91–100 of 428 posts
DVDs are durable, but not immortal. I have several that have failed.
I appreciate the ask. Ripping DVDs is just a lot of work, time, storage, and fiddling. I don’t wish ripping 15 seasons of ER on anyone.
But, the truth is, the things break down.
>I still don’t actually use our DVDs and Blu-rays all that often. But every time I see them lining the shelves, I feel a bit of comfort. Because when I do need them, they’ll be there. The importance of that type of redundancy depends on the viewing habits of a particular person. In the case of my friend, the "don’t actually use our DVDs all that often" really was "never re-watched the DVDs she owned" . She had a DVD…
And there's even a third option: Rip the DVDs, keep the digital copies somewhere safe, and discard the physical discs. If you want to ensure that this remains safe, you'll need to both back up and periodically transfer the digital copies to new physical storage devices (in my case, I just upgraded from the ~4-yr-old 4TB HDD that was holding all my media to a new 16TB HDD). This is, however, kind of a necessity in any…
Pro tip: thrift store DVDs and "friends of the library" sales.
I got every season of ST:TNG for about $40 ($1/disk)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But what if Netflix and Amazon Prime Video lets their streaming licenses expire for "X-Files" and it's no longer available? Wouldn't that make the X-Files DVDs a great backup?!? It would, if she actually re-watched the X-Files -- but she never did. The problem is that the future is uncertain. It's always possible that she might want to rewatch the X-Files at some point, even if she never actually does.
> … the future is uncertain. It's always possible that she might want to … even if she never actually does. True, although … "Difficulty discarding possessions is characterized by a perceived need to save items and distress associated with discarding them. Accumulation of possessions can result in living spaces becoming cluttered to the point that their use or safety is compromised. Compulsive hoarding is recognized…
It’s healthy to hang onto a few ratty t-shirts because you might need them to mow the lawn or because they remind you of good times; you can even be a bit bummed when you eventually do throw them out. It’s compulsive hoarding when you do it even though it seriously bothers you or turns your place into a death trap.
The only reason I still have my stack of disks is because I haven't had time to rip them and their special features yet. That and we keep the disks for kids movies because the van doesn't have streaming support or AppleTV yet. :)
People tend to shit on Spotify (while still using it), but they did manage something that we all want: Access to (almost everything), for a nominal monthly fee. We need the same, but for movies and tv shows. Globally. It's an economical problem that currently has a suboptimal solution.
I get the point the author is making but keeping all the DVDs also isn't the answer IMHO. At least it wasn't for me, it was just annoying to find a place to store it all, to move it when we moved country would have cost money for basically nothing of value. I had a purge of pretty much all my physical media a bit over a decade ago. I had a little over 1000 DVDs and Blu-rays. Probably 200 VHS too. God knows how many C…
I have ~1500 DVDs stored that way in less than a meter of shelf space.
Why are we always in the cycle where X is the contrarian and minority but was pushed aside while Y enjoy all the frames and glories but is fundamentally wrong.
I am putting X and Y here simply because this observation hold true not just in tech, in streaming but everywhere else.
It is not like they were not warned.
Back to the subject. We really something better than BluRay. Smaller but also much higher in storage capacity, and when stored properly that could last a hundred year. While being cheap to produce.
>I still don’t actually use our DVDs and Blu-rays all that often. But every time I see them lining the shelves, I feel a bit of comfort. Because when I do need them, they’ll be there. The importance of that type of redundancy depends on the viewing habits of a particular person. In the case of my friend, the "don’t actually use our DVDs all that often" really was "never re-watched the DVDs she owned" . She had a DVD…
I'd rip them and put them on new hard disks from time to time. AFAIK, that's the best long-term storage strategy for most people.