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Thread: Anyone used Span? No, not a typo.

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    Anyone used Span? No, not a typo.

    I'm talking about Span.com, a supplier of storage systems, especially NAS units.

    If so, any idea why their website has been down for about a week? Which especially in these troubled times makes me very,very nervous.

    And are they any good to deal with? I need a NAS box and was thinking of using them.

    Thanks.
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    Laird Of The Glen jimborae's Avatar
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    Re: Anyone used Span? No, not a typo.

    No sorry mate not used them, did consider them when i was buying my new NAS but ultimately went with whoever was cheapest & reputable, Laptops Direct I think.

    The site was up when I was comparing prices and I think they've been around for a good while so not sure whats going on with their site atm.
    Last edited by jimborae; 26-02-2021 at 12:57 AM.

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    Laird Of The Glen jimborae's Avatar
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    Re: Anyone used Span? No, not a typo.

    By the way, what have you decided to go for in the end?

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    Re: Anyone used Span? No, not a typo.

    I have used Span, but it was a very long time ago... back in 2000.

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    Re: Anyone used Span? No, not a typo.

    I've bought from them - not recently though. It was over two years ago.

    They're reputable - I have no qualms on that front - but they aren't the cheapest around.
    Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes; after that, who cares?! He's a mile away and you've got his shoes!

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    Re: Anyone used Span? No, not a typo.

    Quote Originally Posted by jimborae View Post
    By the way, what have you decided to go for in the end?
    Not quite there yet. Still playing with configurations, and working outdata requirements, as I'm considering sticking a Plex srver on it too.

    Probably, in no small part because SHR appeals to me. But I'm working out the cost implications of the 920+ v 1621+, and various drive capacities. It's complicated, innit?

    I have a spreadsheet with a range of options, including the 4-bay and 6-bay units, together with drives from 4TB up to 16TB, looking at cost per TB at each size, taking account of the RAID5 redundancy loss (1 drive worth), and trying to decide whether to splurge on big drives and 4-bay now, or smaller drives but a 6-bay, giving more expansion options and the workings of SHR are beggaring up my spreadsheet .... and giving me a headache trying to design it.

    Put it this way, the overall cost (including the NAS) goes from about £45/TB to something like £110/TB, depending on configuration. But getting the lowest 'per TB' cost means big drives, and a pretty big bill in total.

    And I was finding Span pretty good at getting all the data for the spreadsheet quickly and easily.

    At the moment, I'm inclined towards 1621+ and smaller drives (6-8TB) rather than 920+ and bigger drives (10-12TB) because then, I can get 4 drives initially,keep total cost down a bit, but still add 2 extra drives (thus 12-16TB extra) before running out of expandability without either replacing drives with bigger ones (trying to avoid doing that) but it adds about £300 to the cost of the NAS.

    One thing about SHR does seem to be that a BIG increase in drive size is inefficient because the space reserved for parity is always that of the largest drive. So adding a 12TB to 3x 4TB in a 4 bay isn't going to end well.

    It's trying to think through all the options that I wanted that site for. Then, their prices diidn't look bad .... when they were up.

    Will take a look at Laptops Direct, though.
    A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".

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    Re: Anyone used Span? No, not a typo.

    I wouldn't dilly-dally too long Saracen,knowing how tech companies are going,they might find some excuse to start jacking up HDDs too,and anything they can get away with.

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    Re: Anyone used Span? No, not a typo.

    Span have definitely been around a long time and reputable.

    However, looking at their website it looks like their database has gone down as there are funny field names.
    Oddly they're posting on their Facebook page, but then that could have been something they scheduled a while ago.

    https://www.facebook.com/SPANdotCOM

    If you need another company to look at with a large range of computing based products we use Ballicom as our main supplier now. They give good no nonsense after sales support.
    Prices are often competitive, however, now that most of them are algorithm based, I find it's just good to properly shop around and keep your options open.

    EDIT: I scrolled down a bit further on their FB page and heres what they had to say

    Quote Originally Posted by Span.com Facebook
    A Message from the Team at SPAN.COM
    Thank you for getting in touch with us about our site and services. It has come to our attention that our website has sustained a critical failure with our host and this has resulted in our platform being unreachable for our customers online at https://www.span.com . Please rest assured that this is something that is being resolved and we are in the process of migrating our site and services over for recovery. This will lead to our site being unavailable online for a short time. Please rest assured that our internal systems are still running and our team are working remotely, as usual, however, responses may be marginally delayed. Thank you for contacting us and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.
    https://www.facebook.com/SPANdotCOM/...88658857889534
    Last edited by AGTDenton; 26-02-2021 at 02:29 AM.

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    Re: Anyone used Span? No, not a typo.

    If you're evaluating Plex it's worth poking around with Emby & Jellyfin too. The direction of travel with Plex (as in where the new features are being added,) is on content provision from outside sources rather than locally hosted and they've removed the ability to customise it with plugins.

    Emby has matured a lot in the past few years and has yet to go down the added content road.

    Jellyfin is a fork of the last open source version of emby (circa 18 months old now,) which is still developing. They're about to release 10.7 which will overhaul the backend database. For own hosted content it's robust and complete plus offers strong transcoding support for free (including HDR tone mapping which the others don't have yet IIRC. However it doesn't have a huge range of client apps and only the web, roku and android ones are what I'd call feature complete.

    I run Emby with a test instance of Jellyfin. I'll likely migrate fully after 10.7 is released and the app for LG tvs is released.

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    Re: Anyone used Span? No, not a typo.

    @AGTDenton

    Thanks for that. i don't use Facebook, so that update confirms what I was told when I finally had someone answer the phone. As for their "marginally" delayed, though, it took me probably 30 to 40 calls to get an answer on the phone, and the site has now been down about a week. By down, I mean the shell is there but the database (MySQL probably) connection backend appears to have imploded. Were it not for the fact that, well, "been there, done that, got t-shirt", I might be a lot less sympathetic. That said, my usage was a non-critical back-end engineering documentation database for a small client company, not an internet-facing retail outlet. Guys, you need some disaster-planning and recovery options in lace, even if it costs you. How much has being offline for a eek cost you? You'll never know, because it will just have scared some customers off.

    As for Ballicom, it's always good to know, especially from old-timer Hexen, who they trust, and sometimes, who they don't. So yeah, thanks for that too.
    A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".

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    Re: Anyone used Span? No, not a typo.

    Quote Originally Posted by spacein_vader View Post
    If you're evaluating Plex it's worth poking around with Emby & Jellyfin too. The direction of travel with Plex (as in where the new features are being added,) is on content provision from outside sources rather than locally hosted and they've removed the ability to customise it with plugins.

    Emby has matured a lot in the past few years and has yet to go down the added content road.

    Jellyfin is a fork of the last open source version of emby (circa 18 months old now,) which is still developing. They're about to release 10.7 which will overhaul the backend database. For own hosted content it's robust and complete plus offers strong transcoding support for free (including HDR tone mapping which the others don't have yet IIRC. However it doesn't have a huge range of client apps and only the web, roku and android ones are what I'd call feature complete.

    I run Emby with a test instance of Jellyfin. I'll likely migrate fully after 10.7 is released and the app for LG tvs is released.
    It's tricky, space-in, 'cos Plex etc is new territory for me. Raid storage isn't, going back to an old Adaptec 4-disc IDE drive setup about 20+ years ago, then a 6-disc SCSI array in a "proper" server since then. But .... relatively small (but decently quick, for their time at least) UltraSCSI drives with nowhere near, and I mean orders of magnitude different, the capacity available now. That said, as it wasn't running media, that vastly smaller capacity was all I needed.

    So .... I'm kinda running blind on media-serving entirely, my limited knowledge coming from a lot of reading and YT videos and precisely zero hands-on experience.

    My intentions are :-

    - primary .... digitise as much of my media selection as I can,
    - enable playback mainly via two TVs and a laptop (or sometimes, Surface Pro)
    - maybe a Samsung tablet if I ever get around to replacing a dead one
    - oh, and my own digitised music collection rather than paying for streaming.

    Current plan is to run Plex on the NAS. And I haven't yet committed to which one, even which brand. Synology is in the lead, but not over the winning line. Do Synology have Emby/Jellyfin apps for their NAS. Oh, and probably Asset UPNP on the NAS for music.

    But as I say, flying a bit blind, feeling my way.
    A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".

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    Re: Anyone used Span? No, not a typo.

    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen999 View Post
    It's tricky, space-in, 'cos Plex etc is new territory for me. Raid storage isn't, going back to an old Adaptec 4-disc IDE drive setup about 20+ years ago, then a 6-disc SCSI array in a "proper" server since then. But .... relatively small (but decently quick, for their time at least) UltraSCSI drives with nowhere near, and I mean orders of magnitude different, the capacity available now. That said, as it wasn't running media, that vastly smaller capacity was all I needed.

    So .... I'm kinda running blind on media-serving entirely, my limited knowledge coming from a lot of reading and YT videos and precisely zero hands-on experience.

    My intentions are :-

    - primary .... digitise as much of my media selection as I can,
    - enable playback mainly via two TVs and a laptop (or sometimes, Surface Pro)
    - maybe a Samsung tablet if I ever get around to replacing a dead one
    - oh, and my own digitised music collection rather than paying for streaming.

    Current plan is to run Plex on the NAS. And I haven't yet committed to which one, even which brand. Synology is in the lead, but not over the winning line. Do Synology have Emby/Jellyfin apps for their NAS. Oh, and probably Asset UPNP on the NAS for music.

    But as I say, flying a bit blind, feeling my way.
    It's a big old subject, and one I've put a lot of time, trial and error into for the past 5+ years and is often the way the "right" answer is different for every use case. A few bits are pretty universal though. I know that you're technically competent so apologies if any of the following is teaching grandma to suck eggs but I thought I'd share my experiences.

    The two advantages you have starting from scratch is that you can decide the format(s) all your media will be stored in and the capabilities of the server and the clients.

    All media servers provide content for playback in one of two ways, direct play and transcoding. When a client requests a given item of media the first thing the server does is establish what format the file it holds is in and then queries the client to see if it supports playback of that format. If it does it uses direct play, simply passing the file to the client which plays it natively. This uses very little resource on the part of the server which is why systems configured this way can be run on something as low powered as older versions of the Raspberry Pi. If the client doesn't support the file format the server asks it which formats it can play, selects one of those and then begins creating a temporary version of the media in that format and sending it to the client all on the fly (transcoding.) This is much more resource intensive for the server, especially if the content is 4k, HDR or requires subtitles burning in to the video. Transcoding video at 720p or below and any audio formats are unlikely to cause any problems for vaguely modern hardware, Pi's included.

    As transcoding high quality video quite resource intensive for general purpose compute like x86/x64 and ARM, many devices have dedicated hardware acceleration built in to their GPUs to be able to do this which is why even a £30 TV stick can play so many different formats. My i5-7400 can do 1 4k transcode at realtime speed or 2 1080p streams using its CPU but managed 3 4k or 12 1080p streams using its GPU hardware transcoding. On the server side by far the most widely supported is Intel Quicksync, second to that is Nvidias NVENC (not really applicable on a NAS though,) with AMD support patchy but improving. Interestingly the lower spec Synology device you mentioned is a Celeron with modern Quicksync support while the higher power one is Ryzen embedded which does not have an APU element to provide transcode support.

    For digitising video content, the de facto standard software is handbrake (loads of settings guides available but even the default profiles are ok,) and the most widely supported/playable formats by client devices are H.264 in a .MKV container. Many modern devices also support H.265 which is required for HDR and resolutions above 4k if you're one of these madmen with more money than sense and an 8k TV. For 1080p/non HDR 4k either will work, 264 will be more compatible and quicker to rip but 265 produces either smaller file sizes or better quality.

    In terms of playback A Surface Pro will play anything you throw at it, a modernish (Ivy Bridge or newer Intel, AMD a bit more uneven but anything with UVD 3.0 or higher,) laptop will play H.264 and anything Kaby Lake/Zen1 based or newer will play H265. Similarly you can't buy a new tablet that won't do 264 and I'd wager all but the most bargain basement Samsung would do 265.

    For TVs it's a mixed bag, both on what native apps are available and even where they are available if the TV has the grunt needed to push h.265 but that is easily solved with a Roku/Firestick/similar device if need be.

    Then you need to choose your media server software...

    Plex and Emby are the established players, with Jellyfin relatively recent. Plex has been around longest and has the widest support. They have images in the app stores of most of the off the shelf NAS sellers and in all the Android/Apple/MS stores and all the big TV manufacturers assuming the set is capable. It is the slickest to set up, aiming for Apple style "it just works." The downside to that is that like Apple it reduces your options to do so. You cannot run a Plex server (even a free version,) without a Plex account and the server authenticates/phones home every time you login though there are temporary workarounds.

    They (like Emby,) have a premium subscription for some features though you can buy a 1 off lifetime licence. Whether you need/want those features is a personal choice but the most likely one to benefit when running on a NAS is hardware transcoding, but if you prepare your media into a near universally accepted format like H.264 you can largely work around that. The other premium features many use a remote access (outside the LAN,) and the ability to download media to your client device for offline playback. Yes I know you could copy the file manually and use VLC, apparently enough of the user base doesn't.

    Finally their direction of travel has been to get closer to various content providers, the new features tend to be focused on providing new streaming options and live TV. For example on their website now the section called Your Media is 3rd in the list after Live TV and On Demand. This has coincided with a reduction in settings exposed to users and a removal of the plugin system which offered many different capabilities some of which coincidentally are now mirrored in the main client.

    Emby a is more recent but still mature offering that until around 18 months ago was also open source. It doesn't support any streaming services or content providers but does support live TV if you have a compatible receiver but I've never tested that functionality. Unlike Plex it can be entirely locally hosted without any kind of account or authentication, but like Plex it does offer some premium features you have to pay for. This again includes transcoding and download to device but remote access is in the free tier, but annoyingly automated backups are a premium feature. They also do a monthly sub or lifetime licence.

    Its major downside over Plex is its app availability. The client app is on all the major Apple/Google/MS stores as well as Roku, and the games consoles but the only TVs it's on natively are LG and manufacturers that use Android TV. The server is available for most NAS providers but you need to download it from Emby themselves and install rather than it being present on Synology/QNAPs own store. The process is simple though, like installing a non Play Store Android APK.

    Their direction of travel doesn't seem to be similar to Plex but they have fallen out with a part of their community as the developers professionalised their model by closing the source and charging more for premium features, plugins are still available though and I've not seen any plans to change that. Almost all new features introduced in the past 18 months have been made Premium only though and this is likely to remain the case. That said, transcoding and backups are the only ones I've found useful. I've been using it for around 4 years now as my main media server, with clients a mix of laptops, android tablets, LG TV app and a couple of Roku devices on older TVs.

    Jellyfin is the result of that fall out Emby had with some of its community, with the last open source version of Emby being forked. A lot of the past 18 months has been spent refactoring a lot of backend code so features wise it is a bit behind the other two, although its UX is very similar to Embys. It has a very focused approach to being JUST a system for managing and serving your own locally held media though so the LiveTV functionality and some other bits deemed 'fluff' from Emby has been stripped out. It doesn't require an account for anything and all features including hardware transcoding and downloads to devices. It is robust and works well at what it does do though, it's been very stable during my testing for at least 6 months, the only reason I've not moved to it entirely is app support.

    Clients exist for Roku, Android and FireTV, with LG, Chromecast, Tizen and consoles listed as under development, a much shorter list than the other 2 options. Some of this is partly down to not being a company as for example the LG TV client is feature complete but navigating LGs store acceptance testing is challenging for them. While the server runs on windows/mac/linux and even the Pi if you want to run it on a NAS you need to install Docker on it and run it as a container within that which is a bit of a showstopper.

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    Laird Of The Glen jimborae's Avatar
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    Re: Anyone used Span? No, not a typo.

    I just use Kodi as all my devices are easily powerful enough to do the transcoding themselves and I believe Emby and Jellyfish are forks of it. This simplifies things massively at the back end.

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    Re: Anyone used Span? No, not a typo.

    On Portable devices I use VLC to play the video content.

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    Re: Anyone used Span? No, not a typo.

    Quote Originally Posted by jimborae View Post
    I just use Kodi as all my devices are easily powerful enough to do the transcoding themselves and I believe Emby and Jellyfish are forks of it. This simplifies things massively at the back end.
    Plex was a fork of Kodi way back in the XBMC days circa 2008, I'm not aware of any link between it and Emby/Jellyfin though. Kodi is more of a media player/centre, doesn't follow a client/server model and essentially works on the single device it's installed on. It can link to remote media and you can roll your own SQL backend to allow you to pause a film on one Kodi device and then unpause on a different one but that all requires manual work to setup and isn't what it was built for. All the systems I referenced support Kodi as a client device though and it's very good at what it does.

  20. #16
    Laird Of The Glen jimborae's Avatar
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    Re: Anyone used Span? No, not a typo.

    Sorry it was OpenELEC I was thinking of rather than Emby as a Kodi fork! Either way for me I just don’t need the server client model in my simple setup & Kodi seems to suit needs perfectly.

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