this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2026
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Marty, we need to go back...to the future!
https://ebay.io/m/85Z5UG
(Mind you, those top out at 320GB per cartridge)
Kidding aside, for deep storage...?
LTO-8 is 12TB native per cartridge. A used LTO can be as little as $300 USD with a 12TB cart $65ish. Ancient LTO-3 can be had for like...$5....and stores upto 800GB per tape.
So...if it's deep storage you want....that's one insane option.
OTOH if you're looking for a Jellyfin streamer...they're tape, so random access would suck bad. You'd genuinely be better off optical media at that point lol
Though if we're time travelling... DVD shufflers (400+ DVDs) were a thing for a minute. You'd have to write bridge software because they're HDMI and com port only...hmm. Checking quickly, they seem to go for $100 USD....is this even possible....? You'd be limited to 1 stream at a time, but I can see a way to share that across multiple TVs with HDMI splitter...hmm...how do I carry RF remote signal from each room back to main unit...oh, I don't need to, could I make a web ui that controls the shuffler via a Pi to RS-232, that you access on your phone?...Shit...i could do this.
$300...I could do this. I could make a clock work Jellyfin server...
No, stop. This is a dangerous rabbit hole.
PS: shit - I just thought of two better options - and one of them is even semi sane (store video at 480-540p on DVD as mkv, use Nvidia shield to upscale on fly to 1080p). Back of envelope maths suggests this would be around 3000 movies.
I should not be online this late at night with easy access to credit card.
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Some people just want to watch the world burn
how do you find so cheap LTO drives?
you could also do an ~~RF~~ IR remote bridge with two minimal Pis
Ive seen LTO for sale in person at the $300 USD mark...but I admit that's a rare occurrence / fire sale. So that "as little as" is probably not fair. Sorry and retracted.
EBay shows some in the $1200-1500 USD range (and maybe closer to $3-4K brand new).
That now makes me feel stupid for walking past one at $300 ("tape drive? Who the fuck needs that ancient shit") but I'm willing to bet that wasn't a lto-8, in hindsight.
Even my LTO-3 claim is not as remembered; I can find a lto-3 for $60 USD here locally (not the $5 I jokingly claimed), with cartridges in the $15 USD range.
https://ebay.io/m/1UST3Y
https://ebay.io/m/Gcf77T
Not bad, but not 12TB per cartridge.
All of this to say; the DVD shuffler + pi intermediary (+ NVIDIA shield if needed) is probably the genuinely better version of this. Bizarrely.
Use a hdmi to ip adapter to stream to multiple locations on a local network. Learned about them when looking at security cameras.
Stop enabling my drug addiction :P