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a binder with the cover art stored in folders, but it seems like a gigantic waste of money to buy a storage system for outdated standard definition media, when most studios have remastered editions readily available.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.

  • fediverserEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

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  • igmyeonguiBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Buy > Rip > Donate to thrift store. This way I can make someone else happy.

  • jakuri69BEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    My shelves are full of anime figurines. I don’t have space to store DVDs.

  • Mountainking7BEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    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.

  • momasfBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    I threw away my DVDs years back. With >1200 physical books in my 650sq ft apartment, I’m thinking of getting rid of some genre paperbacks, and replacing them with electronic versions. I’ve got a ton of collectible hardbacks, which I’ll keep forever.

  • CrispyBegsBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    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.

  • Celcius_87BEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

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

  • FizzicalLayerBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Never throw away physical media. If space is a problem, remove disks from cases and store on spindles (the packages that CD-R blanks come in are ideal).

    Most people run a compression pass on media rips (handbrake) to make storage feasible with today’s disks and budgets. The day is rapidly approaching when hard disks will be large enough and cheap enough to store bit exact copies of your media. You’ll want to rerip then, and having the media will make that possible.

    Physical media serves as long term stable backup. It should be part of your backup plan, just like multiple physical backup disks sets, offsite storage, cloud storage, etc.

    If space is an issue, there are easy solutions. Disks do not have to be in cases, and they’re too useful to part with.

  • michaelmalakBEnglish
    1·
    11 months 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.