this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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[–] [email protected] 93 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Shockingly good news from a media corp. Paramount would just steal your discs and tell you to pound sand

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

As would Sony and Disney. It is surprising that WB is doing this.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 1 week ago (3 children)

It doesn’t matter. If the CD/DVD works, copy it immediately. If not, so sorry.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 week ago (1 children)

or just pirate it whenever.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Yeah seriously; never understood why a certain sector of people obsess over backing up their personal media, when you can literally download a perfect copy straight from the internet with no effort on your part. Especially when it comes to widely-available media like popular Hollywood films or video games that sold well. Just grab a torrent and toss the disc.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Pirated copies rarely contain any of the extras. Some people actually do watch those.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Extras are something I miss from modern movie distribution.

After finishing a movie you could watch the deleted scenes and behind the scenes and such. I rarely did the commentary watch of the movie but it was cool that it was there.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

They're also generally lower quality

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Well, those online copy's either originate from someone sharing their backed up collection or a camera pointed at the TV.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Most of what I download are webrips, though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Sure, but the point is someone’s already done it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

If you only need popular shows in english sure.

Plenty of older things which where made for localized television cannot be found online but can be found in public libraries.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I’m digitizing my SO’s cd collection now. Half are normal cds. 1/4 are promo or weird stuff from bands that barely existed. The rest are mix tapes or unreleased things from when they worked as a music journalist in college.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Because these people often don't want to pirate. In Germany the government now fines you for piracy, using a common VPN isn't enough anymore. Then there are other factors such as remasters and changes.

Fight Club, The Matrix, The Terminator and Star Wars are all popular films but there are several versions out there with different color grades and special effects. So I completely understand why this subset of people would want to keep their version of the movie.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You also have to deal with whatever settings the uploader decided to use when they transcoded the original rip. Which can mess with the color grade and contrast ratio, the hdr grading, introduce noise, and otherwise fuck with the video quality and audio quality.

Most people won't care, but to some it matters.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Fight Club, The Matrix, The Terminator and Star Wars

Yes, and you can find perfect exact copies of all versions of these movies if you look in the right places

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

And some hard to find movies can be lost forever because nobody have them anymore

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Sometimes access isn't so reliable. Maybe you want to disappear into the woods with a few hundred thousand novels.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Some prefer different languages or options. For many animations like Disney and DreamWorks children like to watch in native language, while adults like to occasionally watch in original language. Native language as pirated version are hard to come by these days.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

Right? Oh no, my disc rot, good thing I have 3 backups.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Buying music CD and either ripping to flac or pirating flac after it (physically) arrived to keep it sealed.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 week ago (5 children)

For those saying "just pirate it" some people like the option of physical media and have moral qualms about piracy. This is actually a good thing WB is doing. Just let people have their DVDs

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

If you own the physical DVD, fair use allows you to own a backup copy, so torrenting it in that case would not be unethical nor illegal.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (4 children)

You’re allowed to make your own backup, but I’m pretty sure downloading somebody else’s backup is still illegal? First time I’ve seen someone suggest otherwise, would love more details about the actual laws.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I'm not a law talking guy, but from my understanding of it, downloading isn't illegal. But if you're torrenting it, you're uploading bits of it to others while you're downloading. That would be distributing it to others, so that's copyright infringement.

So if you could find a way to download something without uploading anything, you'd be fine. Kinda like if someone uploads copyright infringing material to youtube. You're not going to get into hot water for watching that video, but the person who uploaded is.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fuck off, these people already own it at this point, so there is no such moral qualms. They paid for it. As for physical media, do you think only these companies can burn ISOs to DVD????

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (3 children)

be ye shill or bootlicker, may thou be cast at great speed into our Goddess and saviour Sol

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Yeah, that is a very valid option! I don't like it when people not into collecting do it, though. Because it makes zero logical sense for a digital copy to be tied to a physical thing, unless you like the sentimental value of said physical thing as well.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Welp, guess I'm digging out my complete SG1 collection tonight.

I have to watch them all, you say? No, honey, this is important work I'm doing here. 😎

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

It's an investment

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I didn't know DVDs are supposed to last 100 years. That's definitely not the case with newer storage media, be it BluRay, hard disks or even worse SSDs.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Modern Blurays should actually last longer than DVDs. Bluray M-Discs supposedly even last 1000 years. 100 years for DVDs is pretty optimistic. 20-50 years is more realistic.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Apparently there's some huge drama in data hoarding communities about manufacturers switching between different recording technologies, and how everybody is worried that they aren't going to last for 5-10-100-1000 years.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I have 3 physical backups of all my stuff, one a rotating offsite backup. The backup media gets replaced over time.

I don’t expect media (especially backup media) to last more than 10 years. But it doesn’t matter, as my NVMe backup solution of today looks nothing like my spinning rust backup solution of 20 years ago, despite holding all of that data.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I’ve always been curious about this stuff and I know I need to make some effort soon, ever since we moved our home recordings from VHS to DVD some 15-20 years ago.

My understanding is that SSDs are also likely to lose data when unpowered for a long time, which is why they haven’t been recommended to me for external backup drives.

“Spinning rust” is much cheaper than I thought, even if I have to pay 200$ in shipping to get a bunch of massive used server drives here. And it seems to not have that problem, with the downside of either needing to be completely powered off or wasting a bit of power when it’s not active. I’m still not sure where the HDD parking technology is at.

Of course ripping all the physical media would also be nice. A lot of the original discs I have (most of my discs are straight shitty copies with one file, yay third world) have things like special features and multiple audio tracks, things like that. I wonder how those should be organized.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago

Over the Top (dvd in photo) is an excellent movie.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

many of the discs produced by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (WBHE) between 2006 and 2008 are failing prematurely

he (Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader) says the most reliable way to look for playback problems — DVDs that won’t load at all, freeze while you’re watching the film, or have unplayable special features.

Crusader’s video description links to some Google Docs, one of which is a list he compiled showing what he believes are “known rotted DVD titles” he found reported online

I skimmed over the article to see if whether or not if they're just gonna send you another DVD or if they're gonna do it through other means. I couldn't find anything.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I skimmed over the article to see if whether or not if they’re just gonna send you another DVD or if they’re gonna do it through other means. I couldn’t find anything.

???

It's right in the quote in the article:

Where possible, the defective discs have been replaced with the same title. However, as some of the affected titles are no longer in print or the rights have expired, consumers have been offered an exchange for a title of like-value.

Consumers with affected product can contact the customer support team at [email protected].

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

I just checked one of my dvd shelf and two WB movies that should be in excellent condition were little bit sticky from both sides. This feels like a flashback to when Arturia’s hardware keys and knobs started to ”melt” after few years. Companies use cheapest plastics possible.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

Thanks for the reminder that I own DVDs

I forgot all about them in storage

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

How does one find the manufacturing date of the discs?

[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Cut it open and count the rings

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

If you turn the disc over, you can actually count the rings without needing to cut into it! This lets you skip having to glue the disc back together after checking the age.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you have the dvd case, it's in the back of it, at the bottom somewhere

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

No, it is not. I just scrutinized half a dozen DVD cases with a magnifying glass. They had copyright dates, but no disc manufacturing dates.

I wonder if the numeric codes printed around the hubs of the discs can be decoded into manufacturing dates.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Huh, if that doesn't work there are a few websites that will show you info about when the dvd was released

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Unfortunately, that doesn't help, since most DVDs in the world were not manufactured in the first production run.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I knew WB's HD-DVDs (remember those?) were a timebomb. I didn't realize regular DVDs were, too.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

All optical media is.

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