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My husband was right about DVDs

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Re: My husband was right about DVDs

#311
I've started browsing second hand blue rays and picking up some every week. Lots of special editions and other extra material you don't get on streaming and tons of movies I can not even find on either Netflix, HBO or Prime.

Re: My husband was right about DVDs

#312
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes, Writable DVDs/CDs are not permanent, far from it! The dyes in writable DVDs degrades over time. If your storage requirements are more than a couple of years you might have already experienced some pretty major data losses.

> Yikes, Writable DVDs/CDs are not permanent, far from it! The dyes in writable DVDs degrades over time. They do degrade, but a "couple of years" is pessimistic. My earliest CD-Rs are from 1994 and they're still good.

CD-Rs will last longer than DVDs because the pits being written are larger. Further, audio can experience more degradation without perceptible impact.

I've had DVD-Rs fail in 2 years.

The type of DVD matters, of course. Here's a handy guide:

https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-institute/services/con...

Re: My husband was right about DVDs

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pirate bay is that backup option, at least for me. To use your example of the X-Files, you can currently download a 75 GB torrent with every season + extras and it will only take a few hours. I think people continue seeding torrents for longer than DVDs reliably last.

I've never understood the appeal of downloading pirate movies. Feels dodgy, always a hassle trying to fight your way through all the scams and malware and porn and when you get the movie it's of questionable quality. If I buy a DVD then I get perfect quality in a nice case in a day or two without having to visit the seedy red light district of the Internet only to get dud contraband.

The only reason you see scams, malware and porn is because you don't have an adblocker. Install uBlock Origin. It's mandatory not just for pirating, but even for normal browsing.

It does take a but of time to spot fakes, and you need to give the community time to aggregate good content and weed out the fakes, but it's definitely not the experience you describe. It sounds like you last tried a decade or two ago.

Re: My husband was right about DVDs

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pirate bay is that backup option, at least for me. To use your example of the X-Files, you can currently download a 75 GB torrent with every season + extras and it will only take a few hours. I think people continue seeding torrents for longer than DVDs reliably last.

I've never understood the appeal of downloading pirate movies. Feels dodgy, always a hassle trying to fight your way through all the scams and malware and porn and when you get the movie it's of questionable quality. If I buy a DVD then I get perfect quality in a nice case in a day or two without having to visit the seedy red light district of the Internet only to get dud contraband.

>I've never understood the appeal of downloading pirate movies.

Oh, that's easy! You want to see , so you search for " 1080p" (or better) and after a few minutes you have it on your PC and can watch it 1,000 of times if you want; even when offline (!). It's also free. This is why people like pirate movies.

>in a day or two ...

LOL

Re: My husband was right about DVDs

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One added bonus of having a limited selection to pick from was the quicker decision making time. With thousands of options via streaming services some of us become paralysed by choice!

I keep a list of media that I have heard enough good things about in my notes app to prevent this.

great idea!

I think I'll make a reminder list so I can just get siri to add them as I hear about them.

I have a terrible memory but a large ego that doesn't let me admit it so I often forget about recommendations.

Re: My husband was right about DVDs

#316

I wish this article had mentioned the greatest thing about DVDs: You can lend them. Have a friend over and find out they have never seen before?! No need to quick search and figure out if it's on a streaming service they have, just walk over and snatch it off your shelf and hand it to them. In the 00s the trade in media lending was so brisk my friends and I would keep spreadsheets and little databases of who-borrowed…

I need some automated streaming-service ripper that will burn DVDs whenever I pop in a blank disk. And maybe generate nice sticker label PDFs from some intermediate scene with the title.

Consider instead: a Plex library backed by a “disk drive” that’s actually a DVD/Blu-Ray jukebox. You can fish the disks out if you really want, but most of the time they’re just “online” as part of your library. Buy a new one? Feed it to the jukebox. Ideally, rip one “into the library” and the jukebox will consume a blank disk to burn it, then file it.

(AFAIK, this last bit is how Amazon Glacier works—just with some online disk drives in between to buffer content up into Blu-Ray-sized chunks.)

Re: My husband was right about DVDs

#317

I wish this article had mentioned the greatest thing about DVDs: You can lend them. Have a friend over and find out they have never seen before?! No need to quick search and figure out if it's on a streaming service they have, just walk over and snatch it off your shelf and hand it to them. In the 00s the trade in media lending was so brisk my friends and I would keep spreadsheets and little databases of who-borrowed…

In this day and age and that day and age, I’ve had friends offer me ripped DVDs or nowadays a single thumb drive with their entire former DVD collection and then some.

Re: My husband was right about DVDs

#318

I wish this article had mentioned the greatest thing about DVDs: You can lend them. Have a friend over and find out they have never seen before?! No need to quick search and figure out if it's on a streaming service they have, just walk over and snatch it off your shelf and hand it to them. In the 00s the trade in media lending was so brisk my friends and I would keep spreadsheets and little databases of who-borrowed…

I lent almost none of my DVDs and VHS tapes(!) back in the day because the fact of the matter is /people never gave them back/. Not even good friends.

It's one of those lessons I learned early in life. If you're going to lend something to someone, do so with the expectation you're never getting it back.

Re: My husband was right about DVDs

#319
post #266
post #19

>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…

This is why I don't have a DVD/BD player and only use streaming services. I almost never watch the same movie more than once.

Same type. It's urgggg feeling to re-watch a movie. I can say that I never, but I don't remember exactly so almost never is accurate.

Re: My husband was right about DVDs

#320

I wish this article had mentioned the greatest thing about DVDs: You can lend them. Have a friend over and find out they have never seen before?! No need to quick search and figure out if it's on a streaming service they have, just walk over and snatch it off your shelf and hand it to them. In the 00s the trade in media lending was so brisk my friends and I would keep spreadsheets and little databases of who-borrowed…

This is also true of DRM-free files on thumbdrives. More of my friends have devices with USB ports that can run VLC than optical drives these days (not to mention the whole zone thing, which is quickly a pain when you're a movie nerd)... thankfully generating a DRM-free file from a DVD is trivial.

- signed, someone who also owns lots of CDs and DVDs, mostly old non US-produced things that are close to unfindable on streaming services :)

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