Transcoding on the fly takes juice

That much?

Yes, it's expensive to re-encode video to a different resolution or quality.

I realize it's expensive, but does it require 12 cores/24 threads running at almost 3.5ghz. I just find that hard to believe, sorry.

Well when you've got your plex account shared with 10 or so people it adds up.

ohh, i see

He is using ~$1000 of hardware to save on ~$100 harddrive

16TB of video, actual files, not raw storage, and I need to transcode it, so you're saying just transcode that data and store duplicates? Yeah not a ~$100 hard drive.

Sorry, ~$180 (8TB storage pod, for example STEB8000100).

Whatever man, that's just a single hard drive. I've got 8 hard drives setup in a custom raid. I can't just willy nilly buy an off the shelf usb drive to add storage too it. You come off so high and mighty not knowing someones actual needs.

Sounds about right.