Has anybody here thrown out their physical media?
Has anybody here thrown out their physical media?
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a binder with the cover art stored in folders, but it seems like a gigantic waste of money to buy a storage system for outdated standard definition media, when most studios have remastered editions readily available.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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I think this is a problem many people have, buying stuff for the sake of it without actually being interested in it. You have to plan for a physical library, it will take space and if you live in a small apartment you will need to make compromises or completely change the way you store your discs. If you stack the boxes on top of each other that would be the most efficient use of space. Then you can have 1000 movies and shows stacked in a 25x15cm area with the discs in a spindle or two.
But to answer your post, don't fall into the digital trap. If you have physical media and the means to store it do so. Otherwise downsize your library and keep what you can since you've ripped a lot of it. The question becomes, do you buy a $200 8TB drive or a $200 shelf as a showpiece? If you can guarantee your data is safe then sell after ripping. Otherwise the only way you can guarantee you have access to your favourite shows in future is if you take actions to do so. Like owning a physical library.
Look at what just happened to Sony. They had a deal with the discovery network and after discovery merged with their new parent company they revoked Sony's rights to license and sell their shows meaning everyone who purchased discovery shows like Mythbusters through the PS Store has now lost access to it without compensation. The same thing happened to the Nintendo DS and will happen to the 3DS next year. The closure of all communications to Nintendo's servers so if you bought the digital versions you are fucked and will have to resort to homebrew to reclaim what was once yours.
Which is why even before they stopped digital transactions I had already dumped all my Pokemon carts and updates including saves. So even if my 2DS XL breaks in future I still have access to roms of my physical cartridges with Citra as an alternative to a console if I can't ever find another second hand.
In a digital world full of greedy and monopolistic companies, only You can guarantee your rights of ownership and access.