probably the same reason I refused to leg it go.
I actually own it, control it, and can use it at my wimsy.
vs streaming, which I could buy it and still have it taken away from me cause you never own anything when its streaming/digital download.
Its not just DVDs. I switched to all local mp3s for music and i get a lot of them by scoring cds from second hand stores.
This has been the biggest and dumbest take I’ve seen come from the GenZ/GenA crowd. Polaroids were a big hit a few years ago and I can’t help but wince at this stuff. Yeah it’s cute or whatever to hold it in your hand, but in 1, 5, 10, 30 years…when that photo or DVD is bent/scratched/lost, you’ll be kicking yourself in the ass for even bothering with it.
Just pirate your content, take photos with your $1000 phones and print the photos out, and learn to backup your own shit. Buy a 2 bay NAS and backup your shit to it. And then backup your NAS to a cloud like backblaze.
My dad has been doing this since the early 2000s. We have our family photos AND videos from 1990-2026 all backed up on a NAS, which syncs to backblaze. ~600GBs of data. And the cloud backup on backblaze is $7.25 a month for that data.
Literally anyone can go buy a a $200 2-bay NAS, then grab two 1TB hard drives for $40 each. $280 for a NAS that will last you YEARS. And then figure out whatever service you want to backup to for a cloud backup.
While I agree with the general idea, your example prices are no longer valid since storage costs are now through the roof. The best defense of kids using DVDs is that you can borrow them from the library for free.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00519B0UO
https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-DH2300-2-Bay-Capacity-Diskless/dp/B0FNWHSPXF
Please at least Google something before talking out of your ass
There is a bit of a romantic feeling in only having a physical copy of a photo though, and Polaroids are the easiest ones to do this with.
backup your NAS to a cloud like backblaze.
Are you encrypting your data before it goes to Backblaze? And if so, are you also testing those encrypted backups?
Yes, and yes. I’m running TrueNAS and I test a restore once a quarter or so, worst case once every 6 months.
I haven’t had to do a full restore…so that’ll be the true test, but I do have a sister TrueNAS at an off-site location for off-site backups. I went simple with this off-site one and just use Tailscale and Syncthing.
Out of curiosity how do you test your restore? Do you just choose a file and try to recover it from backup? I have a synology NAS that I should backup but haven’t really looked into the complexities of backing it up.
I cut/paste a single file or folder, depending on my mood, out of a directory that is backed up and then do a PULL/sync through the TrueNAS GUI from Backblaze
Not sure on Synology…I’m sure there is a method though
Blu Ray is where it’s at. Give me some actual quality bitrate baby.
We are forever fucked over lots of TV shows/movies that are caged within the stream services realm :/
I think part of it might be that DVDs are easier to find used or just cheaper new. GenZ isn’t really rolling in cash and in my area for example used stores rarely if ever carry Blu-ray.
And decent resolution: DVD is forever stuck at SD (480p MPEG). While Blu-ray can be UHD (4K HEVC).
I’ve always kinda thought about implementing a software and standard for 1080p av1 on DVD. Would be neat as a project, obviously no commercial use would exist.
Either way you can get some really impressive encodes out of av1, really neat tech.
It’s both for me. Some things are either not on BluRay, too rare and expensive, or the transfer on BluRay is actually worse. And besides, any BluRay player is a dvd player too.
Anyway, any physical collecting or pirating needs to encouraged because streaming is such a stupid model now.
That’s cool I guess. I have a shelf full of switch games. And a NAS full of hundreds of movies, tv shows, audio books, music and more. I’ll take digital so long as I’m in control.
Its like going physical you get both with the right ripper
True, but then you gotta rip it and store it
Yeah because i want to own when i buy things
I’m happy to just pirate this shit.
I don’t buy band media anymore but I do go out to live shows and buy t-shirts and other merch like nobody’s business.
Record company middlemen can take a hike.
I do go out to live shows and buy t-shirts and other merch like nobody’s business.
Who doesn’t love a cool band t-shirt?
- My wife, just before she stole my band shirt
In fairness, she looks better in it
I’ve been collecting physical media for over 30 years. Started with VHS, CD’s and DVD’s back in the day. Now I’m primarily a blu ray/4k collector as the image and sound quality is closest to the filmmaker’s intentions.
It’s been hard to see physical media slow down production over the past 5 years. The biggest loss is the wealth of information from all the special features that are now considered over and above what studios are willing to pay for. It’s unfortunate that the newer generation can’t expect features on par with what Peter Jackson shared on his Lord of the Rings Extended discs. (I know there are still boutique labels putting out great discs loaded with features, but they are fewer by the year and costly.)
There are some moments in time where the world really surprises though, and it’s been a pleasant turn of events to see Gen Z embrace VHS!? The resurgence of vinyl was understandable as the sound exhibits a warmth and depth. VHS is a bit of a head-scratcher, but I can understand its nostalgic appeal. Just happy that people are enjoying physical media in any form.
I totally get it. Kids missed out on everything good.
Too bad DVDs and CDs will quit being made soon, and disc rot sets in on most discs in 20 years. Luckily mine have survived. But make backups. Although that’s why “they (the rich)” want to drive up the price of HDDs so we can’t afford it, so we are tied to their cloud systems forever.
Good luck young people !
that’s why “they (the rich)” want to drive up the price of HDDs so we can’t afford it, so we are tied to their cloud systems forever
That seems like a reach. Hanlon’s says they’re just buying HDDs for their Artificial Imbecile service.
Too bad DVDs and CDs will quit being made soon
We’re still making vinyl records. What on earth makes you think we’re going to stop making DVDs?
Vinyl has hipster vibes and false audiophile claims. CDs and DVDs dont. They won’t be profitable in a few years and then bye bye factories. Just like vhs. I’d still be buying vhs takes if they made them but they dont. Same with CRTs.
They won’t be profitable in a few years
I just don’t know where you get these claims from
Properly manufactured Audio CDs are actually quite resilient, obviously not so much to scratches but out of all my 100+ CDs (I’d say half of which are older than 25 years) only one has disc rot and that one is a pressing made by PDO who’s known for their bad pressings prone to disc rot.
I don’t really store my CDs in a special way either.
The life span of CD/DVD is not on the printed media but on the media we make/made our backups on. Of my many spindles from back in 2k (some disks are almost 25 yrs old), so far maybe 5 disks have gone partially or completely unreadable, lucky I didn’t lose much. Baring scratches or other physical damage, the printed disks will last decades where my disks have outlasted prediction
CDs were so much better for my kids than any other digital player. Especially when they couldn’t read yet. It’s much easier to choose a CD and put it into a player than opening an app to search for something.
I’ve used CDs with my kid for music, it works well for us too
And gets them away from screens!! We don’t need more screens in today’s world.
People! Try Yt-dlp, when spotify decide to make Spotify Developer available again, then yt-dlp plugin integration with spotify, still, in anna’s archive i think they will make available if not already the hundreds of TBs of metadata and songs managed to get from Spotify so media preservation and ownership will also be in the digital space
FYI, Tidal is approximately the same price as Spotify and there are several tools floating around on GitHub which will allow you to download high quality flac files from that service.
qobuz too!
3D printing your own guns
Just buy a normal fucking gun, this is America ffs there are more guns than people.
We’re not all Americans.
What are you, Swiss? Australian? Irish?
The same applies.
Planet is choked with guns. They’re everywhere and very easy to get. Absolutely no reason you need one that’s been churned out by a printer you got on Temu.
Lets also put “quitting your job” on there because thats what i see a lot of ppl not doing because they feel bad about it
Oh awesome the memes are proliferating.
If you don’t hold it, you don’t own it. Unless you take the DVD from them, you can’t remove their access to the movie stored on that disc.
That’s completely bullshit. I can’t hold any of the thousands of videos on my NAS, yet they can’t remove access to them.
You can’t hold your NAS? It actually weighs very slightly more with data on it.
DVD have already polluted and currently exist and are rotting, and need to be ripped to longer term storage, especially for media that is becoming lost and needs a custodian to host so it can be pirated online. A lot of things cannot because no one has it, but it still exists in physical form.
Technically network connected blu ray players can be updated to region lock you out of your content.
Sony had this bullshit on the ps3 which muted you playing certain sony media. Cinevia
Gross
So don’t connect them to the Internet
Yes, just being pedantic with a risk that people don’t think of.
I think the blu ray secret keys leaked so you can rip them anyways.
Normal blurays are easy to rip. The 4k ones need a drive with hacked firmware.
I prefer dedicated digital players over physical media, for instance, a FLAC player with a digital library over CDs, but I’m glad to see this trend catching up. Anything that gets people building their own collections, escaping algorithms and escaping DRM/streaming is a huge win in my book.
I’m curious as to why? CD’s are the ultimate form of audio purity, in my opinion. I’ve got a kickass stereo set-up with a CD and vinyl hook up; also a cassette, but she don’t work so good no more. I always rip my CD’s to FLAC so I can put it on my iPod.
I’m curious as to why?
Physical media scratches, rots, burns down, etc. They also require a lot of space, and you can’t have it all with you easily.
My FLAC library is got the same or better audio quality, I can backup and copy in seconds for myself or friends, I can carry everything, or just curated playlists, with the toggle of a button, and I can preserve them on any medium I find - mechanical HDs, SD cards, SSDs, etc.
Though I am very curious about vinyl…
I recently revived my record player and CD player and I’ve been enjoying three things:
- You have to think about what to listen to,
- the player is completely offline and separate from the devices you work and communicate on, so nothing will interrupt and you feel you’re doing something different, and
- it means you listen to whole albums, not mixed up playlists, so you get deeper into it.
But… those other storage mediums can also get damaged, burn, rot, etc and are also less portable (excluding the SD cards anyway).
Nothing a decent backup strategy can’t mitigate. Also less portable? Between the maybe storage available on digital audio players and using jellyfin with something like symphonium digital audio is massively more portable.
You have a point except the portability. A single USB drive is infinitely more portable than a large cd collection.
Your hard drive can be erased in many ways. And soon you wont be able to afford them or be allowed to own them.
Vinyl lasts forever. Its only damaged if you play it 😐
Your hard drive can be erased in many ways.
I’m willing to bet my main SSD, my backup HDD, my FLAC player’s SD card, and my laptop SSD all carrying the same file are going to be more durable than a piece of plastic.
They make record players that use lasers so they don’t slowly wear down the grooves
Those never worked well. They pick up every tiny bit of dust, far more than a stylus does. If you keep your stylus in good condition and change it regularly it shouldn’t harm the records.
“Ooh I wanna listen to [song], let me just…find the CD…put the CD in the tray…find the track number…skip to that track…wait for CD player to scan and start…”
FLAC is everything good about CDs minus the headache. Sure you can’t physically hold the liner notes but it’s not like that hasn’t been digitized, too!
I only listen to albums all the way through when using CDs and vinyl, so track search doesn’t matter to me. CDs are the pinnacle of digital physical media for audio. Large enough, copyable, portable, not too big to store.
But the rest still applies so in what ways are a CD better than FLAC? Flash drives take up even less space and can hold hundreds of albums. Arguably even more “portable” because disc drives aren’t common anymore
Its much less user friendly. I hate the permeation of computers in every aspect of life. When i want to listen to music, I turn on my stereo stack with turntable, 5 disc changer, and reel to reel. So relaxing. Computers have too much going on, updates, notifications, crashes, hard drives dying, blargh. I deal with that all day long. A record or CD is the fastest way to enjoyment without distraction.
I should mention I don’t really listen to music outside my home as it will never sound as good as my home speakers. Dynamic music sounds like trash in cars and headphones will never be as good as speakers for spatial recognition. I don’t even have wireless earbuds.
A decent music library would require thousands of CDs, it would be a huge hassle. Why deal with that when you can just copy all of that to one hard drive?
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Because that’s not cool.
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Because its information overload
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It has no resale value. And if that HDD dies or you die and your family doesn’t know how to use it or how to decrypt it, its useless.
I don’t consider HDDs physical media per se. No one is handing down hard drives or selling them at yard sales. I can play my great grandpas 1890 shellac records. Think a hard drive will be able to do that? Hell no.
I don’t consider HDDs physical media per se.
Ok. But I can touch mine … they very physical.
No one is handing down hard drives or selling them at yard sales
Because it’s easier to just copy the data to someone else’s drive, no need to physically hand it over. Also you can still keep the CDs after copying them to another medium.
Because its information overload
That seems more like a personal problem than a technical one.
It has no resale value. And if that HDD dies or you die and your family doesn’t know how to use it or how to decrypt it, its useless.
Have you looked at HDD prices recently? You can definitely resell them. And all data should be backup anyway so you don’t lose anything on a disc failure. And the last point can be addressed by either just not encrypting your drive or leave the proper instructions behind.
All in all those are minor inconveniences compared to dealing with thousand of CDs.
Everything you just said is a HUGE amount more work than my shelf of CDs and just taking one out and popping it in my stereo. Plus then I have the art and lyrics there. No screens.
Nothing beats physical media for simple enjoyment.
HDDs are not designed to last very long. Neither are SSDs. That’s one reason to prefer dedicated physical media.
Ssds die randomly without warning. Ask me how I know. Then worrying about all your backups, are they going to work? Are those drives failing? Its a huge headache for a real world person that doesn’t spend 24/7 talking about Linux on Lemmy.
You can still keep the CDs around for archive purposes, but to me CDs are no longer a viable option for actual media playback.
If you spend a lot of time sitting next to a CD player they’re still OK for now. For music on the move, not so much. And when the player breaks it will be hard to replace. So they’re definitely not perfect.
All your points about HDDs being physical assume you have computer knowledge to know what to do with a HDD.
There’s USB ones, but that’s what your limited to when it comes to casual users who just want it to work.
Everyone old enough knows how to handle a CD.
Even if you don’t use a USB one, you basically just put the thing in the slot and start up the machine, maybe it needs some formatting. It’s not brain surgery. Again, it still easily beats dealing with unmanageable number of CDs.
Everyone old enough knows how to handle a CD.
Actually, more and more people are too young to know how to handle CDs these days.
“Put the thing in the slot”.
Which slot? Where?
“Formatting it”
Format a drive? What’s that?
“Its nor brain surgery”.
Your assuming a tech literacy that simply doesnt exisit in the general populace.
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Can we stop publishing these articles? I was enjoying the cheap CDs.
They’re likely at the point of not just wanting to own things but not being able to afford subs. .
I’d much rather have to find space for my server than for 1000s of Blu-rays/DVDs/CDs.
I wonder why specifically DVDs… It’s not like with audio formats where the experience is almost as or even more important than the quality; Blu-Ray delivers far better quality with the same experience. If they were into Laserdisc I’d understand, but DVD?
They’re not even that much more expensive.
I haven’t read the article yet, so apologies if this is addressed.
Bluray has always been a niche product in many/most parts of the world, DVD is ubiquitous.
It pains me to say this, but people generally just do not care about the difference in picture quality between the two formats. At least not enough to pay the Bluray premium.
The equipment itself is more expensive, as are the discs. Your subjective “not even much more expensive” is very dismissive of the economic situation for huge numbers of people around the world. It’s often $3 - $4 more per disc in a retail setting, sometimes higher. And DVDs go on deep discount far more often in my experience, furthering the cost divide. And the bluray players aren’t just more expensive, they’re way more troublesome, slower, clunkier, and many/most/all require a stable internet connection (at least periodically) or you’ll be locked out of watching your discs.
The money aspect isn’t a concern for wealthier households. But, wealthier households tend to have higher adoption rates for stable, reliable, unlimited, high speed internet. They’ve largely switched to streaming only, and have little to no need for discs and players. They’ve also got many other entertainment options. They went from DVD to streaming, skipped Bluray.
Poorer households are far more likely to have no/less reliable internet, let alone unlimited data. If you don’t have internet, you will be locked out of watching at least some of your blurays. You certainly won’t be streaming, at least not regularly and reliably. That $3 - $4 difference in the price of each disc is money for gas or a loaf of bread. The $50 difference in the player is potentially a big financial blow. If you want to watch something cheap, you can find a huge selection of DVDs at the thrift store or even rent for free from the library, or you can pay a little more for the one bluray they have for sale (it’s an Adam Sandler comedy from 20 years ago where he dresses up as a woman) and does funny voices.
