#physical storage media

[wjbs-aus]

[sortanonymous]

I know expecting Congress to get anything right these days is like expecting to see a triple rainbow in the Arctic, but if we could just get sticky, scratchy, awful cardboard sleeves for physical media discs illegalized, that would just be lovely!

[abby-howard]

A Christmas gift from Tony.....

(original comic circa Feb 2019)

[fallensapphires]

Media: Floppy Disks

Not born to be rich, by 1981 I had nonetheless begun to use a PC that required for its operation the absorption of several hundred pages of protocols and the placement of very large floppy disks in the freezer to fix frequent crashes.

[mewhenifreakit]

I love cd's

[shiraishi--kanade]

Not enough young people use or care about using USB flash drives now. This has been a psa

[thejazzywaffles]

angry about the degradation rate of physical media at 3 AM

Does film degrade under poor storage conditions? Yes. But on the other hand, in OPTIMAL storage conditions, I have 15-year-old DVDs with disc rot. And unlike film degradation, disc rot means the disc is worthless. It either won't play at all or will hang once it reaches the missing data. Completely fucking worthless storage medium. It would literally last longer if it were a fucking CARTRIDGE. Yeah, that's right. The shit you shove into an NES. Movies would last longer in THAT old tech than new-fangled discs... oh? And did I mention? Discs have only been getting worse. CDs last longer than DVDs. DVDs last longer than Blu-rays. I'm a proponent of physical media but holy fuck why did we think this was the storage medium of the future? And why are we still using it??? I'd buy an SD card that's 50% content and 50% security shit to stop most people from copying the content if it meant I could have a physical medium of game/movie/music storage that doesn't degrade in a decade or two.

oh and also books are based as hell I love books you can treat a book like dogshit and your grandkids will probably still be able to read it as long as it doesn't catch on fire or whatever, we got media storage right the first time actually

[aromantyczno-liryczna]

Google drive's working overtime to backup up my 1tb of stuff

[cauldronoflove]

[middle-aged man ripping from his extensive lp collection and uploading his favorites to youtube thereby preserving music that likely exists nowhere else on the internet] my favorite kind of guy for the 22nd year in a row. and also my dream life

[showyoumyfavoriteobsession]

Ok, I have a probably very dumb question. I'm looking at buying blank DVDs that I can burn some movies onto. They all say they have a 4.7GB capacity with up to 120 minutes of playback. The thing is, many of my video files are well under 4.7GB but over 120 minutes. Is the 120 minutes just an estimate of what will fit, or is it a hard limit on the disk?

[sortanonymous]

Sorta's CD/DVD/Blu-Ray Collection

Tons of notes under the cut

The Beatles Red and Blue albums are the 2023 remixed and expanded versions, not the 2010 remasters with practically the exact same packaging.

The Bad 25 case has been jammed since I got it in 2019, so despite it having a bonus disc inside, I've only ever been able to use the first disc. Yeah, that's nice.

I do have the slipcover on Echoes in a drawer, but not on the case because the case is kind of busted and can't fit it.

The tiny replacement case is for Running with Scissors by "Weird Al" Yankovic.

I don't actually have Rio or Surf's Up (at least not the discs anymore) but I'm using them as replacement cases for the Snow White 2001 cases, since that case wasn't in great shape. Prepare to see something like that a lot.

The Tangled DVD case has disc 1 of the Atlantis DVD due to a bad disc holder in that case (disc 2 isn't too bad though)

The copy of Iron Man on the third shelf was one I bought from a record store in 2020 that somehow didn't have the bonus Blu-Ray, but instead a DVD copy, and for some reason I didn't think to get a refund (it was the same visit actually when I got Echoes and its bad case).

I put the discs for the Steven Universe box set in those four clear cases due to how bad the sleeves were. However, I also keep the original Season 1 DVD there (which I got a couple years earlier in 2018) because the identical S1 discs in that specific box set might have been particularly ruined. (Now do you see why I want disc sleeves in box sets banned?)

I do have Angry Birds Toons S2, Vol. 1 on DVD, but due to, wait for it, another bad case, I have the disc in the Lion King 2011 Blu-Ray case, which conveniently was missing the DVD. (Same story actually for Finding Dory as I moved my Kirby's Dream Collection case into there from a bad GameStop case, although nowadays at least it's backed up through USB Loader GX.)

The Star Trek Compendium steelbook version on the 2nd shelf (which was also from that visit to that record store that I swear was way better than I'm making it out to be) was such a nightmare packaging-wise that I just ordered the case version of it.

The version of Star Trek Beyond I have is the Target 2-disc Blu-Ray, with the DVD thrown into the Snow White 2001 case.

The Cartoon Saloon box set's weird disc holders were bad (especially for Song of the Sea, which had to spend a few days after Christmas '21 in an empty Wii U case) so I have those 4 discs in a plain case.

The Arrested Development S1 DVD I bought in 2023 had a broken disc spindle, so the 3 discs are spread across an empty Minecraft Xbox case, a LEGO Star Wars Force Awakens PS4 case, and the actual case.

I also have a VERY old DVD of Batman (1989) via a Wii copy of LEGI Batman: The Videogame.

Ftr, I still haven't mentioned that I'll probably need replacement cases, for varying reasons, for Encanto, A Bug's Life, every 2018-present Pixar movie with 2 Blu-Ray discs, MCU Phase 3b (and 3a if I ever get that in 4K), Holy Grail Extraordinarily Deluxe edition, SpongeBob 100 Episodes, and especially del Toro's Pinocchio.

Tl;dr: my tastes might be a bit limited and weird and apparently making a reliable case is 100 times harder than you think. Viva La Disque!

[jbk405]

I bought a new bookshelf earlier to store all the Blu-rays that a friend gave me last week, and this was the first time I assembled one of these things with no mistakes. I didn't have to backtrack at all after putting on a wall backwards, or mixing up which board was the bottom or middle base.

It was harder just getting all the discs properly organized (That took close to an hour).

[teamhawkeye]

love that i’m sitting here reorganizing my DVD/BluRay shelves right now when i’m just gonna have to rearrange them all again in just over a week lmao

[frozenbassist]

This is one of the reasons why I try to buy as much physical media as possible. I always buy a band's CD whenever I go to a concert, and if I have an album I really like, I always buy the physical CD. Same with movies - if I really like a movie (as in I will watch it > 5 times), I almost always buy it on Blu-ray / UHD Blu-ray.

It also helps that I have a Blu-ray drive in my current desktop and use it to make backups of my movies and CDs. And in case anyone is asking about copyright - in most cases, there is an archival copy / backup copy exception, which means you can rip CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, etc. as long as you keep in on your PC and don't distribute it. Playing it over a NAS / home network / Plex server is where you start getting into the gray area, since it technically leaves your PC.

And as for my PC, I recently made the switch to Linux, which is 100% free and open-source. Due to being on Linux, I also use open-source alternatives to most programs, like GIMP instead of Photoshop, LibreOffice instead of MS Office / Office 365, and Firefox instead of Chrome.

Another plus in open-source software is that you know EXACTLY what's in it because you have access to the source code, and if necessary, you can audit it. So no company is ever going to sneak in some telemetry or a hidden kill switch, etc.

[subjectsix]

I don't know I'm not done talking about it. It's insane that I can't just uninstall Edge or Copilot. That websites require my phone number to sign up. That people share their contacts to find their friends on social media.

I wouldn't use an adblocker if ads were just banners on the side funding a website I enjoy using and want to support. Ads pop up invasively and fill my whole screen, I misclick and get warped away to another page just for trying to read an article or get a recipe.

Every app shouldn't be like every other app. Instagram didn't need reels and a shop. TikTok doesn't need a store. Instagram doesn't need to be connected to Facebook. I don't want my apps to do everything, I want a hub for a specific thing, and I'll go to that place accordingly.

I love discord, but so much information gets lost to it. I don't want to join to view things. I want to lurk on forums. I want to be a user who can log in and join a conversation by replying to a thread, even if that conversation was two days ago. I know discord has threads, it's not the same. I don't want to have to verify my account with a phone number. I understand safety and digital concerns, but I'm concerned about information like that with leaks everywhere, even with password managers.

I shouldn't have to pay subscriptions to use services and get locked out of old versions. My old disk copy of photoshop should work. I should want to upgrade eventually because I like photoshop and supporting the business. Adobe is a whole other can of worms here.

Streaming is so splintered across everything. Shows release so fast. Things don't get physical releases. I can't stream a movie I own digitally to friends because the share-screen blocks it, even though I own two digital copies, even though I own a physical copy.

I have an iPod, and I had to install a third party OS to easily put my music on it without having to tangle with iTunes. Spotify bricked hardware I purchased because they were unwillingly to upkeep it. They don't pay their artists. iTunes isn't even iTunes anymore and Apple struggles to upkeep it.

My TV shows me ads on the home screen. My dad lost access to eBook he purchased because they were digital and got revoked by the company distributing them. Hitman 1-3 only runs online most of the time. Flash died and is staying alive because people love it and made efforts to keep it up.

I have to click "not now" and can't click "no". I don't just get emails, they want to text me to purchase things online too. My windows start search bar searches online, not just my computer. Everything is blindly called an app now. Everything wants me to upload to the cloud. These are good tools! But why am I forced to use them! Why am I not allowed to own or control them?

No more!!!!! I love my iPod with so much storage and FLAC files. I love having all my fics on my harddrive. I love having USBs and backups. I love running scripts to gut suck stuff out of my Windows computer I don't want that spies on me. I love having forums. I love sending letters. I love neocities and webpages and webrings. I will not be scanning QR codes. Please hand me a physical menu. If I didn't need a smartphone for work I'd get a "dumb" phone so fast. I want things to have buttons. I want to use a mouse. I want replaceable batteries. I want the right to repair. I grew up online and I won't forget how it was!