Technology

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.

probably the same reason I refused to let 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.

I wish blue ray 50 GB discs were used more.

They have really good shelf life and it would be awesome for things like yearly backup of your photos or some shit like that.

Great sentiment but still optical media bad

When I bought my dream machine it was the first one without an optical drive... and then I bought an external blu-ray player/DVD burner.

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.

Just make sure you back them up. Bit rot is real.

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.

..... No they aren't. Way more are just keeping their own digital media on their own storage. Even more are still just streaming. The least are watching DVD and Blu Ray.

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.