You have to know where to look assuming you have working optics.
finley@lemm.ee 2 months ago
i can’t even remember the last time i saw an optical disc. it must be several years.
GasMeterCrasher@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
finley@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I also don’t care to look
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
same here. the last optical drive i had was used to rip my girlfriends dvd collection about 12 years ago. all still here on hunks of spinning rust if needed, but the space consuming load of dvds went to the flea market.
lemmyvore@feddit.nl 2 months ago
They’re a very common form of personal backup. A few discs and an USB writer and you get a very long lasting medium for passwords, personal files, family photos etc.
Can also archive multimedia of course, the smallest discs are 25 GB and can pack a few films, a season of a series, or a lot of music.
finley@lemm.ee 2 months ago
i guess, but they’re not great for backup. Eps. R/RW optical media doesn’t last that long (5-10 years) and is easily damaged. You’d be better off with tape for long-term storage. or an M-Disk or some similar magnetic backup solution.
lemmyvore@feddit.nl 2 months ago
optical media doesn’t last that long (5-10 years) and is easily damaged
I beg to differ. I’ve been backing things up to optical for 25 years now with minimal issues. CDs could be easily scratched but it hasn’t been the case for DVD and BR.
M-DISK uses in-organic substances that make the discs mostly immune to exposure but it’s a more recent invention. Proper storage and handling still goes a long way towards protecting discs even if they’re not in-organic.
Majestic@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
M-Discs had merit in the DVD era. It’s a common refrain of those who don’t know better to claim they mean anything in the Blu-ray era. They don’t.
Standard Blu-ray Discs have all the technologies that supposedly make m-discs so long lasting and as far as media that isn’t continuously updated and hashed from live storage medium to live storage medium (cold, archival storage unpowered) they are about as good as you’ll get.
They are much tougher than DVDs. Of course a variety of things go into how long a disc remains readable and without damage to data including luck with regards to no impurities in the batch. Even m-disc themselves based their longest claims off storage in ideal situations like an inactive salt mine (commonly used for archives by governments). Kept out of sun, away from extreme heat (including baking in uninsulated 120 degree F heat all summer year after year), away from high humidity and away from UV exposure to the data side of the disc as well as scratches and such and they should last a quarter to half a century, some more.
TGTX@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Politely disagree. M-disc for BD-Rs are still absolutely worth the money if you want to properly archive something. You have to be careful with normal BD-Rs because there are two different types of recording material: High to Low and Low to High (LTH). You want to stay away from BD-R LTH discs as their longevity isn’t as good as the High to Low discs.
finley@lemm.ee 2 months ago
That all sounds like it’s still terrible idea to use optical media for backups
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Found a small part of the problem.
Physical media is dying because the majority of people think just as short sighted as businesses do. Businesses think in short term thoughts like quarters. They do so because investers want immediate return.
But why would you as a person not want physical media??? I literally bought a George Carlin dvd of one of his HBO specials 2 days ago. It was traded into a local resale shop as “used”. It was brand new, because even though the plastic wrap was gone, the adhesive label at the top was still unbroken. Brand new dvd. $3.
knotthatone@lemmy.one 2 months ago
Most people don’t know how to switch between inputs on their TVs or have gotten rid of their DVD or BluRay players at this point.
They’re using the built in streaming apps or they’ve plugged a Roku in where the cable box used to go.
discount_door_garlic@lemmy.world 2 months ago
dont know why youre being downvoted, this is completely true. The majority of people favour the convenience that streaming has represented, and TVs have been designed to turn on showing a shiny netflix icon instead of “Composite II” for like a decade now.
Yes, while consumers have been sold a double-edged sword/lie - the streaming companies were obviously never going to market their platforms by saying “one downside of streaming is we can take away content whenever we like”.
The average person with a bluray collection is going to be much more aware of the pros and cons of the formats - I’d be willing to guess most peoples family “collections” are still on DVD.
Murdoc@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I’d guess that the down votes weren’t because it wasn’t true, but rather simply that the fact made them unhappy. Not the best use of down votes, but understandable.
Macros@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
With very little initial work, physical media is also very convenient.
I buy a disk, put it into a specific drive, get a instant message when its ripped, check its name and put it into a folder. From there my mediabox converts it to a managable size and adds it to the collection.
Whin I turn on my TV I see all these Movies and shows neatly presented by Kodi. I have a tiny Wireless keyboard and can start any in under a second. No buffering, no adds, no matter if the router is connected, and no fear of ever loosing access.
Its great.
Exeptions are there of couse, I would love to buy The Orville, but they just don’t want my money!
finley@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I don’t want physical media because it’s a liability. It can get lost or destroyed very very easily, especially optical media.
Digital copies are portable, I can date to hold them, and, worst case, I can just re-download it.
nickhammes@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s very easy to make digital copies of physical media. The resulting copy is likely to be as high quality as you can find, and as portable as any digital copy can be. Pop it in a folder and point Jellyfin at it, and it’s available anywhere.
It’s also the easiest legal way to get a good digital copy.
finley@lemm.ee 2 months ago
And why on earth would I pay for media when I can get it for free?
My Plex server is packed with downloads and rips.
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
For me, digital media takes up more space. It’s a good thing and a bad thing. It takes up more space which means I need to have more space, but it’s also cool having the boxes and box art etc. Ultimately, as long as I own my media and it’s physically accessible to me (like located on my hard drive), then I am happy with that ownership and don’t have to worry about it being taken away from me.
doodledup@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Blu-rays do not actually take up this much space: On a 1TB drive you can store about 10-12 4K movies. You need a backup and you need a second drive for your Raid setup. This takes up quiet a lot of space too.
Besides that: storing the movies on a Raid system is a lot more expensive. If I’d rip all of my blu-rays to a digital copy, I’d need like 12 TB of storage. In a raid setup with backup, that’s quiet expensive!
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
I mean, with one computer with multiple 22TB drives, you can hundreds or thousands of Blu-rays. To have that amount of physical Blu-rays, you would need a massive shelf - or more likely, multiple massive shelves.
True, RAID is more expensive, but it also ensures your data will keep working reliably - and it’s much harder to lose than a small disc.
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Modern hard drives come in 20 TB or larger. 4K movies don’t need to be anywhere near that big either with modern compression technology.
Murdoc@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Which has its own downside, that being the up-front cost.