DVD storage & access

Conventions and other events, fandom, stores, manga-ka, animators, and other people, etc
Post Reply
davemerrill
Posts: 1235
Joined: Sat Feb 18, 2012 3:38 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1984
Location: the YYZ
Contact:

DVD storage & access

Post by davemerrill »

So here's my question for all you guys & gals who have a lot of DVDs, a lot of home-burned DVDs that didn't come with boxes and sleeve art. How are you storing these discs? Jewel boxes like CDs, or DVD cases in bookshelves, or are you using binders? I've been using binders, and it's fine up to a point, and after that point it becomes difficult to add new discs, and finding a particular disc means flipping through pages and pages. It's a pain.

What's your solution?
_D_
Posts: 795
Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2012 8:21 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1978

Re: DVD storage & access

Post by _D_ »

This is why many are now ripping them to hard drives and cataloging them as part of their home media systems. Just bought another 2 2TB drives today (couldn't pass up the deal since they were only $40 each!), so I'll be back ripping my bud's collection of 1600 discs soon. Once done, he will catalog them and rename them and give me a set for ripping them for him. Would take forever to watch them though...
SteveH
Posts: 645
Joined: Thu Apr 25, 2013 10:30 am
Anime Fan Since: 1979/82 (depending)
Location: Michigan and the Sea of Stars
Contact:

Re: DVD storage & access

Post by SteveH »

_D_ wrote:This is why many are now ripping them to hard drives and cataloging them as part of their home media systems. Just bought another 2 2TB drives today (couldn't pass up the deal since they were only $40 each!), so I'll be back ripping my bud's collection of 1600 discs soon. Once done, he will catalog them and rename them and give me a set for ripping them for him. Would take forever to watch them though...
Which then begs the question, why do that?

Never mind the fact that you're tied to watching your stuff on your computer.

See, I see DVD as a reasonable 'random access' entertainment medium, like books. You can grab one off the shelf and *boom* good to go. Of course one is still tied down to the need of electricity and a player and a monitor of some kind.

And while DVD may not be an eternal media, I do have more faith in it compared to a hard drive.

As to Dave's question on what to do with the home burn and so on, I really haven't come up with a solution. I'm not clever or skilled enough to jimmy up a label or a cover for either CD or DVD case so everything of that sort is in those non-static 'envelopes' or sleeves, the kind I guess is meant to be placed in binders. I don't do that. I just jam them on a shelf.

Which naturally flies in the face of my OCD and the way I have to sort everything. Man that's hard. Trying to decide if a movie should go in SF, Action, or subcategory 'big tentpole movie' or 'post apocalypse/dystopian' or 'cult'. Like, Blade Runner.

Maybe I need to invent a 'Dewey decimal system' for home video.
_D_
Posts: 795
Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2012 8:21 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1978

Re: DVD storage & access

Post by _D_ »

Haven't been keeping up with media streaming have we? :-)

I can stream the content of DVDs ripped directly to hard drives as full DVDs using any number programs. I can also stream them directly to any portable device including my (now EOLed by Blackberry) Playbook tablet anywhere in the world I happen to be that has wireless internet access. Also, the amount of space needed to keep all this stuff together is tiny compared to keeping to all on disc in cases someplace (don't I know this already with all the thousands of DVDs I recorded over the years and now stored in spools or binders). I also can't be bothered with looking for something to watch when I get restless at 3am. It's all available at the flick of a switch. Soon, I think hard drives will be replaced by solid state devices. That makes things even smaller. I guess I could be paranoid about losing it all in some disaster but I'm hard pressed at this point to figure out what could happen. Eventually, it may all move to some sort of cloud storage as that is the way industry is heading. With my download speeds already at 25 - 100 mbps and going soon to the Gigabit solutions, I can see this happening ere long. I can also play the ripped discs through media players like my WDTV Live to any room in my house. That works very well...

The redundancy is that if my bud loses his collection to some disaster at his home, a copy is still available either through me or anyone else he made a copy for. The odds of all of our collections going out at the same time is staggeringly low...
davemerrill
Posts: 1235
Joined: Sat Feb 18, 2012 3:38 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1984
Location: the YYZ
Contact:

Re: DVD storage & access

Post by davemerrill »

Gosh-wow prognostications of the future and "here's what you OUGHT to be doing" advice aside, I believe the best solution (for me anyway) is something like the Memorex file-n-store drawers here: http://www.amazon.com/Memorex-File-n-St ... B00CFPM75O - there was a cheaper brand sold a few years back that Toole swears by, but they are no longer being made. Dunno if I'm willing to shell out $24 for 'em, though.

I'm way past the stage where I have to record and keep copies of everything. There aren't any new shows I'm saving. There are only so many old shows I'd keep. So, I'm not worried about space being an issue. I have no need to stream video from my home collection to any location anywhere in the world; TV is something I can go without for long spells, and the idea of being on vacation and suddenly feeling an uncontrollable urge to watch a random thing from the bowels of my video collection... well, it hasn't happened yet.
_D_
Posts: 795
Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2012 8:21 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1978

Re: DVD storage & access

Post by _D_ »

davemerrill wrote:Gosh-wow prognostications of the future and "here's what you OUGHT to be doing" advice aside, I believe the best solution (for me anyway) is something like the Memorex file-n-store drawers here: http://www.amazon.com/Memorex-File-n-St ... B00CFPM75O - there was a cheaper brand sold a few years back that Toole swears by, but they are no longer being made. Dunno if I'm willing to shell out $24 for 'em, though.

I'm way past the stage where I have to record and keep copies of everything. There aren't any new shows I'm saving. There are only so many old shows I'd keep. So, I'm not worried about space being an issue. I have no need to stream video from my home collection to any location anywhere in the world; TV is something I can go without for long spells, and the idea of being on vacation and suddenly feeling an uncontrollable urge to watch a random thing from the bowels of my video collection... well, it hasn't happened yet.
You should talk to my other bud who has 900 DVD box sets and movies! His latest thing is buying MOD (manufactured on demand) discs from the Warner Archives among others. I let him buy them and then get copies of what I want to watch at a later date. There is too much stuff however. He on the other hand is disabled and retired, so this gives him something to do when he is bored as most of the stuff he has isn't available on TV. In many cases, I think he is trying to recreate the fun times he had as a kid back in the 1960s. To that end, I get like that myself sometimes. I have been having the urge to go back and watch the complete runs of the 1960s Batman and Green Hornet TV series. Haven't watched them in a couple of years now. Too bad no commercial sets of those series are available. I did record them however some years back before all the logos and crap appeared on stations running old TV. Nice clean prints as well...

My stuff (some if it anyways) are in these:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_ ... nics%2C303
SteveH
Posts: 645
Joined: Thu Apr 25, 2013 10:30 am
Anime Fan Since: 1979/82 (depending)
Location: Michigan and the Sea of Stars
Contact:

Re: DVD storage & access

Post by SteveH »

My DVDs are in these:
http://www.amazon.com/Sauder-Multimedia ... vd+storage

I've got two built and filled, with a third awaiting me clearing a bit more room.

They're very nice.

My VHS are in an insane mountain of file boxes.
User avatar
Daniel
Site Admin
Posts: 525
Joined: Sun Jul 24, 2011 2:56 pm
Anime Fan Since: 199X年
Location: USA

Re: DVD storage & access

Post by Daniel »

Once upon a time, when I first became a fan, every video of mine was set out neatly for display. Soon enough, however, it was clear that I had to stop being neat and started to train in the art of cramming the most stuff into the smallest space possible.

Now I digitize everything and stick things onto hard drive instead of keeping the physical media on shelves. Talk about saving space and convenience...! As for homemade discs, I don't think I have any around here that haven't been backed up to hard disk; I would trust old tapes to last longer than burned discs. Of course, I clone the hard disks for backup as well...
_D_
Posts: 795
Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2012 8:21 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1978

Re: DVD storage & access

Post by _D_ »

Looking at getting one of these for streaming and file access while I am out and about:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/140953922976?ss ... 1423.l2649

Means I don't have to load up the tablet with stuff...put it on a 32 GB flash drive or memory card and I am good to go...
User avatar
greg
Posts: 2159
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 9:00 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1989 (consciously)
Location: Shizuoka-ken, Japan
Contact:

Re: DVD storage & access

Post by greg »

SteveH wrote:I see DVD as a reasonable 'random access' entertainment medium, like books. You can grab one off the shelf and *boom* good to go. Of course one is still tied down to the need of electricity and a player and a monitor of some kind.

And while DVD may not be an eternal media, I do have more faith in it compared to a hard drive.
I am pretty much with you. I like having media on my shelf. Plus, I try to buy only stuff that I know I will watch. Even when I lived in America and made much more money than I do now, I didn't drop tons of cash on DVDs willy-nilly that I may never watch. So, my collection has grown slowly but surely. I hate running out of room, but tossing the cases out and just keeping the discs (or ripping them to hard drives) does not appeal to me at all.

I have a bunch of fansubs on one hard drive, but not a whole lot. I'd like a few other series as fansubs, like the Mellowlink series I started to collect. But living in Japan, torrents are just not optional for me, so I have to rely on others to maybe snag them for me.

The fanciest way I get around to watching stuff digitally is to FTP shows to my hacked Xbox. Otherwise, I burn them onto DVDs to watch them on the Xbox.

The DVD burns I have are kept in a large DVD wallet thingy.
My presence on the Net, with plenty of random geekiness:
My homepage
My YouTube channel
My Flickr photostream
My Tumblr page
Post Reply