhears it or copies it can make charges to your account (whether it be a thief who stole them from the merchant, or an employee at the merchant, or the guy standing behind you in line who snapped a picture of your card with Google Glass).

The way I understand how chip and PIN works, you insert the card into the reader which powers up the chip. The merchant transmits the transaction info to the chip. You enter your PIN which gets transmitted to the chip. The chip then uses the private key embedded in it to encrypt those pieces of data. That encrypted data and the card number is sent to the credit card processor, who holds the card's corresponding public key. They look up the card number, find its public key, and decrypt the data. The card number is no longer the gateway to your money, it's just a reference number for looking up the public key. It's the public/private key pair safeguarding your money and authenticating the transaction, and using the private key requires physical access to the card's chip and the corresponding PIN.

The much cheaper "non-gaming" editions of this make much more sense.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

They have VESA mount points and can be mounted on the back of a monitor:
http://assets.hardwarezone.com...

Sure the graphics aren't top-notch, but most people don't need that. They're great if you need a computer but don't have space for a tower (and also don't want the failure issues associated with a laptop).

This would be great for NAS if they make motherboards with a large number of SATA ports.

This. In my home server, I have an A4 on one of these, which has six SATA ports. It's probably about as fast as the Core 2 Duo that was in it previously, it uses not much power at all (though probably still more than these new chips), and I think I didn't spend much more than $70 or so for the CPU and motherboard. I'm currently using one port for the boot drive and three for the data drives (JBOD with Greyhole). That gives me 7.5 TB, with selectable redundancy so a drive failure doesn't kill my docs or photos (video and music can be restored from BD-R), and I still have two ports available before I need to add a card.

Neah, it was the: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

That was for an AC band WiFi? The AC1750 is listed at Newegg for $95 right now

What you need to do is to look at the available routers, and find which ones have supported chipsets and adequate flash storage and stuff.

In the 802.11n dual-band generation, the best seemed to be the Atheros AR7161 routers, such as the Netgear WNDR3800. I bought that specifically because it has robust open-source drivers for both radios, so it works smoothly with OpenWRT. It's not the fanciest, but I used 802.11g for years without problem, so it can't be that bad.

For the 802.11ac generation, I'd guess that devices with version 2 of the Qualcomm Atheros QCA-9880 might work best, such as version 2.0 of the TP-Link Archer C7, but I haven't been following it since I don't need an upgrade, yet.

Am I then only one that sees that price gouging is going on with SSDs?

I bought my Corsiar 115gb SSD for $69.99 in July of 2012. That's almost 2 years ago. Today a generic 120gb SSD costs $69.99 from newegg. 5 more gb, same price 2 years later. If I want a Corsiar SSD again, a 120gb one costs $109, $40 *more* than what I paid 2 years ago!

More manufactures make SSDs now and more devices use SSD now, but you're going to tell me years later the prices haven't dropped?

Come on, give me a break, obvious price fixing is going on with SSD prices, I can't be the only one that sees this, when the was last time that prices on computer hardware went up years later? Never? This is just like the one billion dollar LCD price fixing scheme a few years ago, I'm sure this will be in the news a few years from now.

Am I then only one that sees that price gouging is going on with SSDs?

I bought my Corsiar 115gb SSD for $69.99 in July of 2012. That's almost 2 years ago. Today a generic 120gb SSD costs $69.99 from newegg. 5 more gb, same price 2 years later. If I want a Corsiar SSD again, a 120gb one costs $109, $40 *more* than what I paid 2 years ago!

More manufactures make SSDs now and more devices use SSD now, but you're going to tell me years later the prices haven't dropped?

Come on, give me a break, obvious price fixing is going on with SSD prices, I can't be the only one that sees this, when the was last time that prices on computer hardware went up years later? Never? This is just like the one billion dollar LCD price fixing scheme a few years ago, I'm sure this will be in the news a few years from now.

I don't know when you got your Netgear GS108T units at, but somewhere in that product's lifecycle it turned bad. My experience mirrors the highest rated critical review at Newegg, circa 2011 and talking about the decline. There are several reasons why the current version of the product only averages 3 stars there, and why 28% of buyers are giving this 1 star now. I have a good, older GS108T and a worthless newer one. Each firmware update is rolling the dice.

That's actually the core argument behind why I won't buy a manufacturer only firmware network product anymore. When the Netgear firmware on a Netgear product is broken and that's the only option, you now have a paperweight. The Tomato firmware upgrade scene for routers is more complicated than I'd like sometimes, but it always gives you multiple options. I'm using an Asus RT-N66 right now, and I don't ever expect its CPU performance is going to be a bottleneck for me. I'm using the Netgear switches only to add more wired ports than it supports.

Thanks for posting real benchmarks. I can't afford/don't need a Mac Pro but if PCIe SSD become available on other systems, it's nice to know how fast it really operates.

You mean like this one...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

A 480GB Crucial M500 is slightly cheaper per GB than a 4TB spinning drive right now. I think the 960GB SSD is as well.

Where are you shopping? Crucial M500 480GB $240is $.50 per GB. Seagate 4TB $165 is $.04 per GB.

A 480GB Crucial M500 is slightly cheaper per GB than a 4TB spinning drive right now. I think the 960GB SSD is as well.

Where are you shopping? Crucial M500 480GB $240is $.50 per GB. Seagate 4TB $165 is $.04 per GB.

$55 Drone that could have your kid in jail, or hero for finding lost "stuff"; it's hit or miss.
WLToys V959 Future Battleship 4-Axis Gyro IR RC Remote Control UFO Quadcopter Helicopter Camera
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

and we are one step closer to a 1984 'Big Brother is watching' world....

Or a jump...

I bought a SAMSUNG UN32F6300AFXZA smart HDTV as a computer monitor.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

While I haven't read the Xbox ToS and Privacy statements; I have read the ones for this HDTV, it's one hell of a data miner that claims it's jurisdiction in some city in South Korea.

It can match the Xbox and Kinetic for intrusiveness and I'm sure surpass it.

The difference is you must supply a webcam for the HDTV, this is used for gestures (no joke).

With a built in WiFi, it will most likely be connected to the Internet 100% of the time, this is to use it's features, which includes social applications; so when someone hits a like button of yours somewhere it shows on your screen -being an example.

Everything you do, and watch with this HDTV is monitored and saved, this is for it's "S Recommendation" feature.

I only use it as a monitor (the price was right), and have yet to establish an account for it; which is part of it's features set-up.

Some of it's features (which I have no use for).

Smart TV
The Samsung Smart TV finds the movies and TV shows you like – and more. Navigate within the 5 Smart Hub content panels. Easily discover movies, shows, and social posts with less searching and more watching.

Smart Hub
Our new interface organizes your entertainment and content into 5 convenient panels: On TV, Movies and TV Shows, Social, Apps, and a panel for your Photos, Videos and Music.

S Recommendation
Find something good to watch. Simply click the recommend button on the remote to get instant recommended shows that are on now.

Full Web Browser
All the benefits of full web browsing, right on your TV. From social sites like Facebook and Twitter to news, weather, entertainment, blogs and more. Discover even more content possibilities with your Smart TV.

Built-in WiFi
With WiFi built right into the TV, no additional equipment is needed to connect with an existing wireless router in your home network and start browsing the web, accessing Samsung Apps or other Smart TV features.

It's also not 120Hz as claimed but 60Hz, I watch TV with my Plasma 600Hz HDTV which is also 60Hz.

Get an Asus G75VX - 4 RAM slots, Core i7, decent GeForce, and 2 drive for RAID.
Max RAM - 32GB. I'm running twin SSDs in here for a max speed of over 1GB/sec.

Cost - $900

If you look around, you can find drivers for Windows 7 too (not vendor provided).
I'm not sure I have the thunderbolt driver installed since I don't on any devices that use it, but everything else works great.

Sounds like you already bought something, but I wonder if you know about the HP Microserver with AMD CPU? I have one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859107052

It's discontinued because there is a newer model with a faster Turion chip.

One 5.25" drive bay for your optical drive, four drive bays with easy-swap carriers (NOT hot-swap but I don't need hot-swap), lots of USB ports. Supports ECC RAM. I put the documented max of 8 GB of RAM in mine, and then read online that actually 16 GB of RAM will work even though 8 GB is documented as the max. (I haven't tested that so I cannot confirm it but it seems plausible.)

The system is cunningly designed. It's as small as it can be and still offer four 3.5" hard drive bays and a 5.25" optical drive bay. It has clever cable routing. It only needs one tool to fully disassemble, and they give you the tool snapped into a holder inside the box; just open the door to access it. (The tool is some sort of Torx screwdriver.)

It supports some kind of system management card but I don't know about such stuff. I got it just for running a handful of Linux virtual machines on software RAID.

An even older model reviewed at Silent PC Review. http://www.silentpcreview.com/HP_Proliant_MicroServer

I'm planning to buy one more of these to use as a hot spare. If a hard drive goes bad, swap out the drive, boot up again, rebuild the RAID. If anything else goes bad, swap all cables to the hot spare chassis, move the drive carriers to the hot spare chassis, boot up again. Estimated down time less than 5 minutes, which is just fine for my home server needs.

There is also an HP microserver with an Intel CPU. It comes with a laptop optical drive built-in rather than a general purpose 5.25" empty bay. I'll stick with this.

If you live 15 minutes from Newegg, just pick your stuff up in person to avoid shipping fees and to get your stuff in as little as four hours.

Sure when you show me a box that is an actual PC and not a thin client for that price, otherwise the comparison is moot as the Chrome isn't a PC, its a thin client. Here is a mini with SATA and wireless for $159, just add a RAM stick and unlike ChromeOS you aren't giving a corporation every single thing you do online...yay!

Maybe, but in that case you could simply get a NUC instead.

On one hand, an equivalent NUC is cheaper at $290.

On the other hand, the ASUS comes with a (small) SSD, RAM, and "a custom wireless ASUS Chrome keyboard and mouse that are collectively valued at $49." The NUC comes with none of those. Together those probably cost more than the $80 difference in price.

On the other hand, you could get a last-generation NUC with an i3 for $180.

On the other hand, there's a lower-end ASUS Chromebox, with a Celeron, RAM, and an SSD, also for $180. (No keyboard/mouse with this one.)

On the other hand, I'm running out of hands!

Maybe, but in that case you could simply get a NUC instead.

On one hand, an equivalent NUC is cheaper at $290.

On the other hand, the ASUS comes with a (small) SSD, RAM, and "a custom wireless ASUS Chrome keyboard and mouse that are collectively valued at $49." The NUC comes with none of those. Together those probably cost more than the $80 difference in price.

On the other hand, you could get a last-generation NUC with an i3 for $180.

On the other hand, there's a lower-end ASUS Chromebox, with a Celeron, RAM, and an SSD, also for $180. (No keyboard/mouse with this one.)

On the other hand, I'm running out of hands!

Maybe, but in that case you could simply get a NUC instead.

On one hand, an equivalent NUC is cheaper at $290.

On the other hand, the ASUS comes with a (small) SSD, RAM, and "a custom wireless ASUS Chrome keyboard and mouse that are collectively valued at $49." The NUC comes with none of those. Together those probably cost more than the $80 difference in price.

On the other hand, you could get a last-generation NUC with an i3 for $180.

On the other hand, there's a lower-end ASUS Chromebox, with a Celeron, RAM, and an SSD, also for $180. (No keyboard/mouse with this one.)

On the other hand, I'm running out of hands!

Ditch the crappy receiver.

More seriously, it is a rather distressing problem that there's all too often this one magic self-contained box that is expected to do everything perfectly with no ability to modify anything. Much like the adoption of DRM, it's a problem that no amount of edge-case (read: my) whining has had any effect on. It'd be nicer if the receiver had a low-level output (which some do, usually in the form of RCA jacks).

The proper (and again, I fully realize this goes well into the "pricey and ridiculous" territory) way is to turn down the receiver's amp pretty low, then use an 8-channel DI box to cut down the power your receiver is pushing out. Then you're into the signal level used for decent audio gear, and your options are far more flexible. You could add 4 of the aforementioned compressor units to compress all 8 channels, or you could just compress some of the channels for the preferred effect. You could leave your distant speakers uncompressed to preserve some of the punch without worrying about having the signal be too loud from nearby speakers.

Working entirely at low level, you have other options, too. If you have a big home theater, where the distance between main speakers (subwoofers don't really count) varies by more than about 5 feet, you might benefit from a properly-configured delay unit, so the sound arrives at your ears at the proper time, according to its spacial location in the source. If you prefer to take the sound fully into your own hands, you could add 8 channels of equalizers to set the frequency curves to match your room and listening preference. With a patch panel, mixer, and a multitrack recorder, you could also hook up your band for an in-house recording session, because if you're actually considering this level of production for a home system, you very likely have more money than sense.

Anyway, since you had to waste the earlier amplification to get down to that usable signal, you'll need 8 channels of amplification again to take your fully-customized signal and run it up to audible levels.

Life is easier and cheaper with just a 2-channel stereo system.

You *can* plug in an external drive, it's called a complete hardware duplicate of your array

You don't even need to duplicate the array hardware. 20 TB is still within the range of a RAID enclosure. Basically a box where you plug in drives, and it gloms them together into a RAID 0/1/5/10. You then plug it into your computer with eSATA or USB 3, and your computer sees it as a single drive up to 32 TB in size (8x4TB with current drives). Do your backup, then unplug it and turn it off until your next scheduled backup.

Incidentally, TFS is a perfect example of why RAID is not a backup. Yes RAID is kinda like storing two copies. But the "two copies" are linked both virtually and physically. If you accidentally delete one copy, the other gets deleted simultaneously. If you physically damage the array, you lose both copies.

RAID is not a backup. RAID is for redundancy. If your business will lose hundreds of dollars per hour or more while the file server is down, you put the file server on a RAID array so it will continue to operate even if there's a single (or double) drive failure. i.e. It only protects against your file server going offline. You still need a separate backup.

Define 'would suit best home usage'. If you have 20 TB of data on a RAID running on a server in your home then I'm not sure the term 'home usage' really applies.
LTO-5 which stores 1.5TB natively can be had for under $1,500: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
LTO-5 tapes are $30: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

Define 'would suit best home usage'. If you have 20 TB of data on a RAID running on a server in your home then I'm not sure the term 'home usage' really applies.
LTO-5 which stores 1.5TB natively can be had for under $1,500: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
LTO-5 tapes are $30: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

I would definitely say external drives for the irreplaceable data (photos, home video, scanned images, voice clips, documents, etc.). The rest is already *cough torrents cough* backed up for you. Yes, it would take a while to rebuild, but ultimately it's available.

I would also perhaps back up any older or hard-to-find collections to the hard drive, or any particularly cherished movies (kids movie collection, perhaps). Personally, I back up everything to three 4TB external drives because I have the ports available on my server, but if you don't then back up what's important and don't worry about the rest...

Your only other option, really, is to get a 6-bay NAS and some hard drives to fill it. This setup would run you around $2,000, but then you'd be able to back up all of teh things...until your data grows beyond 20 TB (assuming you'd put the NAS into Raid 5 at least :)

I would definitely say external drives for the irreplaceable data (photos, home video, scanned images, voice clips, documents, etc.). The rest is already *cough torrents cough* backed up for you. Yes, it would take a while to rebuild, but ultimately it's available.

I would also perhaps back up any older or hard-to-find collections to the hard drive, or any particularly cherished movies (kids movie collection, perhaps). Personally, I back up everything to three 4TB external drives because I have the ports available on my server, but if you don't then back up what's important and don't worry about the rest...

Your only other option, really, is to get a 6-bay NAS and some hard drives to fill it. This setup would run you around $2,000, but then you'd be able to back up all of teh things...until your data grows beyond 20 TB (assuming you'd put the NAS into Raid 5 at least :)

Your comment seems to suggest that $1500-$2000 tape backup is not home usage.

I would argue a 20TB raid array isn't home usage.

So if we have moved past home usage, then yes a $1500 tape backup and about 20 1.6 TB tapes (another $500) is very reasonable considering you have ~$2000 invested in the hardware to run the 20TB raid array not including the cost of the content.

for the lazy
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
with
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

Your comment seems to suggest that $1500-$2000 tape backup is not home usage.

I would argue a 20TB raid array isn't home usage.

So if we have moved past home usage, then yes a $1500 tape backup and about 20 1.6 TB tapes (another $500) is very reasonable considering you have ~$2000 invested in the hardware to run the 20TB raid array not including the cost of the content.

for the lazy
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
with
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

A compact 16TB cube:

• Qty 1 of $99.99 Mediasonic HF2-SU3S2 ProBox 4 Bay Hard Drive Enclosure with USB 3.0 & eSATA
• Qty 4 of $164.99 WD Green WD40EZRX 4TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - Bulk Bare Drive

Total: $759.95

Then for the last 4TB, throw on a $149.99 Seagate Backup Plus 4TB USB 3.0 3.5" Desktop Hard Drive STCA4000100 Black

A compact 16TB cube:

• Qty 1 of $99.99 Mediasonic HF2-SU3S2 ProBox 4 Bay Hard Drive Enclosure with USB 3.0 & eSATA
• Qty 4 of $164.99 WD Green WD40EZRX 4TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - Bulk Bare Drive

Total: $759.95

Then for the last 4TB, throw on a $149.99 Seagate Backup Plus 4TB USB 3.0 3.5" Desktop Hard Drive STCA4000100 Black

I have DVD backups nearly a decade old but I follow two VERY important rules...1.- Take a few discs from each batch at random and test them every 6 months or so, if a disc has any read errors? that batch needs replacing. 2.- the most important of all...AVOID CRAP DVDs!!!! Now just because its cheap does NOT mean they are crap, likewise expensive doesn't always mean good. I've had no problems with the memorex and amazon basics for example. The brands I actively avoid are Ilo,Best Buy/Staples store brands, and while Rosewill are fine for DVDs you hand to people I don't think I'd want to trust them long term.

So follow those simple rules, along with the common sense keeping them in a dark cool place and your DVD backups will easily outlast your desire to keep the old junk backed up. As for TFA? Like for like is really the only way to go with that much data. Buy a pile of HDDs (most will say 4Tb but you can buy 2 2Tb for the price of a single 4Tb so that would be the smart money) and slap 'em in a full size case with a cheap board to be the controller/server and Bob's your uncle. For a board I'd probably go with this. Its cheap, plenty of SATA and more importantly 3 PCIe 1x slots for adding more SATA. For a backup/file server it'd be just perfect.