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Yeah if you are not a collector who wants to display their collection it makes no sense to hold on to the physical media. As long as you have digital backups (3-2-1).

I’m in the process of throwing everything away. I have got a digital copy(s) of all my content and even remasters of DVD media. I don’t even have a DVD player.

I tried selling it on market place and it’s not getting any offers. Time for the bin.

I got rid of all my books. Never really had dvd/bluray.

Unlikely to get rid of photos as Id have to digitize all the old stuff and physical copies are a pretty good backup…

I tossed vinyl, VHS, cassettes, 8mm, miniDV, CDs, and DVDs. I also tossed all photos negatives and prints.

I did throw out boxes and put them all in a folder. Saved tons of space. Simply could not keep them all like they were

I gave away most of my DVDs to a couple who live on a mountain with no internets, I gave away most of my CDs to a music hoarder.

I found myself in a loop where I’d rip all of my physical media, then rarely consume any of it, then some new format would come out, I’d get larger drives and re-rip everything, and rarely consume it. I had to break the cycle.

I assume hard drives are not considered “physical” for some reason?

I think this is a problem many people have, buying stuff for the sake of it without actually being interested in it. You have to plan for a physical library, it will take space and if you live in a small apartment you will need to make compromises or completely change the way you store your discs. If you stack the boxes on top of each other that would be the most efficient use of space. Then you can have 1000 movies and shows stacked in a 25x15cm area with the discs in a spindle or two.

But to answer your post, don’t fall into the digital trap. If you have physical media and the means to store it do so. Otherwise downsize your library and keep what you can since you’ve ripped a lot of it. The question becomes, do you buy a $200 8TB drive or a $200 shelf as a showpiece? If you can guarantee your data is safe then sell after ripping. Otherwise the only way you can guarantee you have access to your favourite shows in future is if you take actions to do so. Like owning a physical library.

Look at what just happened to Sony. They had a deal with the discovery network and after discovery merged with their new parent company they revoked Sony’s rights to license and sell their shows meaning everyone who purchased discovery shows like Mythbusters through the PS Store has now lost access to it without compensation. The same thing happened to the Nintendo DS and will happen to the 3DS next year. The closure of all communications to Nintendo’s servers so if you bought the digital versions you are fucked and will have to resort to homebrew to reclaim what was once yours.

Which is why even before they stopped digital transactions I had already dumped all my Pokemon carts and updates including saves. So even if my 2DS XL breaks in future I still have access to roms of my physical cartridges with Citra as an alternative to a console if I can’t ever find another second hand.

In a digital world full of greedy and monopolistic companies, only You can guarantee your rights of ownership and access.

I live in a small apartment (40 m², about 430 sqft), and I still like to buy physical media (although that doesn’t mean everything I own has to be on physical media).

For me it’s mostly music (~700 CDs, ~500 LPs), and a handful of DVDs/BluRays. I guess I just like to have that stuff around me. If Amazon/Netflix/Spotify/Deezer/whatever other streaming services there are all shut down tomorrow I don’t even care…

Don’t buy books/video/music on physical media unless it’s hard/impossible to get a digital version. But also don’t rely on IP subscription services either. The Cloud is great as part of a backup strategy: but not as an exclusive service that could gate your access to your content.

Digital storage is great because it can hold anything: books, shows, games, whatever. And it can be easily copied, and sent around the world. Have some space you own: redundant and automatically backed-up to a Cloud service… then enjoy it for years. It will feed your ebook readers and media players and homelab devices for a long time, and take up almost no space.

Hard drives fail in a few years. Factory printed dvd blue rays and burned M disc dont fail, right? So, you just by new and larger hard drives every 10 years?

Yep, tossed hundreds of discs. Most of them were “backups” of Netflix discs, but they are long gone.

I haven’t owned a CD/DVD in at least a decade.

I purged hundreds of DVDs when I moved, movies and series I was confident I’d never rewatch, or that would be easy to find on Blu-Ray.

I still occasionally buy used DVDs, mainly foreign films and series, and mountain bike or fmx videos.

I need to do the same with my CDs. And make backups of the rare ones in case of disc rot. Vinyl likewise; but those won’t be given away.