Has anybody here thrown out their physical media? - eviltoast

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a binder with the cover art stored in folders, but it seems like a gigantic waste of money to buy a storage system for outdated standard definition media, when most studios have remastered editions readily available.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

  • Santa_in_a_Panzer@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    Kept the discs, tossed the cases. You can fit a lot of discs in a sleeve book and they make convenient backups.

  • Boogertwilliams@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    I did throw out boxes and put them all in a folder. Saved tons of space. Simply could not keep them all like they were

  • Celcius_87@alien.topB
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    10 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…

  • Hatta00@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    I have two boxes of burned CDRs, that I’ve replaced with better rips. Remember DiVX? Fit a 90 minute movie on a 700MB disc with obvious artifacting even at SD resolutions. Still can’t bring myself to get rid of them.

    Checked a few of them a couple years ago and they all still worked. Taiyo Yuden made good stuff.

  • bobj33@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    I kept all my CD’s from the 90’s that have sentimental value because those are my high school and college years. I used to look at the band photos and lyrics in the liner notes all the time

    Since 2000 I’ve been ripping CDs the moment I buy them and look the liner notes once and then it goes in the closet. I sold or donated almost all of those unless it was from a band I liked from the 90’s or some kind of collector’s edition

    Same for DVDs. I ripped them all and kept about 10%

    Same for my National Geographic magazines. I kept about 10 and I have the entire collection on my computer back to 1888

  • DarkReaper90@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    I never understood people that say physical media takes too much space. It’s literally a binder or two.

    Chuck the boxes, keep the sleeves.

  • CrispyBegs@alien.topB
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    10 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.

  • m0rfiend@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    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)

  • michrech@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    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. :)

  • grislyfind@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    I purged hundreds of DVDs when I moved, movies and series I was confident I’d never rewatch, or that would be easy to find on Blu-Ray.

    I still occasionally buy used DVDs, mainly foreign films and series, and mountain bike or fmx videos.

    I need to do the same with my CDs. And make backups of the rare ones in case of disc rot. Vinyl likewise; but those won’t be given away.

  • armacitis@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    I never got much to begin with so it isn’t really a problem to hold on to most of it.

  • Sopel97@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    I assume hard drives are not considered “physical” for some reason?

  • iamtherepairman@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    Hard drives fail in a few years. Factory printed dvd blue rays and burned M disc dont fail, right? So, you just by new and larger hard drives every 10 years?