Data Hoarder

My shelves are full of anime figurines. I don't have space to store DVDs.

I figure my DVDs and CDs don't take much room. I have a few Case-Logic binders that hold about 400 discs each. They're about the size of a medium-sized 3-ring binder.

I am defo considering selling my DVDs and probably blurays after ripping them. I can play them on the PS4 but since I'm putting everything on Plex now, playing physical is just extra steps.

Personally I keep all my stuff. If the file gets lost or damaged I don't need another copy, I can just grab mine and rescan it. Plus DVDs play in almost all of my machines (I installed a DVD drive in most of them) so there's that.

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)

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.

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.

Only beta and VHS tapes, except for those that were never released on anything else.

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.

I dumped all my CD-Rs and DVD-Rs ages ago as we don’t have a physical player any more, not including game consoles.

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.

Me i still buy VHS/DVD/Bluray. Some movies on vhs i have never got dvd or bluray releases. Others like the first Mortal Kombat, has different french dub (different voice actors and dialogue) and different background music on both dvd and bluray compared to vhs. The movie The Mask, on vhs as i recall has some scenes which are a few seconds longer and one small scene at the start absent from the dvd and bluray releases. Bluray doesn't have the french dub. So for some movies i have both vhs/dvd or vhs/bluray depending on the dub (if french dub is absent or altered).

For games i thrift a lot so i still massively purchase cd-roms & dvd-roms for pc. Since 2017 i bought like two hundred pc games. I automatically archive the discs and then proceed to use them to play.

I of course buy physical for consoles too and my video game shop of choice has 10 games for 30$CAD; systems included are PS2/PS3/PS4/XBOX/XBOX360/XBOX ONE. More common games and those which they have too many copies are part of the bargain. I got the dead space trilogy and crysis trilogy for xbox 360 that way. I buy games for all consoles except gb/gbc since buying high quality carts and flashing them is cheaper than the originals and you get FRAM instead of SRAM for your saves which makes them last up to 40 years. I don't buy nes/snes/genesis games anymore but once i acquire soldering skills i will buy again and change the SRAM chips for FRAM to have durable saves.

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.

I would never do this, personally. But it depends on the collection - mine consists almost entirely of 3D movies... most are out of print and many are now quite rare. If it's a bunch of easy-to-find titles then that's a different story

Buy > rip > give to me

Do you have a system of backups for your digital library? For example at minimum do you have a physical backup of the data on drives not connected to your main computer AND an offsite backup (cloud storage or storing backed up physical media offsite)?

If not then you’re risking losing your entire library to one power spike caused by a nearby lightning strike or any other number of random events such as malfunctioning drives… etc.

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.