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a binder with the cover art stored in folders, but it seems like a gigantic waste of money to buy a storage system for outdated standard definition media, when most studios have remastered editions readily available.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.
You must log in or register to comment.
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.
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.
This post is an automated archive from a submission made on /r/DataHoarder, powered by Fediverser software running on alien.top. Responses to this submission will not be seen by the original author until they claim ownership of their alien.top account. Please consider reaching out to them let them know about this post and help them migrate to Lemmy.
Lemmy users: you are still very much encouraged to participate in the discussion. There are still many other subscribers on !datahoarder@selfhosted.forum that can benefit from your contribution and join in the conversation.
Reddit users: you can also join the fediverse right away by getting by visiting https://portal.alien.top. If you are looking for a Reddit alternative made for and by an independent community, check out Fediverser.
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.
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.
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 assume hard drives are not considered “physical” for some reason?
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 gave away most of my DVDs to a couple who live on a mountain with no internets, I gave away most of my CDs to a music hoarder.
I found myself in a loop where I’d rip all of my physical media, then rarely consume any of it, then some new format would come out, I’d get larger drives and re-rip everything, and rarely consume it. I had to break the cycle.
Implying there was physical media to begin with. yarrrr lol but for real im debating it. I have 4 boxes of dvd’s in the closet I havent touched since 2 house moves ago and I dont even have an optical drive in house at the moment (this moment has been since 2020 when I pulled a bluray drive out of my tower to make room for a 8x 2.5 drive dock for another raid)
MY GF has the same problem. Huge physical media collection, tiny living space. She was on the verge of throwing it out/ donating it after I set up an Emby server for her, but managed to reach a compromise instead. Disc binders.
While still taking up space, they are much smaller than normal DVD cases and you still have them for backup.
I’ve gone so far that I’m scanning my books. Almost done. DVD’s have been gone for years.
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.
Buy > Rip > Donate to thrift store. This way I can make someone else happy.