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submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Since the pandemic I’ve been collecting DVDs and Blu-rays, because I started getting into filmmaking and valued the importance of physical media. One of my reasons was the horror stories I’ve read about licenses on DRM-protected purchases being revoked.

After we moved to a much smaller house, my Billy bookshelf containing around 200+ titles has been taking a huge amount of space. And the cases just sit there looking pretty. We never use the discs. There’s no Blu-ray player in our house. We all watch digital content on portable devices. I’ve filled up several hard drives with so many obscure, international films that will never get distribution here. And so, I’ve stopped buying discs. It’s also much more convenient to be able to play MKVs on every device in my house.

I was one of those people who constantly purchased discs to remux and encode them myself for use on a future server, but that’s a waste of time, energy and money as there are dozens of release groups who’ve done the work already for me.

It doesn’t make sense to keep all the clutter around. I also have 500+ DVDs in a binder with the cover art stored in folders, but it seems like a gigantic waste of money to buy a storage system for outdated standard definition media, when most studios have remastered editions readily available.

I’m thinking of selling the Blu-rays that aren’t rare to buy a cheapo Optiplex. The discs are already pretty worthless. I’m just scared that I might regret this decision.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

buy a couple of cheap plastic totes after christmas to put all the physical media in and store it. you will never get much selling physical media (with the exception of a few titles). and rebuilding the collection years from now will not be easy or cheap (since most of yours will be oop in 10-20 years)

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Still got some but I only have a couple dozen.

I quit buying physical media many years ago.

Just not any point, It's never more convenient to carry around a physical book to read when I already have a tablet that has hundreds.

I'm never going to want to have to physically find and insert a dvd or bluray just to sit through previews and warnings that I'm only subject to because I dared pay $20 for a physical disc.

Plus they're impractical for the same reasons as physical books.

I can watch pretty much any movie on my phone now from practically anywhere.

The only thing I think you might regret and realistically this is only a concern for older releases as this is pretty much completely not a thing anymore is the disc bonus features. Most modern stuff just flat doesn't have anything extra but used to you could get director's commentary and deleted scenes and stuff on the disc, things that online releases don't often include.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I've started throwing out DVD cases, but keeping the disks in a DVD binder like you. Still keeping the Blu-ray cases on the shelves for now.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I’ve been getting rid of my physical media too. I still have my UHD movies but I don’t even watch them…

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I keep my physical discs. I do however throw out the cases and put the discs themselves into a 400 disc binder. They take up a lot less space and then I can bring them with if I go someplace without Internet or pull them out if my Plex server crashes and I can't be bothered to fix it.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I just throw out the cases. Buy used, rip, store disk in a collection case.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

If you want to keep the media but cut the space it takes up, but 90s style CD/DVD binders and toss the cases. I keep hundreds of my disks in 3 binders.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Personally I keep all my stuff. If the file gets lost or damaged I don't need another copy, I can just grab mine and rescan it. Plus DVDs play in almost all of my machines (I installed a DVD drive in most of them) so there's that.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Yeah managed to sell all my dvds and blurays to a collector trying to line his basement media room with them.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

all of it. about 15 years ago when i started collecting digitally. never looked back.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Me i still buy VHS/DVD/Bluray. Some movies on vhs i have never got dvd or bluray releases. Others like the first Mortal Kombat, has different french dub (different voice actors and dialogue) and different background music on both dvd and bluray compared to vhs. The movie The Mask, on vhs as i recall has some scenes which are a few seconds longer and one small scene at the start absent from the dvd and bluray releases. Bluray doesn't have the french dub. So for some movies i have both vhs/dvd or vhs/bluray depending on the dub (if french dub is absent or altered).

For games i thrift a lot so i still massively purchase cd-roms & dvd-roms for pc. Since 2017 i bought like two hundred pc games. I automatically archive the discs and then proceed to use them to play.

I of course buy physical for consoles too and my video game shop of choice has 10 games for 30$CAD; systems included are PS2/PS3/PS4/XBOX/XBOX360/XBOX ONE. More common games and those which they have too many copies are part of the bargain. I got the dead space trilogy and crysis trilogy for xbox 360 that way. I buy games for all consoles except gb/gbc since buying high quality carts and flashing them is cheaper than the originals and you get FRAM instead of SRAM for your saves which makes them last up to 40 years. I don't buy nes/snes/genesis games anymore but once i acquire soldering skills i will buy again and change the SRAM chips for FRAM to have durable saves.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I have and I regret it immensely

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I would never do this, personally. But it depends on the collection - mine consists almost entirely of 3D movies... most are out of print and many are now quite rare. If it's a bunch of easy-to-find titles then that's a different story

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Surprised Ctrl-F turned up zero occurrences of "copyright". It is legal to back up CDs (which have no copy protection that would fall under DMCA), provided one keeps the originals. And I haven't heard of an individual getting prosecuted for backing up copy-protected discs like DVDs.

I keep my originals, for legal reasons. I wish I didn't have to keep the atoms around, but I feel like I do.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Remux 4K on the NAS. Discs only if I can't find what I'm looking for with other means. Then rip and shelve until someone I know wants them.

Reminds me of back in the day when cd's went to mp3. I had spindles of retail cd's that I couldn't fit into binders. Ripped everything to flac and gave away the cd's.

Everything is digital/streaming now.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Havent had optical media since 2012, spare a few CD's I bought to support artists I like, which I can't listen too because no optical drive.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Do you have a system of backups for your digital library? For example at minimum do you have a physical backup of the data on drives not connected to your main computer AND an offsite backup (cloud storage or storing backed up physical media offsite)?

If not then you’re risking losing your entire library to one power spike caused by a nearby lightning strike or any other number of random events such as malfunctioning drives… etc.

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this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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Data Hoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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