Zatabit

[tebery]

Having 1000+ dvd's, I am thinking of starting to convert the ones i really want to a hard drive(s). I currently have dvd123 gold. Is there something better I should look at before converting them?

thanks

[tumult]

okay c4 members, everyone send me $$$ and I will take on the arduous task of testing out this sweet system:)

[InnSolAV]

Here's the best way I've found to put movies onto a hard drive.

www.dvd-gadget.com

Automated application for transferring onto a hardrive or any connected network drive (NAS). It does not decript but when used with anydvd it is smooth smooth smooth. VTS and VOB out of the box. Can be modified to do ISO.

www.anydvd.com

Go for the HD version which does Blu-ray. They update regularly and notify you via email of the upgrades.

Oh so simple. If you have access to the changer/loader it'll catalog any discs that error out as well as allows for a pause option so you can remove copied discs and add to be copied discs. When kicking over 1000 movies....this is a dream come true.

[natNrik]

In addition to Brandon’s reply, when developing the Zatabit products our aim was to drastically reduce the install and maintenance once installed. We have achieved this by making the install including integration with your home automation happen in less than 20 minutes per machine. Any metadata changes made to the movies stored on the Zatabit are pushed to the Control4 system in just a few seconds. As an end user this means once you load your content to the Zatabit Server the Control4 system automatically updates no more scanning for media.

[tebery]

If I were to use a system such as zatabit, escient or xbmc, would the files be readable using 'any-dvd'?

[brandon]

So is the primary target for this a user that needs to stream HD to 3+ sources at the same time? I realize the $300-400 offerings currently available from Netgear etc can only stream to one source at a time and require an independent storage/PC, but if thats all you need then this would be overkill, no?

Streaming higher quality video (and especially 1080p content) over a network is not as simple as you might expect. We've seen just about every NAS come to a screeching halt, some crash, and set top boxes crash too if you ever try writing to a NAS at the same time you stream. Telling a customer "Don't try to save content to a nas if you're watching a movie." isn't what I'd consider acceptable, and even if you do tell them they will forget and the dealer will get a call and complaints anyway, maybe even have to go out to their house and teach them how to reboot the NAS every time they tried to watch a movie when their kids were updating their Itunes collection.

Most NAS systems are also built for an average home user, not for HD video streaming. A lot of NAS's can't write more than 10MB/s (actual, not just claimed performance) if that's all it is being used for and that's without a RAID level that supports redundancy for keeping data safe if a drive is lost. Many sub $1k (not including cost of disks) NAS systems also can not stream a single 1080P, some can but not if you are writing data to it at the same time. Manufacturers like listing the max performance, so using gigabit network, jumbo frames turned on (which usually only commercial grade switches support) and they'll do a 50MB file transfer (and since most NAS's have 4 drives, each with a 16MB cache for the disks, the test only tests the performance of the NAS hardware, not the disk read/write throughput) which is completely useless for real world performance. As was mentioned before, we have been able to locate a couple NAS's that will constantly handle multiple 1080p streams while writing to disk but it's not in the same class as the low cost NAS's and they will require proprietary changes (which we will ship with it all done) to get them to handle 11+ 1080p streams while being uploaded to at the same time and work with our products.

Brandon

(Zatabit)

[InnSolAV]

Any-DVD decripts or strips the DRM which keeps you from ripping DVDs. So yes it should work for any system.

The beauty of Zatabit is that once the movie is loaded on the drive it pushes all the movie and music info onto your Control4 system in seconds. Once you select the movie it begins to play in under 2 seconds. Music is instantaneous...you'd swear it knew you were selecting it before you press the button. So speed isn't an issue.

Quality...it upscales (major processing power required) all content to 1080p. That way you won't have your projector or flat screen pausing while it adjusts for the resolutions changes. The quality is so good you have to ask "why would I sacrifice 30-50gb for a Blu-ray when I can have the same quality with a DVD at 7gb?"

[brandon]

If I were to use a system such as zatabit, escient or xbmc, would the files be readable using 'any-dvd'?

Zatabit products do not play encrypted or protected files under any circumstance.

As for the use of Any-DVD I strongly advise you to review the copyright laws and patent laws for the country or state you live in.

For information on Escient or XBMC you will need to contact Escient or the XBMC community.

[InnSolAV]

Thanks for slapping me around.

Zatabit is a medis storage device. If you can get it on there (non-encrypted) it'll play it.

Basically it is hungry and wants to be fed.

[akg4y]

Brandon, thank you very much for your responses. Zatabit seems like a great product, but at a minimum of $6300+ for a single server it has unfortunately priced me out of the market. My main goal is essentially to stream a single source of HD content (PC Hard drive or NAS) to multiple outputs (with only one being used at any given time). With multiple PCs or network hard drives attached to the system I can easily arrange for music, etc to be on separate physical drives from the HD video, or I could use a RAID 5 media center PC as the source. For true HD video this may cause hiccups occasionally which would be unacceptable to some, but unfortunately a tradeoff between cost and features/quality needs to be made somewhere in my case. As such a $400 Netgear box or better yet, free use of XBMC would seem the way to go.

[RyanE]

You're comparing apples and oranges in a big way.

Comparing pricing of the Zatabit solution with the pricing of something you can hobble together with XBMC or the Netgear box is somewhat irrelevant, since the XBMC or Netgear can't do most of the things the Zatabit can.

Adding the capability to do raid at the capacities stated above, streaming to the number of endpoints the Zatabit will, and the quality that it does, you're going to spend a lot closer to the price of the Zatabit, even doing it DIY, not to mention the number of hours you'd spend doing it.

The true comparison of pricing should be between Zatabit and Escient or other high-end video streaming solutions, not between Zatabit and some unspecified DIY solution.

Don't misunderstand, I'm not *AT ALL* knocking a DIY solution. If it works for you, hey, go for it. I don't have a Zatabit either (I personally use a Sony 777 and MythTV), but the Zatabit does sound like an awesome solution, at a pretty decent price for enterprise-grade storage and streaming, IMHO.

RyanE

[alanchow]

I was given an online demo for zatabit a few months ago. Though the solution is not for me i have to admit it is one of the more user friendly solutions around. Considering you don't have to build it yourself and it automatically inserts media into the control4 database this solution is pretty sweet.

[akg4y]

I wouldnt say I was comparing apples to oranges so much as I was saying I cant afford the Ferrari, so I need to find a way to make a beat up Datsun thats leaking oil with a busted axle get me from point A to point B.

[waynechi]

You're comparing apples and oranges in a big way.

Comparing pricing of the Zatabit solution with the pricing of something you can hobble together with XBMC or the Netgear box is somewhat irrelevant, since the XBMC or Netgear can't do most of the things the Zatabit can.

Adding the capability to do raid at the capacities stated above, streaming to the number of endpoints the Zatabit will, and the quality that it does, you're going to spend a lot closer to the price of the Zatabit, even doing it DIY, not to mention the number of hours you'd spend doing it.

The true comparison of pricing should be between Zatabit and Escient or other high-end video streaming solutions, not between Zatabit and some unspecified DIY solution.

Don't misunderstand, I'm not *AT ALL* knocking a DIY solution. If it works for you, hey, go for it. I don't have a Zatabit either (I personally use a Sony 777 and MythTV), but the Zatabit does sound like an awesome solution, at a pretty decent price for enterprise-grade storage and streaming, IMHO.

RyanE

Makes sense that you get what you pay for, but then my question is who should be buying the Netgear EVA-8000 that will also be supported by C4 drivers and will also be integrated into the C4 GUI?

[alanchow]

Both the netgear eva8000 and xbmc support coverart on Control4's Navigator.

[stash]

There must be something that I am missing here. Does the market need another high priced Kalaidescape type solution??? Although I'm sure the equipment is top notch, the prices are laugh out loud funny. I think I would consider our household in the "target market" for Control 4 (mid 30's, $250K+ income, tech savvy), and I would not even begin to consider this as a solution. It seems very out of line that they would expect someone attracted to Control4 to pay $10,000 to be able to watch their DVD's and some Blu-ray from a server.

I'll take my chances on XBMC or Netgear plus a NAS drive.

[Mav-Jason]

There must be something that I am missing here. Does the market need another high priced Kalaidescape type solution??? Although I'm sure the equipment is top notch, the prices are laugh out loud funny. I think I would consider our household in the "target market" for Control 4 (mid 30's, $250K+ income, tech savvy), and I would not even begin to consider this as a solution. It seems very out of line that they would expect someone attracted to Control4 to pay $10,000 to be able to watch their DVD's and some Blu-ray from a server.

I'll take my chances on XBMC or Netgear plus a NAS drive.

Couldn't agree more.

[tebery]

are 'any-dvd' files compatible with xbmc?

[brandon]

Zatabit is not meant to be 'just a dvd jukebox' by any stretch of the imagination. As Ryan mentioned, it's apples and oranges. You need to think outside the box because there are many systems out there that only do DVD and music but Zatabit was designed to go much further.

Zatabit is also not meant to be a Kaleidescape like system. Kaleidescape is a harddrive based DVD and CD jukebox, nothing more. If you do want to compare just the video playback though, lets go over some of the apple and oranges differences. Kaleidescape can only display 480p content upscaled to 1080p, it has nowhere near enough processing power to decode 1080p content. Kaleidescapes' other feature, CD playback, does not support as many audio formats and bit rates as Zatabit does. Zatabit also costs 20% that of Kaleidescape for comparable storage amounts.

If our highest end products posted by Rick earlier are out of your range, we do offer non raid 5 systems starting at $3300 (Retail). For specific questions or if you are a dealer and interested in dealer pricing you can contact sales@zatabit.com. If you would like to complain about the cost of our systems you're welcome to contact feedback@zatabit.com. We have taken a lot of care and time to design our systems to have a very stable architecture. As you mentioned, you're welcome to take your "chances" and personal time to build and setup a DIY media box; but chances are something we will not be passing on to our customers. OSS projects like XBMC exist for a reason, people like to get their hands dirty and people like hobbies. Someone making $250k a year and considering a DIY media box obviously isn't a normal customer. I don't know one reputable dealer that would install a XBMC in a customers home because it's just not stable enough, and stability takes time and cost for a company to develop and put into a product. A great example is hackers fry media boxes all the time because they sacrifice cooling for good looks and then put the system in a hot or enclosed rack and they fry the system or drives fail after a year.

Anyone who knows my background knows I understand OSS very well, especially in the media server area. Our systems are not for everyone and are not intended for someone who wants to have to get their hands dirty and learn how the technology works. If you feel a DIY system is your best choice then I'll be the first to encourage you to go for it and enjoy it too. The bottom line is you need to be happy with and enjoy your content, go with whatever you think is best for your end goal.

[GoGo Delicious]

Zatabit is also not meant to be a Kaleidescape like system. Kaleidescape is a harddrive based DVD and CD jukebox, nothing more. If you do want to compare just the video playback though, lets go over some of the apple and oranges differences. Kaleidescape can only display 480p content upscaled to 1080p, it has nowhere near enough processing power to decode 1080p content.

That's WAY OFF. Kaleidescape can play NATIVE 1080P content. In fact a Kaleidescape system comes with 1080p content pre-loaded to show what it can do. What Kaleidescape CAN NOT do at the present time is import/playback Blu-Ray dvd's. A Blu-Ray player is scheduled for release in 2009.

Take a look at Kaleidescape Supported Formats to see what other formats are also supported.

[brandon]

Zatabit is also not meant to be a Kaleidescape like system. Kaleidescape is a harddrive based DVD and CD jukebox' date=' nothing more. If you do want to compare just the video playback though, lets go over some of the apple and oranges differences. Kaleidescape can only display 480p content upscaled to 1080p, it has nowhere near enough processing power to decode 1080p content.[/quote']

That's WAY OFF. Kaleidescape can play NATIVE 1080P content. In fact a Kaleidescape system comes with 1080p content pre-loaded to show what it can do. What Kaleidescape CAN NOT do at the present time is import/playback Blu-Ray dvd's. A Blu-Ray player is scheduled for release in 2009.

Take a look at Kaleidescape Supported Formats to see what other formats are also supported.

Hmm, maybe I'm still missing it, but that page only states video output of up to 1080, it doesn't list what codecs or bitrates of content it supports.

Do you know what codec the HD content is? I could see maybe MPEG-2 on their video decoder chip, but not h264 that's often used in HD video, and no mention of HD-audio support either.

Edit: They don't handle VC-1 or h264 1080p HD video and they also don't support HDMI audio out for HD audio. The "HD" video clip may be HD resolution but it's not the same codec found on a Blu-ray disc.

[panamagixxer]

So does it interface like the 777? Basically, can you pull up movies on the remote's lcd?

[dogdvr]

Yes,

you will see cover art just like you do with the 777

Brent

[panamagixxer]

Now I need to spend the rest of the week identifying that bank to rob so I can get one.

[brandon]

It automatically updates cover art and video information in C4 if you add, remove or make changes to video information on Zatabit. A thousand movies takes about 3 minutes on an HC1000. It will also auto generate cover art from home movies or videos that do not have cover art yet, or you can use our video search tool (which searches online for video information and cover art), or you can upload your own image and fill in details yourself. There are also ways to control what is uploaded to C4, for instance can select a specific video(s) to not appear in C4 or you can set a parental rating and Zatabit will not add videos to C4 for ratings higher than that (and each Zatabit can be configured differently). If you change the main rating for a system, Zatabit will go through your entire video list and bring it in line from a matter of seconds to minutes depending what C4 hardware is managing the home and how many videos you have (thousands will take a couple minutes if you were to go from NC-17 to G for example). Zatabit also has parental pins for each rating that can be setup to access videos with a higher rating than is currently set without having to change the main rating...

Edit: You never have to use the "Scan" button in C4, all the dealer does is add the .c4i to the project, drag the Zatabit icon over to a room, set the IP, video out, and audio out in C4 Composers' connection page and that's it for Zatabit setup in C4. From then on Zatabit keeps everything updated and synced on its own.