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a binder with the cover art stored in folders, but it seems like a gigantic waste of money to buy a storage system for outdated standard definition media, when most studios have remastered editions readily available.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

  • NemoJones@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’ve gone so far that I’m scanning my books. Almost done. DVD’s have been gone for years.

  • grislyfind@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year 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.

  • Jimmy_the_Heater@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • DarkReaper90@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year 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.

  • Celcius_87@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

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

  • m0rfiend@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year 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)

  • Tha_Watcher@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I don’t throw out anything. I keep physical and digital media. Of course, I have a lot of rooms to store it.

  • armacitis@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

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

  • _King_pin_@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I moved back in April to a much smaller place. I am having a hard time parting with over 2500 Blurays and 4k’s. On top of that thousands more of “collector” Steelbooks and custom sets from places like Nova, FilmArena, HDZeta, Manta Lab etc.

    I used to have a spare bedroom dedicated to movie stuff with all my media on Billy Bookshelves and special editions and movie parapharnelia shelved and on display. Now it’s all in boxes.
    I have it all ripped 1:1 on my Media server plus backups but can’t get myself to rid of the physical media.

  • xeonrage@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    i’m moved from video (dvd/blu/4kblu) to vinyl as my financial disaster hobby

    will be selling off my large collection of movies early in the new year, including a large criterion collection mostly unopened

  • stowgood@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I never really like rewatching stuff so I never really had a collection, sold all my cds for pennies a decade ago.