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a binder with the cover art stored in folders, but it seems like a gigantic waste of money to buy a storage system for outdated standard definition media, when most studios have remastered editions readily available.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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Buy > rip > give to me
I’ve got a similar situation. In an apartment with limited storage and just want to eliminate the storage I have. My main suggestion - double backup everything you want to keep. I’ve already lost one backup early on but luckily had a backup to that.
Regret will happen - it did when I got rid of some CDs. But the relief of having the extra free space more than makes up for that.
The 80’s 12” singles I have are all transferred to digital with multiple backups. I have an 80’s music show ready for syndication so I can’t lose that (I kept the 600 or so 12” singles).
But then there’s the 350 “blank” VHS tapes loaded with network TV shows from the mid-80’s to the mid-00’s. They’re bulky, heavy & take up 6 big storage bins - so they need to go. Many have never aired beyond the original airing, never been released in any format (including streaming) and most can’t even be found on YouTube. It’s not lost media, it’s more like next-to-impossible to find currently unreleased media. I’ve spent time over the last few months transferring my favorites to digital. That will be double backed up. Fun times lol.
Yeah like 10 years ago
I have two boxes of burned CDRs, that I’ve replaced with better rips. Remember DiVX? Fit a 90 minute movie on a 700MB disc with obvious artifacting even at SD resolutions. Still can’t bring myself to get rid of them.
Checked a few of them a couple years ago and they all still worked. Taiyo Yuden made good stuff.
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If they have cases I pay .50 on blu ray and .15 on dvd. The binder discs are pretty much garbage but .05 a piece seems reasonable. Prices are in CAD. No one has room for clutter it seems. Good thing I have a warehouse.
Used to be the case in some countries that physical media is proof you have purchased legally. Even if you just keep the disks on a spindle (aka the spindles from writable media packs). This is how i keep my original media in the back of the cupboard.
I’m in the process of throwing everything away. I have got a digital copy(s) of all my content and even remasters of DVD media. I don’t even have a DVD player.
I tried selling it on market place and it’s not getting any offers. Time for the bin.
I backed all mine up and sold it. I can’t justify dedicating a whole room in my house to media when I can fit it all on a few hard drives.
I live in a small apartment (40 m², about 430 sqft), and I still like to buy physical media (although that doesn’t mean everything I own has to be on physical media).
For me it’s mostly music (~700 CDs, ~500 LPs), and a handful of DVDs/BluRays. I guess I just like to have that stuff around me. If Amazon/Netflix/Spotify/Deezer/whatever other streaming services there are all shut down tomorrow I don’t even care…
Box up the media and store it away if you got space. There’s are prob more worthless stuff in a box somewhere than media. Do whatever let you sleep better at night.
Don’t buy books/video/music on physical media unless it’s hard/impossible to get a digital version. But also don’t rely on IP subscription services either. The Cloud is great as part of a backup strategy: but not as an exclusive service that could gate your access to your content.
Digital storage is great because it can hold anything: books, shows, games, whatever. And it can be easily copied, and sent around the world. Have some space you own: redundant and automatically backed-up to a Cloud service… then enjoy it for years. It will feed your ebook readers and media players and homelab devices for a long time, and take up almost no space.
I still keep my hundreds of books and thousands of vinyl records even though I consume almost everything electronically. There’s something to be said for not having your entire culture locked up in small grey anonymous boxes.
I didn’t ‘throw out’ my DVD collection, but I did get rid of over 90% of it. Back when Hastings was still in business, I took all of it to them for a ‘buy back’ (knowing I’d only get pennies on my dollar). I only kept the physical media of things I re-watch often (and have re-watched since I got rid of the rest of the titles).
I went from two cheap multi-shelf Walmart DVD shelves down to a single shelf. Everything else is stored on my Plex server (which is also my NAS), which itself is just a PC with a built in 8-bay 3.5" hotswap cage. :)
I haven’t owned a CD/DVD in at least a decade.