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a binder with the cover art stored in folders, but it seems like a gigantic waste of money to buy a storage system for outdated standard definition media, when most studios have remastered editions readily available.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’ve got a similar situation. In an apartment with limited storage and just want to eliminate the storage I have. My main suggestion - double backup everything you want to keep. I’ve already lost one backup early on but luckily had a backup to that.
Regret will happen - it did when I got rid of some CDs. But the relief of having the extra free space more than makes up for that.
The 80’s 12” singles I have are all transferred to digital with multiple backups. I have an 80’s music show ready for syndication so I can’t lose that (I kept the 600 or so 12” singles).
But then there’s the 350 “blank” VHS tapes loaded with network TV shows from the mid-80’s to the mid-00’s. They’re bulky, heavy & take up 6 big storage bins - so they need to go. Many have never aired beyond the original airing, never been released in any format (including streaming) and most can’t even be found on YouTube. It’s not lost media, it’s more like next-to-impossible to find currently unreleased media. I’ve spent time over the last few months transferring my favorites to digital. That will be double backed up. Fun times lol.
I’ve been getting rid of my physical media too. I still have my UHD movies but I don’t even watch them…
I keep my physical discs. I do however throw out the cases and put the discs themselves into a 400 disc binder. They take up a lot less space and then I can bring them with if I go someplace without Internet or pull them out if my Plex server crashes and I can’t be bothered to fix it.
Still got some but I only have a couple dozen.
I quit buying physical media many years ago.
Just not any point, It’s never more convenient to carry around a physical book to read when I already have a tablet that has hundreds.
I’m never going to want to have to physically find and insert a dvd or bluray just to sit through previews and warnings that I’m only subject to because I dared pay $20 for a physical disc.
Plus they’re impractical for the same reasons as physical books.
I can watch pretty much any movie on my phone now from practically anywhere.
The only thing I think you might regret and realistically this is only a concern for older releases as this is pretty much completely not a thing anymore is the disc bonus features. Most modern stuff just flat doesn’t have anything extra but used to you could get director’s commentary and deleted scenes and stuff on the disc, things that online releases don’t often include.
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)
Only beta and VHS tapes, except for those that were never released on anything else.
Yeah like 10 years ago
Kept the discs, tossed the cases. You can fit a lot of discs in a sleeve book and they make convenient backups.
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.
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.
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. :)
Thrown out? I don’t understand. What does that mean?
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.
buy a couple of cheap plastic totes after christmas to put all the physical media in and store it. you will never get much selling physical media (with the exception of a few titles). and rebuilding the collection years from now will not be easy or cheap (since most of yours will be oop in 10-20 years)