6 ms·

A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

65 points by arnorhs 16y ago

JarekS 16y ago
Maybe you should check this out? http://download.iomega.com/digital-home/index_en.html http://download.iomega.com/digital-home/index_en.html or http://go.iomega.com/en/products/network-storage-desktop/home-network-hard-drives/home-media/ http://go.iomega.com/en/products/network-storage-desktop/hom... ?
- roel_v 16y ago
  I strongly advise everybody to stay away from Iomega. I bought a 1TB NAS a few years ago when 1 TB was a lot. The web UI, to make shares, was so stupid that it would create a tree, in memory, of all directories and files on the NAS every time you tried to make a new share (this tree was passed as javascript to the web UI). Needless to say, after a few hundred gig the amount of files was so big that it took longer to make the list than the timeout was set, effectively rendering making shares impossible. There were dozens of complaints on the support forum (that's right, support through a forum!) and after a year and a half of no updated I gave up hope. Shoddy material, and that's being generous.
quantize 16y ago
AKA the common man's server?
riprock 16y ago
You can dust off an old computer you don't use and set up a VPN/web server. Tack on everything on your check list and there you go.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- gdl 16y ago
  That was my first reaction, too. Once you add enough features (streaming video, web interface) it stops being a "storage device" and quickly becomes a general purpose computer, which have existed for a while now. It's not a sleek and trendy answer, but it would sure do the trick. And it would be a lot more customizable for whatever additional crazy plans he dreams up for it, while any gadget equivalents quickly fade into obsolescence.
  - andreyf 16y ago
    Why are you taking his advice literally? His advice is to a hypothetical startup. The point the author is making that a startup that would make what you describe into a zeroconf plug-it-in-it-works solution would be very successful.
    - gdl 16y ago
      It seems to be phrased both ways, like "I want something that does these things, and I think there is a market for it". We were mostly addressing the first part. I agree that a consumer-oriented gadget to do the same thing easily could be neat. I don't know that there'd be that big of a market though. I suspect most of the general population wouldn't see the need, and the very geeky would tend towards existing free methods of doing the same thing (MythTV and the like).
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - riprock 16y ago
      The author also wrote in the context of a problem and under his "solutions out there" he did not list the self-configuring solution as a possibility. Presumably, the author may not be aware of this solution and we are just throwing it out there as a suggestion. As gdl noted, there are advantages to this solution over a plug-it-in-works solution. It's pretty straightforward to configure and set up too (google instructions, download, and tweak some settings); provided you have the hardware lying around.
wazoox 16y ago
Most SOHO nas devices (qnapp, tekus...) are quite close to this.
djacobs 16y ago
WDTVlive works fairly well for media-related stuff, not so much for other server functions.
kenjackson 16y ago
There's also Windows Home Server, which does everything you're looking for I believe. Here's a list of features from the wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server): <list removed because formatting made it unreadable. see Wikipedia entry for details>
- pragmatic 16y ago
  Yes. I do this, although I also use a dedicated HTPC by my TV. A little expensive but gets used all the time and I can stream Netflix, Hulu, watch a movie in almost any format including Blu-Ray. I've looked into alternatives, (PS3, dedicated media players, etc, etc) but nothing else has everything I wanted.
  - mistermann 16y ago
    What do you use as an HTPC (Hardware, Software)?
- jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
  windows home server is the best microsoft product in years that they don't market too well. I don't get it.
- aik 16y ago
  Do you have to pay for WHS, or is it only available through various companies when buying a server?
ericb 16y ago
I would look at a Myth TV box for this. I wonder if someone will build a good business around creating and selling Myth Boxes.
- bigsassy 16y ago
  Somebody did. And it appears they are now going out of business: http://mythic.tv/ http://mythic.tv/
- mistermann 16y ago
  MythTV is awesome...my MythTV box from ~8 years ago was light years ahead in terms of features and UI than my cable companies (Shaw cable in Canada) PVR today. Does anyone know why the software is so bad on cable boxes? I mean, it is just so incredibly bad, in so many ways, it seems like it has to be deliberate.
  - ttol 16y ago
    consumers are not used to paying for set top boxes. steve jobs stated as much in a recent interview when they were evaluating going after the tv market or the phone market. they chose mobile over tv for that reason. there are many failed attempts at cracking the living room -- the cable companies make most of the money and they have little incentive to truly innovate the boxes that they are "renting" out to their customers. to get truly elegant UI's that are powerful enough to do anything useful with all the TV signals (HD, etc) requires significant hardware. when Tivo was ported over to comcast boxes, most of the features that make it tivo were slashed since the boxes comcast gives to customers were significantly cheaper and underpowered. most cable companies have a monopoly in the physical area they are servicing. where's the incentive to increase cost by upgrading equipment for your customers when the minimal viable product is happily received by the smith household?
    - mistermann 16y ago
      True, but the software is so bad, it almost would have to be out of spite, they could do so much better for the same cost.
thibaut_barrere 16y ago
A friend of mine made this - not sure it covers everything but maybe a partial answer: http://www.my-ditto.com/home.html http://www.my-ditto.com/home.html
jackowayed 16y ago
I think you really want this to be 2 pieces: something "in the cloud" and a local cache. When you're accessing from your phone (at least when not on your home WiFi) or a computer that's not at your house, it would access the one in the cloud, which would make it faster and not rely on your home Internet working. Most importantly, if your house burns down, you're not totally fucked. So the local device interfaces with TVs and such and keeps you from having to wait for anything to download because it's all cached on there. The cloud piece keeps your data safe and makes it a lot less likely that you won't be able to access your data because your Internet is down. It's possible that you could use Dropbox as the cloud piece and sync mechanism and put together a special server that can do all of the TV/remote control/stereo integration he wants. One issue is that even 100GB may not be enough for everyone.
- ttol 16y ago
  When you're setting up a central storage for all your home content, 100GB is nothing -- you need to start speaking in terms of TB's. So, for now, the best thing is to do local=realtime, and cloud=selective backup/cache. I've set it up like this using Windows Home Server. I use a few backup services to point it to some of the folders on the server that are important to me (my work folder for instance). WHS has the ability to stream remotely, and I haven't found any speed issues doing so from my local network. I would like what you're describing, which is local=cache and cloud=realtime, except technology isn't there yet -- disk space in the cloud is still too expensive and ISP <-> home bandwidth still too slow/throttled/capped.
mtr 16y ago
This was featured on This Week in Startups which may fit the bill: http://tonido.com/ http://tonido.com/
oldgregg 16y ago
And please integrate with facebook/google/twitter so I can download/stream movies from my friend's devices.
- gdl 16y ago
  I don't think Twitter is the best solution for streaming movies...
  - jedsmith 16y ago
    I think GP meant that social networking would announce new media available on their servers, not that he'd stream over Twitter.
johnfn 16y ago
This sounds a lot like Opera Unite, which was sadly totally ignored 5 seconds after it came out. http://unite.opera.com/ http://unite.opera.com/ (As a totally tangential rant, I've been using Opera recently for no particular reason, and it's been frustrating me how left-behind it's been, even by the tech crowd. The latest version is both faster and more responsive than Chrome, which had been my browser of choice.)
- brianwillis 16y ago
  I've had similar feelings. You would think that products that are superior from a technical standpoint would be enough for them to get some traction in the technical community. I can't quite put my finger on why, but Opera always seems to get ignored.
  - jsz0 16y ago
    My longstanding theory is it's totally the name. What do most people think of when they hear the word opera? Lame, annoying, outdated, slow paced, inaccessible, old, boring, etc. I'm hard pressed to think of a worse name for a web browser.
    - uptown 16y ago
      I completely agree. Part of their problem is absolutely a branding thing.
      - asnyder 16y ago
        Yep, the problem with their brand is that it's not Google or Apple. If Apple or Google were to release a clone of Opera tomorrow it would have significant higher usage stats and buzz. Lets face it, as much as we would like to believe we judge technology based on it's merits, the truth of the matter is we're just in High School 2.0 and what really matters is that we're hanging out with the cool kids. In this case Opera isn't a part of the in-crowd, a real shame.
jedsmith 16y ago
I've never been too crazy about a device that both (a) stores my media and (b) plays it. Since Hollywood and the scene cannot agree upon formats for any length of time, freezing the state of the industry into a closed box leaves me in fear of not being able to play something in the future. Specialize. I want a device that stores my media (I already have this), and I can then replace the "display media on television" part with whatever I like. When a device tries to wear too many hats, quality of each hat tends to suffer, in my experience.
billnapier 16y ago
I don't see any really compelling reason to have all that functionality shoved into one device. I like the idea of separating playback/record from storage. I like the idea even better when the storage is in the cloud (with a possible local cache, would be nice).
edanm 16y ago
I just upgraded my Dropbox account to 50Gb, and for me, it covers a lot of needs. I keep all my important files in there (my mp3 collection, projects, documents, etc.). I have Dropbox set up on 3 machines (main machine, family computer and my laptop), so I get automatic syncing of all these files, plus backups of all the files on 3 computers, plus access to all these files in the cloud. As far as I'm concerned, it's a revolution in how I work. Dropbox is now my guardian angel, silently backing up everything I do. The only problem with this arrangement is that 50gb is too small for all my files (videos, mostly), and even their 100gb offering is too small for that. I expect this to change in the near future.
- brianobush 16y ago
  I would love to do this, however, the cost is hard to justify. Though, your post makes me think twice about it. The backup of all my "stuff" would be a welcomed safety net and maybe enough to justify the cost. Thx!
- danohuiginn 16y ago
  yes. the problem with all online storage services is keeping multiple copies of the data to protect against disk failure. I wish there were a dirt-cheap service which said "we'll shove your files on a drive and keep it online. You'll lose data when the hardware fails; that's your problem". For most of my audio/video files, it'd only be a minor inconvenience to have the online version explode through hardware problems. As it is, I end up paying for reliability that I don't need.
- sprout 16y ago
  What I would really like is some metadata baked into the filesystem layer that allows you to specify backup levels, which vary how often, whether or not, and where things are backed up. So something like: 1 - always back up to primary backup locations in full. 2 - back up to primary backup locations if it's not too much trouble (some sort of configurable threshold for space) 3 - like 2, but a lower threshold 4 - only back up to secondary backup 5 - do not back up. I know that there's a lot of configuration that would have to go into this, but I think as data becomes a bigger part of our lives, we need to have a more intentional attitude towards how we store our data, and not just 'let the computer back it up.' Until movies are as easy to store as text is currently, there will always be tradeoffs that we will want to think about.
thoughttank 16y ago
I like my thecus for much of this. Basically it has every need filled. The only exception is the playback I handle through a ps3/apple tv's. Home NAS storage. Easy. Plus it's built on linux, modules are easy and fantastic. www.thecus.com
- Terretta 16y ago
  I also like both Thecus and ReadyNAS, with Mac Mini or Xbox 360 as head-ends at the TV sets. Been using these for years. The (add-on|plug-in|module) community for both NAS servers is great. That said, both Microsoft's Media Center and Home Media Server are also fantastic and extensible.
ttol 16y ago
What you're looking for is Windows Home Server. It's amazing. Stores all the media you need, plus has streaming capabilities over the net. Able to expand perpetually -- no need to reformat or anything like that. I have it running with 10TB of space. It has a great front-end UI, and as close to zeroconf as you can get with this type of service. See exampel screenshot: http://ivivo.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/windowshomeserver_28server_storage291.png http://ivivo.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/windowshomeserver_2... EDIT: Forgot to mention one of the biggest pluses. Microsoft pioneered a special file system for WHS called Drive Extender. There are no drive letters, just folders, and it spans across all your hard drives and future hard drives. No more "oh that video is in H:, oops I mean K:", it's just "It's in the video folder." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server#Drive_Extender http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server#Drive_Exten... The best thing is that WHS is tightly integrated with Windows, so it has things like autobackup (selective and not), health monitoring (if any of the PC's hooked up at your home springs an alert, like virus found, or low disk space, etc, it notifies the other computers through dismissable systray popup), central user/password management across all your machines, and other cool things. Many companies have also developed plugins for WHS as well (useful things like PerfectDisk for defragmentation). It also works/integrates with Mac environment. For playback of media content, I have two HTPCs connect from two different rooms as well as some Xbox 360's (yea, the xboxes just found the folders and was able to play the content. it just works). Also, I installed Air Video to stream videos to ipad/iphone. And since it needs to be always-on, I hooked up a UPS battery to it. It's headless -- just the machine is needed, which is great for a server in the closet. You'll manage the WHS through remote desktop/web ui. You'll also want to get the Rosewill RSV-S8 -- you will need more and more space! (Some people have gone the "octopus" -- lots and lots of external hard drives hooked up through USB. I initially went this route but the throughput became a bottleneck so I got the Rosewill - See: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132016 http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132...). Some use-cases: I've got private directories for myself, then I've got public directories such as Photos and Videos, with Photos being writable by certain members of the family. This means I can create a folder, say "07.04.10 July 4th in Boston", and each of us can upload our iphone/camera images to that folder. Now we have a global picture folder for the event we shared together. With Videos, since WHS supports Windows Media Center as well as just normal file streaming, I outfitted my WHS box with 1GBit ethernet card and the machine can stream out files to each of the HTPCs and other consuming devices. Oh yea, the new Windows Home Server release coming out later this year is going to be even better. If you've got an MSDN subscription, download it and mess with it. You won't be disappointed. It's one of the best products Microsoft has put out.
jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
Why not an HTPC + dropbox?
jonknee 16y ago
Popcorn Hour comes pretty close. It's a little rough on the edges (more hacker friendly than grandma friendly), but is highly versatile. http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/ http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/
ori_b 16y ago
DLink DNS-323 with a sync-to-cloud funplug script would probably be near ideal. I have one of those boxes, and I have to say that it's a pretty awesome little Linux box.
paul9290 16y ago
Does anyone else find downloading and organizing digital media to be time consuming? If so wouldnt u prefer to just be able to stream everything from the cloud to ur Internet devices (iphone, apple tv, pc, etc..)? I use to download now i find myself streaming what I want from the cloud. I.E. Im not hyper on quality so listening to music/songs and playlists using youtube on my iphone suits my needs.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
codemechanic 16y ago
Tonido + XBMC fits your bill
Artifex 16y ago
Tonido Plug + Drobo methinks.
bigfoot 16y ago
Why does Ctrl-F “crypt” not find a single hit on this web page, neither in the blog post nor the comments (there, or on yc)? Are you guys really not concerned about security at all? I’d demand industry-level encryption on both the storage device and the communication protocols. Stealing the device should leave the thief with nothing but worthless random data, decryption/encryption should completely take place on the clients.
afshin 16y ago
In my case, this device is a Mac Mini + a Drobo. The Mini is connected to my TV and a receiver and is pretty much always on ... I can access the files pretty easily with MacFuse using SSHFS.
mitjak 16y ago
Gotta love some of the suggestions. "What you need is a linux box". It's like saying, for syncing files all you need is rsync. The reason services like Dropbox succeeded is not because there are no alternatives.
scarlson 16y ago
I can understand wanting 1 ring to rule them all, but having specialized devices has been the solution for a while now. 1 = Server 2 = NAS 3 = HTPC or Server w/ dongle 4 = HTPC again (any XBMC variant, with a receiver for audio) 5 = XBMC remote apps, I like Boxee's remote for iPhone 6 = FTP, VLC broadcasting, VNC 7 = FTP 8 = Capture Card, streaming to mobile = VLC/justin.tv http://apiwiki.justin.tv/mediawiki/index.php/VLC_Broadcasting_API http://apiwiki.justin.tv/mediawiki/index.php/VLC_Broadcastin... 9 = NAS rsync for backups This is all tech that's been around for a while.
stcredzero 16y ago
I think all of this guy's requirements would be satisfied by something like a Mac Mini with two additions: - The ability to mirror the Mac Mini in the cloud - Something like an Airport Express with an HDMI output Simply leave the Mac Mini on all the time. It becomes the stand alone device, satisfying point 1. You can use the iLife suite and a few other programs (mostly free) to satisfy point 2. It has a remote and has been satisfying all the other points except 4 and 9. The Airport Express+HDMI thing would satisfy point 4. (And Apple TV already does this, but it costs too much to get just for that function.) Being able to mirror it in the cloud would give you point 9. (It's only a matter of time before we see a Time Machine back-end in the cloud.)
dan_the_welder 16y ago
FreeNAS is awesome and extensible. Out of the box it's quite functional and it's open source. It's the backbone of my work/home network. All the Linux boxes have it mounted in the home directory, so all the machines with Rhythmbox think it's local. All the windows machines can access it easily. There are a dozen services you can enable as your needs dictate. Setup is straightforward through a web interface. Extra bonus it runs headless on crap hardware, in my case a 433mghz Emachine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeNAS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeNAS
pcbaldwin 16y ago
Doh... missed the conversation. I am one of the lead developers for the open source ClearOS server/gateway. The software is targeted at small and distributed organizations and you can find the gory details @ http://www.clearfoundation.com/Software/overview.html http://www.clearfoundation.com/Software/overview.html We have always talked about adding a new edition for the home market. In fact, it is on the project roadmap for next year. It will be a labor of love of course since it would be difficult to build a business around an open source home server. As already mentioned in this thread, all the pieces already exist -- it's just a matter of putting them together into a coherent package. The "storage device of his dreams" is running in my house. - file server w/ RAID - media center with PVR - backup to the cloud (documents, music and photos -- videos are too large for my crappy DSL line) - remote access via iPhone or web Unfortunately, geek credentials are required to get it working and keeping it running. It saved the day when I had to start recording the World Cup overtime on Sunday. Fired up the iPhone on the road and added the new recording -- screenshot @ http://www.mythtv.org/w/images/7/7c/MythWebList.png http://www.mythtv.org/w/images/7/7c/MythWebList.png
pcbaldwin 16y ago
Doh... missed the conversation. I am one of the lead developers for the open source ClearOS server/gateway. The software is targeted at small and distributed organizations and you can find the gory details @ http://www.clearfoundation.com/Software/overview.html http://www.clearfoundation.com/Software/overview.html We have always talked about adding a new edition for the home market. In fact, it is on the project roadmap for next year. It will be a labor of love of course since it would be difficult to build a business around an open source home server. As already mentioned in this thread, all the pieces already exist -- it's just a matter of putting them together into a coherent package. The "storage device of his dreams" is running in my house. - file server w/ RAID - media center with PVR - backup to the cloud (documents, music and photos -- videos are too large for my crappy DSL line) - remote access via iPhone or web Unfortunately, geek credentials are required to get it working and keeping it running. It saved the day when I had to start recording the World Cup overtime on Sunday. Fired up the iPhone on the road and added the new recording -- screenshot @ http://www.mythtv.org/w/images/7/7c/MythWebList.png http://www.mythtv.org/w/images/7/7c/MythWebList.png

65 points by arnorhs 16y ago

Maybe you should check this out? http://download.iomega.com/digital-home/index_en.html http://download.iomega.com/digital-home/index_en.html or http://go.iomega.com/en/products/network-storage-desktop/home-network-hard-drives/home-media/ http://go.iomega.com/en/products/network-storage-desktop/hom... ?

roel_v 16y ago
I strongly advise everybody to stay away from Iomega. I bought a 1TB NAS a few years ago when 1 TB was a lot. The web UI, to make shares, was so stupid that it would create a tree, in memory, of all directories and files on the NAS every time you tried to make a new share (this tree was passed as javascript to the web UI). Needless to say, after a few hundred gig the amount of files was so big that it took longer to make the list than the timeout was set, effectively rendering making shares impossible. There were dozens of complaints on the support forum (that's right, support through a forum!) and after a year and a half of no updated I gave up hope. Shoddy material, and that's being generous.

quantize 16y ago

AKA the common man's server?

riprock 16y ago

You can dust off an old computer you don't use and set up a VPN/web server. Tack on everything on your check list and there you go.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
gdl 16y ago
That was my first reaction, too. Once you add enough features (streaming video, web interface) it stops being a "storage device" and quickly becomes a general purpose computer, which have existed for a while now. It's not a sleek and trendy answer, but it would sure do the trick. And it would be a lot more customizable for whatever additional crazy plans he dreams up for it, while any gadget equivalents quickly fade into obsolescence.
- andreyf 16y ago
  Why are you taking his advice literally? His advice is to a hypothetical startup. The point the author is making that a startup that would make what you describe into a zeroconf plug-it-in-it-works solution would be very successful.
  - gdl 16y ago
    It seems to be phrased both ways, like "I want something that does these things, and I think there is a market for it". We were mostly addressing the first part. I agree that a consumer-oriented gadget to do the same thing easily could be neat. I don't know that there'd be that big of a market though. I suspect most of the general population wouldn't see the need, and the very geeky would tend towards existing free methods of doing the same thing (MythTV and the like).
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - riprock 16y ago
    The author also wrote in the context of a problem and under his "solutions out there" he did not list the self-configuring solution as a possibility. Presumably, the author may not be aware of this solution and we are just throwing it out there as a suggestion. As gdl noted, there are advantages to this solution over a plug-it-in-works solution. It's pretty straightforward to configure and set up too (google instructions, download, and tweak some settings); provided you have the hardware lying around.

wazoox 16y ago

Most SOHO nas devices (qnapp, tekus...) are quite close to this.

djacobs 16y ago

WDTVlive works fairly well for media-related stuff, not so much for other server functions.

kenjackson 16y ago

There's also Windows Home Server, which does everything you're looking for I believe. Here's a list of features from the wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server): <list removed because formatting made it unreadable. see Wikipedia entry for details>

pragmatic 16y ago
Yes. I do this, although I also use a dedicated HTPC by my TV. A little expensive but gets used all the time and I can stream Netflix, Hulu, watch a movie in almost any format including Blu-Ray. I've looked into alternatives, (PS3, dedicated media players, etc, etc) but nothing else has everything I wanted.
- mistermann 16y ago
  What do you use as an HTPC (Hardware, Software)?
jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
windows home server is the best microsoft product in years that they don't market too well. I don't get it.
aik 16y ago
Do you have to pay for WHS, or is it only available through various companies when buying a server?

ericb 16y ago

I would look at a Myth TV box for this. I wonder if someone will build a good business around creating and selling Myth Boxes.

bigsassy 16y ago
Somebody did. And it appears they are now going out of business: http://mythic.tv/ http://mythic.tv/
mistermann 16y ago
MythTV is awesome...my MythTV box from ~8 years ago was light years ahead in terms of features and UI than my cable companies (Shaw cable in Canada) PVR today. Does anyone know why the software is so bad on cable boxes? I mean, it is just so incredibly bad, in so many ways, it seems like it has to be deliberate.
- ttol 16y ago
  consumers are not used to paying for set top boxes. steve jobs stated as much in a recent interview when they were evaluating going after the tv market or the phone market. they chose mobile over tv for that reason. there are many failed attempts at cracking the living room -- the cable companies make most of the money and they have little incentive to truly innovate the boxes that they are "renting" out to their customers. to get truly elegant UI's that are powerful enough to do anything useful with all the TV signals (HD, etc) requires significant hardware. when Tivo was ported over to comcast boxes, most of the features that make it tivo were slashed since the boxes comcast gives to customers were significantly cheaper and underpowered. most cable companies have a monopoly in the physical area they are servicing. where's the incentive to increase cost by upgrading equipment for your customers when the minimal viable product is happily received by the smith household?
  - mistermann 16y ago
    True, but the software is so bad, it almost would have to be out of spite, they could do so much better for the same cost.

thibaut_barrere 16y ago

A friend of mine made this - not sure it covers everything but maybe a partial answer: http://www.my-ditto.com/home.html http://www.my-ditto.com/home.html

jackowayed 16y ago

I think you really want this to be 2 pieces: something "in the cloud" and a local cache. When you're accessing from your phone (at least when not on your home WiFi) or a computer that's not at your house, it would access the one in the cloud, which would make it faster and not rely on your home Internet working. Most importantly, if your house burns down, you're not totally fucked. So the local device interfaces with TVs and such and keeps you from having to wait for anything to download because it's all cached on there. The cloud piece keeps your data safe and makes it a lot less likely that you won't be able to access your data because your Internet is down. It's possible that you could use Dropbox as the cloud piece and sync mechanism and put together a special server that can do all of the TV/remote control/stereo integration he wants. One issue is that even 100GB may not be enough for everyone.

ttol 16y ago
When you're setting up a central storage for all your home content, 100GB is nothing -- you need to start speaking in terms of TB's. So, for now, the best thing is to do local=realtime, and cloud=selective backup/cache. I've set it up like this using Windows Home Server. I use a few backup services to point it to some of the folders on the server that are important to me (my work folder for instance). WHS has the ability to stream remotely, and I haven't found any speed issues doing so from my local network. I would like what you're describing, which is local=cache and cloud=realtime, except technology isn't there yet -- disk space in the cloud is still too expensive and ISP <-> home bandwidth still too slow/throttled/capped.

mtr 16y ago

This was featured on This Week in Startups which may fit the bill: http://tonido.com/ http://tonido.com/

oldgregg 16y ago

And please integrate with facebook/google/twitter so I can download/stream movies from my friend's devices.

gdl 16y ago
I don't think Twitter is the best solution for streaming movies...
- jedsmith 16y ago
  I think GP meant that social networking would announce new media available on their servers, not that he'd stream over Twitter.

johnfn 16y ago

This sounds a lot like Opera Unite, which was sadly totally ignored 5 seconds after it came out. http://unite.opera.com/ http://unite.opera.com/ (As a totally tangential rant, I've been using Opera recently for no particular reason, and it's been frustrating me how left-behind it's been, even by the tech crowd. The latest version is both faster and more responsive than Chrome, which had been my browser of choice.)

brianwillis 16y ago
I've had similar feelings. You would think that products that are superior from a technical standpoint would be enough for them to get some traction in the technical community. I can't quite put my finger on why, but Opera always seems to get ignored.
- jsz0 16y ago
  My longstanding theory is it's totally the name. What do most people think of when they hear the word opera? Lame, annoying, outdated, slow paced, inaccessible, old, boring, etc. I'm hard pressed to think of a worse name for a web browser.
  - uptown 16y ago
    I completely agree. Part of their problem is absolutely a branding thing.
    - asnyder 16y ago
      Yep, the problem with their brand is that it's not Google or Apple. If Apple or Google were to release a clone of Opera tomorrow it would have significant higher usage stats and buzz. Lets face it, as much as we would like to believe we judge technology based on it's merits, the truth of the matter is we're just in High School 2.0 and what really matters is that we're hanging out with the cool kids. In this case Opera isn't a part of the in-crowd, a real shame.

jedsmith 16y ago

I've never been too crazy about a device that both (a) stores my media and (b) plays it. Since Hollywood and the scene cannot agree upon formats for any length of time, freezing the state of the industry into a closed box leaves me in fear of not being able to play something in the future. Specialize. I want a device that stores my media (I already have this), and I can then replace the "display media on television" part with whatever I like. When a device tries to wear too many hats, quality of each hat tends to suffer, in my experience.

billnapier 16y ago

I don't see any really compelling reason to have all that functionality shoved into one device. I like the idea of separating playback/record from storage. I like the idea even better when the storage is in the cloud (with a possible local cache, would be nice).

edanm 16y ago

I just upgraded my Dropbox account to 50Gb, and for me, it covers a lot of needs. I keep all my important files in there (my mp3 collection, projects, documents, etc.). I have Dropbox set up on 3 machines (main machine, family computer and my laptop), so I get automatic syncing of all these files, plus backups of all the files on 3 computers, plus access to all these files in the cloud. As far as I'm concerned, it's a revolution in how I work. Dropbox is now my guardian angel, silently backing up everything I do. The only problem with this arrangement is that 50gb is too small for all my files (videos, mostly), and even their 100gb offering is too small for that. I expect this to change in the near future.

brianobush 16y ago
I would love to do this, however, the cost is hard to justify. Though, your post makes me think twice about it. The backup of all my "stuff" would be a welcomed safety net and maybe enough to justify the cost. Thx!
danohuiginn 16y ago
yes. the problem with all online storage services is keeping multiple copies of the data to protect against disk failure. I wish there were a dirt-cheap service which said "we'll shove your files on a drive and keep it online. You'll lose data when the hardware fails; that's your problem". For most of my audio/video files, it'd only be a minor inconvenience to have the online version explode through hardware problems. As it is, I end up paying for reliability that I don't need.
sprout 16y ago
What I would really like is some metadata baked into the filesystem layer that allows you to specify backup levels, which vary how often, whether or not, and where things are backed up. So something like: 1 - always back up to primary backup locations in full. 2 - back up to primary backup locations if it's not too much trouble (some sort of configurable threshold for space) 3 - like 2, but a lower threshold 4 - only back up to secondary backup 5 - do not back up. I know that there's a lot of configuration that would have to go into this, but I think as data becomes a bigger part of our lives, we need to have a more intentional attitude towards how we store our data, and not just 'let the computer back it up.' Until movies are as easy to store as text is currently, there will always be tradeoffs that we will want to think about.

thoughttank 16y ago

I like my thecus for much of this. Basically it has every need filled. The only exception is the playback I handle through a ps3/apple tv's. Home NAS storage. Easy. Plus it's built on linux, modules are easy and fantastic. www.thecus.com

Terretta 16y ago
I also like both Thecus and ReadyNAS, with Mac Mini or Xbox 360 as head-ends at the TV sets. Been using these for years. The (add-on|plug-in|module) community for both NAS servers is great. That said, both Microsoft's Media Center and Home Media Server are also fantastic and extensible.

ttol 16y ago

What you're looking for is Windows Home Server. It's amazing. Stores all the media you need, plus has streaming capabilities over the net. Able to expand perpetually -- no need to reformat or anything like that. I have it running with 10TB of space. It has a great front-end UI, and as close to zeroconf as you can get with this type of service. See exampel screenshot: http://ivivo.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/windowshomeserver_28server_storage291.png http://ivivo.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/windowshomeserver_2... EDIT: Forgot to mention one of the biggest pluses. Microsoft pioneered a special file system for WHS called Drive Extender. There are no drive letters, just folders, and it spans across all your hard drives and future hard drives. No more "oh that video is in H:, oops I mean K:", it's just "It's in the video folder." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server#Drive_Extender http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server#Drive_Exten... The best thing is that WHS is tightly integrated with Windows, so it has things like autobackup (selective and not), health monitoring (if any of the PC's hooked up at your home springs an alert, like virus found, or low disk space, etc, it notifies the other computers through dismissable systray popup), central user/password management across all your machines, and other cool things. Many companies have also developed plugins for WHS as well (useful things like PerfectDisk for defragmentation). It also works/integrates with Mac environment. For playback of media content, I have two HTPCs connect from two different rooms as well as some Xbox 360's (yea, the xboxes just found the folders and was able to play the content. it just works). Also, I installed Air Video to stream videos to ipad/iphone. And since it needs to be always-on, I hooked up a UPS battery to it. It's headless -- just the machine is needed, which is great for a server in the closet. You'll manage the WHS through remote desktop/web ui. You'll also want to get the Rosewill RSV-S8 -- you will need more and more space! (Some people have gone the "octopus" -- lots and lots of external hard drives hooked up through USB. I initially went this route but the throughput became a bottleneck so I got the Rosewill - See: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132016 http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132...). Some use-cases: I've got private directories for myself, then I've got public directories such as Photos and Videos, with Photos being writable by certain members of the family. This means I can create a folder, say "07.04.10 July 4th in Boston", and each of us can upload our iphone/camera images to that folder. Now we have a global picture folder for the event we shared together. With Videos, since WHS supports Windows Media Center as well as just normal file streaming, I outfitted my WHS box with 1GBit ethernet card and the machine can stream out files to each of the HTPCs and other consuming devices. Oh yea, the new Windows Home Server release coming out later this year is going to be even better. If you've got an MSDN subscription, download it and mess with it. You won't be disappointed. It's one of the best products Microsoft has put out.

jasonlbaptiste 16y ago

Why not an HTPC + dropbox?

jonknee 16y ago

Popcorn Hour comes pretty close. It's a little rough on the edges (more hacker friendly than grandma friendly), but is highly versatile. http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/ http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/

ori_b 16y ago

DLink DNS-323 with a sync-to-cloud funplug script would probably be near ideal. I have one of those boxes, and I have to say that it's a pretty awesome little Linux box.

paul9290 16y ago

Does anyone else find downloading and organizing digital media to be time consuming? If so wouldnt u prefer to just be able to stream everything from the cloud to ur Internet devices (iphone, apple tv, pc, etc..)? I use to download now i find myself streaming what I want from the cloud. I.E. Im not hyper on quality so listening to music/songs and playlists using youtube on my iphone suits my needs.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

codemechanic 16y ago

Tonido + XBMC fits your bill

Artifex 16y ago

Tonido Plug + Drobo methinks.

bigfoot 16y ago

Why does Ctrl-F “crypt” not find a single hit on this web page, neither in the blog post nor the comments (there, or on yc)? Are you guys really not concerned about security at all? I’d demand industry-level encryption on both the storage device and the communication protocols. Stealing the device should leave the thief with nothing but worthless random data, decryption/encryption should completely take place on the clients.

afshin 16y ago

In my case, this device is a Mac Mini + a Drobo. The Mini is connected to my TV and a receiver and is pretty much always on ... I can access the files pretty easily with MacFuse using SSHFS.

mitjak 16y ago

Gotta love some of the suggestions. "What you need is a linux box". It's like saying, for syncing files all you need is rsync. The reason services like Dropbox succeeded is not because there are no alternatives.

scarlson 16y ago

I can understand wanting 1 ring to rule them all, but having specialized devices has been the solution for a while now. 1 = Server 2 = NAS 3 = HTPC or Server w/ dongle 4 = HTPC again (any XBMC variant, with a receiver for audio) 5 = XBMC remote apps, I like Boxee's remote for iPhone 6 = FTP, VLC broadcasting, VNC 7 = FTP 8 = Capture Card, streaming to mobile = VLC/justin.tv http://apiwiki.justin.tv/mediawiki/index.php/VLC_Broadcasting_API http://apiwiki.justin.tv/mediawiki/index.php/VLC_Broadcastin... 9 = NAS rsync for backups This is all tech that's been around for a while.

stcredzero 16y ago

I think all of this guy's requirements would be satisfied by something like a Mac Mini with two additions: - The ability to mirror the Mac Mini in the cloud - Something like an Airport Express with an HDMI output Simply leave the Mac Mini on all the time. It becomes the stand alone device, satisfying point 1. You can use the iLife suite and a few other programs (mostly free) to satisfy point 2. It has a remote and has been satisfying all the other points except 4 and 9. The Airport Express+HDMI thing would satisfy point 4. (And Apple TV already does this, but it costs too much to get just for that function.) Being able to mirror it in the cloud would give you point 9. (It's only a matter of time before we see a Time Machine back-end in the cloud.)

dan_the_welder 16y ago

FreeNAS is awesome and extensible. Out of the box it's quite functional and it's open source. It's the backbone of my work/home network. All the Linux boxes have it mounted in the home directory, so all the machines with Rhythmbox think it's local. All the windows machines can access it easily. There are a dozen services you can enable as your needs dictate. Setup is straightforward through a web interface. Extra bonus it runs headless on crap hardware, in my case a 433mghz Emachine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeNAS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeNAS

pcbaldwin 16y ago

Doh... missed the conversation. I am one of the lead developers for the open source ClearOS server/gateway. The software is targeted at small and distributed organizations and you can find the gory details @ http://www.clearfoundation.com/Software/overview.html http://www.clearfoundation.com/Software/overview.html We have always talked about adding a new edition for the home market. In fact, it is on the project roadmap for next year. It will be a labor of love of course since it would be difficult to build a business around an open source home server. As already mentioned in this thread, all the pieces already exist -- it's just a matter of putting them together into a coherent package. The "storage device of his dreams" is running in my house. - file server w/ RAID - media center with PVR - backup to the cloud (documents, music and photos -- videos are too large for my crappy DSL line) - remote access via iPhone or web Unfortunately, geek credentials are required to get it working and keeping it running. It saved the day when I had to start recording the World Cup overtime on Sunday. Fired up the iPhone on the road and added the new recording -- screenshot @ http://www.mythtv.org/w/images/7/7c/MythWebList.png http://www.mythtv.org/w/images/7/7c/MythWebList.png

pcbaldwin 16y ago