Published on 12, July, 2020
I personally love DVDs! :)
I like the covers on the cases, some are really nice and there's Holo moving ones too. I have a Paddington DVD case like that ^^
I watch digital sometimes but not very much now. I find that paying for something like Netflix or Disney+ means I could have bought it on DVD dozens of times, so now I just try and buy the DVDs instead.
I have a LOT of DVDs :-) I'm trying to get into watching them more as I've got a lot of free time on my hands.
^^
Some of my DVDs:
I was doing some sorting so got these out but I've got lots more :)
I am a recent digital convert.
Previously I loved DVDs. I have a collection of around 300 DVD and Blu-ray. I love owning them with all the extras such as commentaries and off cuts and other background information.
The number one problem with DVDs is that they decay and become unreadable. I store them at room temperature with no excessive dampness, I don't scratch or do anything to them. But, I try to play a favourite and they stop with messages about no disk in drive or the just get stuck at certain points. I have tried cleaning them, that helps temporarily but later they fail again.
Now, I have joined the 21st century and I stream onto my tablet.
media degradation is a real issue with optical or magnetic media (ie CDs/DVDs and hard drives). I've worked my whole adult life in IT and have a few suggestions on how to minimise this issue.
1 - make a backup of your DVD to hard drive. You can use free software like DVDFab to do this (there are about a half dozen "buy me" prompts but you can cancel these and use it to create a backup fine.
2 - If you can afford it, have 2 disks with your backups and replace these every 3-5 years, or simply buy a newer disk to replace one of the backup disks and keep the older one as a secondary backup. Disks are cheap now (about £60 for a good brand portable 4Tb disk) and this has space for around 1,000 DVDs.
3 - remember to keep backups of your documents, spreadsheets, photos, videos and whatever else is important to you - I do these monthly and use the same disks to back up to. They have saved my bacon on several occasions when a disk on my laptop has died or been lost/stolen.
4 - keep a copy somewhere offsite. Maybe leave and older backup disk with a family member and just grad it once a year to copy your current backup disk to. This will save you from losing everything in the event of a fire / burglary / malicious attack on your data (eg where it gets encrypted and the hackers want money to decrypt it..
I know cloud storage is an option and I do use it for stuff I am actively working on (docs, spreadsheets etc) but there have been several experiences where cloud providers have lost data of my colleagues (through the cloud suppliers fault) and a backup was not available. Luckily my directive to keep local backups saved them, but I just don't trust cloud suppliers fully.
Just my 2p worth, I hope it helps
For personal information such as documents and photos I have a triple back up strategy,
My problem is films and TV programs on commercial DVDs. No backups and money wasted when I cannot play my favourites.