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Uses for an underpowered SFF - File server and downloader
Posted on Saturday, March 05 @ 04:21:22 PST by lincomatic
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While I've given up on using my wimpy VIA M9000 as an HTPC, it's being reborn as a server and client machine which can stay on all the time w/o killing my power bills. This article will describe how to use your ITX box for downloading TV shows, and a future article will be about recording streaming radio and podcasts...
Since my M9000 now has a massive 300GB external firewire drive in addition to its internal 120GB drive, it's got some serious storage for my media files. My complete photo archive (12GB and growing) from my Canon EOS Digital Rebel gets stored on it (6MP JPG's really add up to a lot of storage quickly), because it was eating up too much space on my laptop. Now I have a file server on my LAN which can handle the demanding storage needs.
A lot of space is also taken up by assorted TV shows downloaded via Bittorrent w/ Azureus. Azureus is Java-based, so it's kind of bloated and slow when it runs, but it has no ads, no spyware, terrific statistics, and downloads damn fast. It's easy to keep track of the latest available downloads using an RSS reader such as RSSReader (free and highly recommended). I use this feed to get listings TV downloads: BT-EFNET. Alternatively, you can set up Azureus to download automatically through the use of keyword filters. See this article in Engadget for details; I don't do this myself, however. Since the machine is on all the time, it's perfect for lengthy downloads.
Ever since I was in high school, I've always wanted to record radio shows, but car stereos never had the recording capability, and using a home stereo and cassette player w/ a timer was cumbersome at best; worse, it could only record one station at a time. Enter Internet radio and podcasting (yuck, the word "podcasting" is annoying. Apple didn't invent the hard drive-based MP3 player! My Archos Jukebox, which pre-dates it is living proof! Grr!). In the an upcoming article, I will explore using your SFF box for unattended recording of audio.
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