Archiving DVDs

[Lily]

So I’m going through and Marie Kondo’ing my house and I have to say that shelves full of DVDs aren’t sparking joy in me.

I’ve ripped a few DVDs in the past just for casual play on my laptop. I used Handbrake and just left all the settings to default. However, I’m thinking if I’m packing all these DVDs away, do I really want to save just the episodes, or take a full ISO to get all the extras and menus and stuff.

Has anyone done this and if so what did you do?

Thanks muchly.

Topic

[(deleted)]

Take the boxes to the tip, put the discs in the large capacity wallets. You could lose years of your life ripping ISOs. It’s not the disc that eats the space, it’s everything else.

Oh, and sell anything that’s retained or gained value. While you can.

[si]

While you can.

Sounds ominous.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I ripped my entire DVD collection a few years ago. Didn’t bother with the ISO. Takes bloody ages as it is, let alone pulling an entire copy of the disc. I stuck everything in iTunes and now sync via Plex, you won’t miss menus.

Extras you could rip separately if you wanted but for the most part I don’t miss them. The stuff I would like extras for I kept the DVDs, such as the Red Dwarf ones. I kept all the DVDs I wouldn’t want to live without and ripped everything else.

Darrell’s idea is good if you want to save time, keep the discs and ditch the boxes. But I wanted everything digitised for easy access on multiple devices.

It is also worth seeing how much you can get for what you have. Most probably won’t be worth anything, but you’ll probably have the odd set that’s worth enough to be worth going to the effort of selling.

[si]

I’ve still got VHSes I won’t throw away. And the mere thought of people throwing away DVD sleeves repulses me.

This is probably why I have no space/friends.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I’ve got all my Red Dwarf VHS and I think maybe 1 or 2 others that haven’t been released on DVD. But I don’t have a VCR so that’s a bit pointless

That said I have a tonne of vinyl and not had a deck in about 10 years

[Lily]

Despite the ominous undertones of Darrell’s “while you can”, that is actually why I’m looking at doing this now. I’ve been buying the DVDs of Doctor Who and have most of Drs.1 & 2 now. Just these alone are taking two shelves and I’m thinking I’m really not invested enough to keep these long term. With the blu-rays slowly coming out, the market for the dvds is going to tank. These are already 2nd or even 3rd hand, so I’ll only be breaking even if I’m lucky.

Just been having a look at Plex and I’m not sure my TV is smart enough. I guess I could get a chromecast? I’ve already got an amazon stick thing plugged in it.

[(deleted)]

Most DVDs have become like CDs, books and VHS now – virtually impossible to resell unless they’re long deleted, particularly sought after or scarce. CeX and MusicMagpie are pretty much full to capacity. 1p is the going rate now. Even games are starting to lose their ability to retain their value – stuff like first-party Nintendo games used to retain about 90% of their cover price for years and years. It’s the trade-in economy, it’s gone completely bust and brought everything down with it. Also other boom-and-bust failure stories like 3D, steelbooks etc, UHD is already stumbling, and newly-pressed vinyl won’t be far behind it. Nothing keeps its cover price anymore, so why not embrace this by treating it more roughly and doing what the hell you want with it. No-one’s paying you to ‘archive’ this stuff, it’s just disposable viewing copies that may well perish before you do anyway.

I’ve got about 3000 discs and still love and buy them (admittedly now more in the stockpiling sense), but have to acknowledge that 99% of them are worthless now, so I’m not bothered about the packaging. I do keep the sleeves and any nice booklets, but that’s mainly so I can rebox and pass any films onto charity shops or friends if I upgrade to Bluray (which I do still keep in their boxes at present but only because too many films are unrecognisable from their disc face alone). I bought a BR player in 2013 and back then it was still possible to get a few quid back for most films on DVD, particularly things like Disney. Unthinkable now. Weird times, but oddly cleansing ones.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

You’ll get the Plex app on the Amazon Stick I’m sure.

And yeah, you’ll really only get money for out of print DVDs or box sets of things that are somewhat rare for whatever reason, or if they are relatively new because CEX will want to be able to sell them only just under RRP and willing to pay a bit for them as so few people will be wanting to part with them just yet.

I got quite a bit for my Doctor Who 50th anniversary set of all the regeneration stories within about 12 months of buying it because of that. Might have even broken even.

[(deleted)]

Also, unlike VHS, the vast majority of DVD titles have stayed consistently in print since release, some for up to 15 or even 20 years. Obviously there are plenty of exceptions, but most UK DVD titles ever released are still available affordably.

I do think there’ll be an availability crunch somewhere down the line, when a lot of people have dumped their collections into landfill and new releases have dried up – DVD will definitely become the vinyl of video for future generations though. Guaranteed.

[Moonlight]

If you have the space to spare, make sure to set up Handbrake to convert at a quality that won’t leave you with something that looks worse than streaming. Especially make sure you set the framerate to constant and “Same as Source” so no fuckery goes on that department.

[Plastic Percy]

I’ve got the complete run of Doctor Who DVD releases and I won’t be buying the blu-ray sets. To be honest, there’s a lot of fans out there thinking we’ll get all 26 seasons… but I really can’t see the BBC doing that, especially for stuff like Patrick Troughton’s first season where most of it’s missing. The general public aren’t really going to hand over £40+ for some recons, one or two animations and a handful of orphan episodes – the earliest surviving episode of his is, I believe, the second episode of his third story. Likewise, I can’t see the fans rushing out to buy the first seasons of either Colin Baker or Sylvester McCoy.

[Author]

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