Media Server

That the original media server is still sitting in a police property store is something of a problem. Trying to get a copy of the forensic report that has had it tagged as 'Can not return' is an ongoing battle and there is a complaint into the ICO over the original 'Subject Access Request' which effectively said that there was no property of mine in the hands of the Police. The recent return of that non-existent property has now also provided paperwork that this request SHOULD have disclosed but once again failed to include the documents specifically asked for.

That I had devices still in my possession, and some backup of material provided a start to duplicating the missing server, and the recent returns filled in gaps in that material, so while still only a quarter of the size of the original, a good start has been made. Is this archive actually needed is a question that some will ask, given that a large section has been created from the stack of DVD's and CD's I have left. The main reason I built the archive goes back long before our vinyl collection was decimated by the 2007 flooding around Honeybourne Airfield and for example the original Bond film library was created from the set of VHS tapes I had at that time. Having all of the material accessible in parallel with the additional data that a media server can provide is the main advantage, and searching across that catalogue is a lot easier than trying to find it off the DVD, CD, record or even physical book. My physical collection has been much reduced and I have re-catalogued much of that now along with transferring copies to the current media server. The worst affected is the music collection of which only a fraction now remains and 20+ years worth of vinyl was destroyed so can't be reloaded from that source. That said, much of my primary music is still here in one media or another.

Currently two packages provide the management tools. Calibre for all the paper media and Plex for all the rest. Neither is perfect for the job and I would happily replace them if something better comes along. Needing to downsize due to having moved into a small flat, I have been converting my magazines into electronic copies and Calibre does do a good job of cataloguing the resulting library of pdf's that this process has created, but some of the key data has to be handled as 'custom' fields which are not so will integrated. A side job is another stack of magazines, for Dolls House and Miniature Scene, as background material on the Cadogan Gardens Dolls House project. There is other documentation that I am building to support that project but which are not suitable for Calibre to catalogue and so some other means is needed.

Plex is a bit more problematic. I have a lifetime licence for it which was purchased not long after they first appeared. There was a little problem with gaining access to it again after James's death but that has now been sorted. My main criticism of Plex IS this nannying and the fact that even actions direct to the local server have to be validated on their website. Delays in that validation process seems to slow down access to my own local content. Additionally they keep hassling me to access content that they are pushing and the default home pages always include their own channels which I do not want to access. The other side of the coin is the processing plexmediaserver does when adding a new item to the server. Links to the list of people credited on a film or TV program, tagging the run-in and credits so you can skip them and grouping material that form a set of movies in a similar way as episodes of a TV show are grouped. All of that is helped by standardising the file names of a video, but that is another topic to document.

Another area that I need to dig into is the matter of video resolution. I have a nice 4k smart television and access to HD TV channels give the best results, but many of the current free channels are actually rather lower resolution that even VNS tapes used to provide. A number of years ago, Quest provided a HD channel and I still had a large number of recorded shows on the various TV boxes that I had ( Media Box on Equipment Inventory ). The current SD channels come in via the remaining Xtrend ET8500 with a resolution of 544x576 which is well below the 768 pixels that a normal 4 by 3 televison used to provide. When scalled to a wide screen TV, the horizontal resolution is even softer.  When compared with new HD programs I can download from BBC iPlayer the difference is chalk and cheese. Even those ripped from the DVD's which gives 720x576 such as My NCIS collection where Seasons 1 to 8 are ripped from an old boxed set while the current run on 5USA which has reached Season 6 again is at the lower resolution. On the TODO list is to investigate just what some of the different resolutions actually mean.

Now need to document just what I do have ...