My local library has Monte Python and the quest for the Holy Grail, and the first season of the Simpsons.

What’s more, DVD-RW drives for a desktop PC can be had for under $10 and USB-powered ones aren’t much more. If anyone out there in TV land still relies on DVDs, you should get yourself a drive and rip your local library’s DVDs to your computer. Handbrake is your friend and you can get a DVD down to a video stream with a much smaller file size than the disc image, but you can also still get blank DVDs at any major retailer and make your own copies with all the menus and special features. DVD still works, but it’s 30-year-old technology and paying other people to watch the movies on that format is getting ridiculous, you owe it to yourself to keep DVD expenses to the drive and blank discs from here on out.

Disclaimer for the people who will whine about it: Yes, this copyright infringement. Don’t snitch on yourself and you’ll be fine. I personally recommend and fully endorse violation of copyright law in this way. I advocate that you commit this criminal activity in full knowledge that this makes me an accessory to crime, and I advocate that you commit this crime and others. I do so with the full approval of the MPA and RIAA, whom I unequivocally represent and speak for in absolutely all matters, and they assume all civil and criminal liability for everything I just said.

This is a great suggestion!

Supporting your local library is always a pro move

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My bluray drive flashed with LibreDrive can’t burn BD-Rs, at all. Maybe a coincidence with LibreDrive, but it sucks :(

If the keys to remove the DRM aren’t available, I’ll just torrent the BDMV.

If you have the right model of blu ray drive you could patch the firmware with libredrive so you could decrypt the keys yourself. I set up my LG drive with it in like 10 min.

And finally there’s Best Buy.

My local Best Buy actually got rid of the DVD and CD section. That made me realize I needed to get serious about converting my physical media to digital. I’m still building my Plex library.

Yes, I know about Jellyfin and Emby. If I’d heard about them first, I’d probably be using one of them. Plex was the first one I tried, and it works great for me.

Because tons of media that was never properly digitized for the streaming era and only ever ended up on discs.

Doing it now will prevent a loss of history, much like early BBC recordings are lost because they would just tape over old broadcasts to save money.

For example, there was recently unearthed a single episode of a sketch comedy show made by Graham Chapman and Douglas Adams.

Problem was, the tape it was on was from the formats before VHS and Betamax. While the tape existed, no players to play back the tape existed anymore. It took a several year effort to build a new player from scratch. Finally, after all that, they were able to record the show to digital media and now it lives on YouTube for people to see. It’s not the funniest material ever produced by either man, but it’s definitely a piece of history worth looking at if you’ve ever enjoyed Monty Python or The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Attempts to digitize things that are currently available on disc but not available in digital file formats/streaming is absolutely a process of maintaining historical documents that would otherwise be lost to time. Building a new DVD or Bluray player from scratch when none exist anymore is a much bigger effort than making a tape video player, because it involves proprietary codecs, compression, and DRM.

Cuz I’m sick of not really owning my media. I have to hope the streaming company stays around, doesn’t magically lose records or my purchase, etc.

In Japan, a large part of the digital manga/anime/videogames are still being released only on CDs/DVDs, no online access.

I sadly see a lot of doom and gloom on the horizon when it comes to streaming services as a whole. Prices will increase, Ads will become common place and limitations on how and when you view your content (Hardware exclusivity for example).

Additionally, as others mentioned some media will just be lost to the ages. Many movies and shows will likely never come to a streaming service and are lost to time. Kevin Smiths Dogma for example will likely never come to a streaming service.

Archiving and backing up a DVD, Blu Ray or UHD can be very valuable to a user even today. I run a personal JellyFin with over 1000 movie titles. Having instant access to a library like this can not compare to any streaming service in size or quality and it has zero subscription fees.

But each to their own.

You’re not necessarily wrong, but you are unbearable.

Just because a technology has been eclipsed, it doesn’t mean it no longer has value.

Optical media is really the best choice for data archival. Magnetic media is far more subject to big rot. High quality CDs, DVDs and to a lesser extent Blu-ray Discs can last an order of magnitude longer.

Because not everyone has gigabit fiber run to their door. Streaming is not always the answer. I have read through all the back and forth here, but this is the point that was lost in the conversation. While it may be obsolete to you, it’s still the easiest way to transfer large amounts of data to someone that might not have any internet other than their cell phone service.