A comparison of PS3 and 360 as media players

[Asher]

That's besides the point. It's supposed to not fail (the way it did). It died twice, and the second time it wouldn't start even after the first rescue. I didn't have time to fix it, and eventually (when I finally patched and toyed with it) it's only used to store non-critical stuff and working data.

How is it besides the point? The point is the preservation of data. The data was preserved. If you store it on a Bluray backup disc and the disc gets damaged or lost, you're screwed. Again, I've had CD-Rs and one DVD-R that are supposedly name brand (Memorex) go bad on me years before they're "supposed to".

Burned discs just should not be relied upon to last for many years. The point is a RAID will give you far better reliability. If you have a failure, you've got built-in redundancy.

 

[patsu]

"I'm assuming you had no data loss as you rebuilt?" is besides the point.

First, I did lost data despite it being RAIDed. The HDD in question is sitting in my drawer, unused. Secondly, in my case, the rebuild process could not be performed by a layman. The point is consumer grade RAID may not give me the reliability and hassle free maintenance I expected.

As for burning to disc, I do not intend to keep the data for 30 years.
They get updated from time to time. I only need proper and unchangeable snapshots for a few months.

Also the way I used the storage system... When a general-purpose storage system failed, I will have tons of headaches. Not only do I have to deal with these specific data set and VMs. A lot of other crap were also at risk. It's a MUCH bigger deal to me. If I lose the disc, I only lose the part that fits on that disc.

They are designed for different purposes. To say one can replace another totally may not be universally true. In my case, I have decided against relying totally/solely on consumer grade RAID NAS for all my archiving needs. If you want to use it that way, please go ahead. It's none of my concern.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Hoping media will last 30 years and only keeping 1 copy is asking for trouble.

It's not so bad. I have images archived on MO (Magneto Optical) disks and it's going on 14 years now with no degredation. While MO is basically dead in the US, it's still viable in Japan. Although I think recently manufacturer's have finally stopped making new models.

Likewise I have stuff archived on DVD going on 12 years now with no degredation. I also have a newer backup of that however, I don't trust it as much as my MO disks.

Whether either will last 30 years, no clue. But I'm quite interested to find out. I have far less confidence in my DVD archives lasting as long as the MO archives however.

I think much of it has to do with the quality (and thus price) of the media you pay. Many of my store brand/generic/ridata DVD's have gone to pot (thankfully those weren't important). However, my "that's" brand DVDs from Japan has been universally excellant, not a single one has failed. I believe they are made by MCC (Mitsubishi Chemical Corp). I think Verbatim in the US is made by them also.

Regards,
SB

 

[ShadowRunner]

It's not so bad. I have images archived on MO (Magneto Optical) disks and it's going on 14 years now with no degredation. While MO is basically dead in the US, it's still viable in Japan. Although I think recently manufacturer's have finally stopped making new models.

Likewise I have stuff archived on DVD going on 12 years now with no degredation. I also have a newer backup of that however, I don't trust it as much as my MO disks.

Whether either will last 30 years, no clue. But I'm quite interested to find out. I have far less confidence in my DVD archives lasting as long as the MO archives however.

I think much of it has to do with the quality (and thus price) of the media you pay. Many of my store brand/generic/ridata DVD's have gone to pot (thankfully those weren't important). However, my "that's" brand DVDs from Japan has been universally excellant, not a single one has failed. I believe they are made by MCC (Mitsubishi Chemical Corp). I think Verbatim in the US is made by them also.

Regards,
SB

The issue isnt so much with media degradation only but the hardware that can read it. MO drives dont last for ever, i recently had one replaced, which was hard enough to source now due to them becoming obsolete, i would think it would be pretty hard to scource one in 30 years time if you found an issue.

Its also expensive, our MO WORM disks are around £40 and thats for 9.1 GB

 

[Asher]

"I'm assuming you had no data loss as you rebuilt?" is besides the point.

First, I did lost data despite it being RAIDed. The HDD in question is sitting in my drawer, unused. Secondly, in my case, the rebuild process could not be performed by a layman. The point is consumer grade RAID may not give me the reliability and hassle free maintenance I expected.

I do not comprehend at all.

Rebuilds are automatic. You replace the bad disc, it rebuilds. A layman can and is able to do this. How did you lose data here?

As for burning to disc, I do not intend to keep the data for 30 years.
They get updated from time to time. I only need proper and unchangeable snapshots for a few months.

You burn discs of backups every few months? This is not at all a reasonable nor common use case, it's definitely an outlier.

As for expecting data to last 30 years, you can't guarantee the disc will last that long. Again, all of the CD-R and DVD-Rs I've had issues with were well under their listed lifetimes. There's also burning errors that then require disc verification after you burn, which means burning 25-50GB to Bluray would be exceptionally painful in addition to environmentally unfriendly and long.

Also the way I used the storage system... When a general-purpose storage system failed, I will have tons of headaches. Not only do I have to deal with these specific data set and VMs. A lot of other crap were also at risk. It's a MUCH bigger deal to me. If I lose the disc, I only lose the part that fits on that disc.

Again, I do not understand this at all. If a RAID fails, how is it a headache? If it's the controller, swap out the controller. If it's the disc, swap out the disc. I deal with RAID failures at work on a regular basis in a data centre and it's not at all a headache -- it's certainly far less of a headache to replace a bad disc once every 4 years than it is to burn static backups on increasingly large quantities of optical discs.

I'm not saying a NAS RAIDS will always replace optical discs for backups, but it is absolutely, completely ridiculous to assume Blu-ray discs will be a popular method of consumer backup. It's just too painful, too expensive, and too limited. And it'll always be that way, even as the discs and burners become cheap. Optical media for home use is more or less dead. CD-Rs were ridiculously popular, DVD-Rs popular but less so, DVD-DL are pretty unpopular, and BD-Rs will be even less popular. It's just how the market is going.

 

[manux]

RAID's aren't foolproof. I saw one scsi raid array to have a disc break. Rebuild went fine. It was after second disc broke later on that something went wrong and rebuild didn't succeed anymore and data was lost... except there were backups done to tapes from which at least some data was salvaged. This just goes to show that redundancy in many layers pays off...

I wouldn't see it as a bad practice to have a raid array for everyday use and run backups to blu-ray/tapes on some kind of intervals. It also pays off to have the discs/tapes stored in another building than the raid array in the unlikely case of the building burning down or some such disaster.

 

[patsu]

Exactly.

I do not comprehend at all. Blah...

But of course. You're being yourself, and you don't know my needs.

I have already gone through your route years ago too.

 

[joker454]

Rebuilds are automatic. You replace the bad disc, it rebuilds. A layman can and is able to do this. How did you lose data here?

One problem is the time to rebuild the array. We have a few Raid 5 units at home, one of them is a 6tb Raid 5 setup (four 2tb drives), and as always happens with hard drives, one of them died. No biggie though, pulled out the dead unit, put in a new one, so no data loss. However it took almost two days for our raid unit to rebuild it's redundancy and get back to Raid 5 status. During that time we were vulnerable, if another drive failed we were toast. Now that's for a consumer grade raid unit, the Dlink dns-343, I'm sure the professional units work much better but we can't afford those.

I'm not saying a NAS RAIDS will always replace optical discs for backups, but it is absolutely, completely ridiculous to assume Blu-ray discs will be a popular method of consumer backup. It's just too painful, too expensive, and too limited. And it'll always be that way, even as the discs and burners become cheap. Optical media for home use is more or less dead. CD-Rs were ridiculously popular, DVD-Rs popular but less so, DVD-DL are pretty unpopular, and BD-Rs will be even less popular. It's just how the market is going.

Our 'cheap' 6tb raid ran us $280 for the dns-343, and 4 x $160 for the 2tb hard drives, so ~$920 for a cheap raid setup. I'm not sure how many people will go to the trouble of doing that, especially people that use laptops as their main and only pc's. 6tb may sound like a lot of space, but it really isn't once you start using an hd video camera, and I think hd video cameras are what will really push bluray adoption for typical consumers on laptops.

Blu-ray burners one day will be standard on all laptops and PC's, and eventually the media will be pennies just like it is for dvd-r's, so the cost will be moot. And I do believe that eventually everyone will be buying avchd video cameras once they hit the $300 range. At that point I think blu-ray discs will be a viable backup media because it will be cheap and easy to archive videos and/or give videos to others via disposable 10 cent discs. We're not there yet, my new laptop for example came with a bluray reader but not a burner, and bd-r's are still $1.50. But those prices will tumble, and blu-ray burners will become as standard on pc/laptops as dvd burners are now.

As far are reliability, maybe you are refereing to dual layer dvd's? I do remember hearing about issues with those, but single layer dvd's have been reliable as far as I know. I have some dating back almost 10 years and they still work fine, even the generic brands. The 25gb bd-r's are single layer as well so they should do fine. I admit to being a little more skeptical about the reliability of dual layer media, but I'm sticking with single layer bd-r's so I'm not worrying about it.

I personally think that blank 25gb bd-r's are a great fit for hd video cameras. A typical person can go somewhere, film an hour or two of footage, come back home and dump it to a blu-ray. I envision one day the process will be point and clip. Connect camera to PC, choose your menu style, and it will spit out a ready made blu-ray. They empty the video camera's internal memory, rinse and repeat. That's great for when you are on vacation, just bring a cheapo laptop, some blank bd-r's and your video camera, and video tape everything. I don't know about you guys, but I can easily video 1tb of footage on one trip alone!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

The issue isnt so much with media degradation only but the hardware that can read it. MO drives dont last for ever, i recently had one replaced, which was hard enough to source now due to them becoming obsolete, i would think it would be pretty hard to scource one in 30 years time if you found an issue.

Its also expensive, our MO WORM disks are around £40 and thats for 9.1 GB

Heh, mine is just for home use, so I stick to far lower capacities. And drives for consumer use are still easily attainable...at least in Japan.

Heck, I think my original SCSI MO drive from 95 still works, but it'd be dog slow now days. I'm not certain my USB MO drives would last as long however, they don't seem to be as solidly built...

So yeah, I see the point where hardware will eventually fail. I've got a couple backup drives though. When I'm down to only one with no way to get replacements I'll move my data off the MO disks to whatever is the next promising long term backup solution. Holographic cubes maybe?

Regards,
SB

 

[patsu]

I don't know if anyone here use the MediaGo software (I don't). v1.3 is out.
http://www.sonyinsider.com/2009/12/05/sony-creative-software-releases-media-go-1-3-update/

The following additional devices from Sony Ericsson are supported: Xperia X10. Please note: Sony Ericsson phones sold in Japan are not supported.

Bonus digital copy from purchased DVD or Blu-ray Discs can be transferred to PSP (PlayStation Portable) systems.

Comics purchased through the PlayStation® Store can be transferred to PSP systems (requires PSP Update version 6.20).

Video and photo playlists can be transferred to PSP systems (requires PSP Update version 6.20).

Media Go can check for PSP Updates and copy them to PSP systems.

The new Downloads view can be used to monitor the status and manage the progress of downloadable content.

An Advanced Transfer option provides customized encoding options for transferring media to a device.
Control playback and see transfer progress of Media Go in the Windows 7 taskbar.

A new reel has been added to the large-screen view to make it easier to quickly navigate your media.

 

[Arwin]

Nice!

I have recently started using this software to try it out, and I must say that it is quite good - maybe it helps that I don't have high expectations of this kind of official software, but MediaGo is pretty technically sound and easy to use, and improvements are coming in at a regular basis. Gives me good hope on Sony delivering on the software side.

This v1.3 update is pretty good as well.

I can heartily recommend this software.

Main Features:

Easily transfer music, photos, audiobooks, audio clips, and videos to and from your Sony and Sony Ericsson portable devices
Subscribe to podcasts and video blogs and automatically download new episodes
Discover new video and audio podcasts from around the world in Media Go's podcast directory
Rip songs from your CDs and transfer them to your Sony and Sony Ericsson portable devices
Look up album and artist information and artwork from Gracenote® MusicID®
Organize and search your entire media collection with ease
Add useful ratings to your media and use them to sort your media
Purchase new media from online stores, including:
Sony Ericsson PlayNow™
Partner stores
PlayStation® Store
Automatically synchronize content like playlists, podcasts, and recently added media to your Sony and Sony Ericsson portable devices
See overviews of your devices so you can monitor total space used and total space available
Add SensMe™ data to your music files and create playlists based on the music's mood and beats per minute
Play your media using several different views: compact, large-screen, or full-screen
Purchase, backup, and restore PSP™ games and comics

 

[-tkf-]

One problem is the time to rebuild the array.

I have been looking for cheap reliable storage both professional and personally for a long time.

The only answer to Raid 5 is Raid 6, every professional purchase i have been making lately supports Raid 6. Since most always have a hot spare up and running anyway, it might as well be included in the Raid set via Raid 6

Privately it´s primitive, i simply have two Machines, and i use Synctoy 2 to Echo the files from my PC to my "backup". And while simple, it just works but requires a bit more effort.

 

[patsu]

Nice!

I have recently started using this software to try it out, and I must say that it is quite good - maybe it helps that I don't have high expectations of this kind of official software, but MediaGo is pretty technically sound and easy to use, and improvements are coming in at a regular basis. Gives me good hope on Sony delivering on the software side.

This v1.3 update is pretty good as well.

I can heartily recommend this software.

How much memory and disk space does it take ?

 

[joker454]

The only answer to Raid 5 is Raid 6, every professional purchase i have been making lately supports Raid 6. Since most always have a hot spare up and running anyway, it might as well be included in the Raid set via Raid 6

Yeah I think we may migrate to Raid 6 as the next step in the future. Currently raid 6 seems to be $2k+ in cost (ouch) so it's too brutal for now, but hopefully they will drop in a year or two. My only beef with Raid 6 is waiting for the drives to spin up. Right now our 4 drive raid 5 unit will snooze after inactivity, then it takes a bit of time to first spin up because it wakes them up one after the other instead of all 4 at the same time. That would presumably be worse with raid 6, unless the more expensive units just wake up all the hard drives simultaneously.

Privately it´s primitive, i simply have two Machines, and i use Synctoy 2 to Echo the files from my PC to my "backup". And while simple, it just works but requires a bit more effort.

We kind of do something similar, except we have two raid 5 dns-343 units, one is 6tb and the other 3tb. Our critical stuff, like important files, music, pictures, etc, get auto backed up from one raid to the other with a task my wife setup to run in the middle of the night. So our important stuff is safe. The big stuff on the 6tb isn't totally safe, but that unit is mostly to serve bluray movies so it's no big deal if we lose it all since I have all the original discs on the shelf anyways. It would be a pain to re-dump all my blurays to raid, but there would be no data loss which is most important.

 

[holsty101]

Yeah I think we may migrate to Raid 6 as the next step in the future. Currently raid 6 seems to be $2k+ in cost (ouch) so it's too brutal for now, but hopefully they will drop in a year or two.

Excuse my ignorance if this isn't appropriate (RAID & NAS are foreign to me) but I read this review a few weeks ago.

Newegg

Review

 

[Arwin]

How much memory and disk space does it take ?

100MB in Program Files, 200MB in RAM. Only when the program is open - there's no service as far as I can tell that stays resident, which is good. It can do a full scan of all your media, which also generates thumbnails and such, if you want. I did it because on this machine I barely have anything anyway, but otherwise I don't know if and how much extra space that might take.

I've just set it up to keep track of my gaming podcasts by adding the RSS feeds, automatically downloads only the latest episode - so far so good.

 

[specwarGP2]

The best way for home backup is a RAID NAS enclosure. You can have harddrives die, controllers die, and you'll still have your data. The only thing it doesn't cover is off-site backups..

Unless you're one of those people (like myself) that uses a laptop exclusively.

 

[PARANOiA]

Some updates for us Aussies:
- PS3 now has ABC iView built into the latest firmware update. Given it's unmetered for a lot of Aussie ISP's this is pretty hip. Unfortunately it just links to a browser window and the quality is only so-so, but for the price you can't complain. My GF is now watching loads of stuff from the couch.
- 360 finally has an AU marketplace. I can't imagine that working at all given we pay so much for data and it's metered for all ISP's bar a few.

I've also now got a Harmony One universal remote which works brilliantly with my 360. The Windows Media Centre is perfect for playing pretty much everything these days, including MKVs flawlessly with a free DIVX codec update. I'm on Win7 so I don't know if that's by nature "prettier" but it looks far, far better than I remember the WMC from looking.

Using my PS3 the remote doesn't work at all, which sucks since I can't use it for BR watching. I did buy the Nyko PS3 remote, attached the USB dongle to the PS3, and added by PS3 as a "Nyko Playstation 3" on the Harmony software. It works, but it's not great. It won't turn on the machine, and it's pretty laggy. The other thing that sucks is some games recognise the remote's USB receiver as a controller, so if I turn on my PS3 by putting a game in (even if I have my controller as controller one) and start a game, the controller doesn't work unless I pull out the key. I also need to turn the PS3 off or quit back to the dashboard via my remote control. To watch media on my PS3, I go to the machine, plug in the USB receiver, turn it on, then start using the remote. When I'm done I have to take the USB receiver out. Pretty janky as a media hub, to be honest.

There is a Logitech add-on which makes Harmony remotes work, but it's more expensive than a couple of new games over here, so no dice.

 

[patsu]

The Nyko PS3 IR remote cannot turn on/off PS3.

These may do a better job, but I think IR4PS3 is not an official product:
http://www.remotecentral.com/reviews/ps3_control_roundup/comparison.htm

The PS3 Slim has another option: HDMI CEC

 

[Gradthrawn]

The other thing that sucks is some games recognise the remote's USB receiver as a controller, so if I turn on my PS3 by putting a game in (even if I have my controller as controller one) and start a game, the controller doesn't work unless I pull out the key. I also need to turn the PS3 off or quit back to the dashboard via my remote control. To watch media on my PS3, I go to the machine, plug in the USB receiver, turn it on, then start using the remote. When I'm done I have to take the USB receiver out. Pretty janky as a media hub, to be honest.

Why won't a simple controller re-assignment work? From the sounds of it, the PS3 picks up the USB receiver and assigns it controller port 1 (the only port some games will recognize for input). USB devices get priority with controller assignments on the PS3 at boot up for some reason (faster recognition, maybe). However, the PS button should still work on any BT controller (which will get assigned to controller 2). Pressing the PS Button on the BT controller should bring up the XMB. From which you can go to Settings and then change the controler number to 1. Conversly, holding the PS button on the BT controller will bring up the original in-game menu, which makes controller re-assignment even faster. All without exiting the game or restarting the PS3.

Your method sounds like what I have to do on the 360 to change controler assignments when I have a USB controller connected.