Hi,
Like many PMS owners I too have accumulated quite a bit of media content of which maybe 75% after a short period goes untouched. It would be great to accomplish the following like back in the mainframe (not server based mainframe like today, truly ‘Big Iron’ ) days where a specific tape can be requested by the system if it was not online at the time…… so here goes…
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Once content is deemed fit for archiving off, the Plex entry for that content can be marked as “Archived”, with the ability to notify the Plex owner that a request for that specific media has been made. The notification can be email or whatever is easiest.
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After the archive option is engaged, Plex will maintain the metadata, but know that it is not available in realtime until the archive (bit) option is turned off. There will also be no requirement to refresh the metadata for archived content thereby reducing the refresh metadata time required.
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Once the archive option has been enabled, the owner can then remove the content onto whatever storage medium they are happy with (tape/CD-RW/DVD/NAS/etc.). This technical archiving would not be a function of Plex, once the option to ‘Archive’ is enabled, Plex locks down the metadata and it’s job is done. The metadata is there for any user to see that it could be made available, but it is offline at the moment.
This would be great to get TV series that are no longer being watched or infrequently, off the active volume, especially if the owner does not want to get rid of the content.
The role of PMS would simply be to manage the “archived” metadata, and the functionality of the “Archive Option” when turne on/off.
At some future time PMS could probably handle the off-loading of the content once it knows what off-loading options are available to it.
I hope this meets with agreement to most of you…. Thanks.
