DVD collection to wallets

Gamayun

Hello all,

So I've just done a quick tally and found that I now possess roughly 450 DVDs, with double-disc boxes taken into account I estimate a total of 600 or so actual discs.
These occupy a full bookcase which may be put to much better use. The bookcase is in the attic so it's not as if they're even on display.

So my plan is to get a few large CD/DVD wallets and transfer all of the DVDs into them. (Though I'll keep a few fancy boxes e.g. Eureka! releases and a few box sets and such intact)

I've already done this a number of years back with my CDs, retaining just the booklet and disc and discarding the case. I found that process to be fairly painless, however DVDs seem like much more of an object to me. I know that the important bit is the actual film on the disc yet somehow the idea of just having the bare disc devalues them somehow in my head. I wont ever be selling/trading them or anything so that's not an issue.

So I'm just wondering has anyone else here done this? Could you dismember your collection this way?

Daemos

I have c.450-500 DVDs, most of which I keep in storage cases similar to this, although I do keep the original boxes stored out of the way, should I ever need them

It's definitely not as satisfying as having shelves full of DVDs, but it is a lot more practical

krudler

Did it with a cd collection years ago, fit a few hundred cd's onto a couple of those spindle things you get blank discs on, ripped most of them to my laptop and never used the cds again,never looked back.
I havent bought a physical disk in years. Rarely ever buy dvds or blu-rays anymore, I had well over 800 or more at one point (thanks hmv staff discount!) but after the last time I moved house I kept the rare stuff and flogged or gave away everything easily attainable again or I'd never plan on watching again. Yeah it's cool having shelves of dvds but they take up so much space, weigh a ton if you ever need to move, bleh, minimal media ftw.

DesperateDan

krudler wrote: »

minimal media ftw.

Yeah that's the direction of stuff these days isn't it. Thankfully I never amassed such a large collection (have around 60 dvds max), but they've been left in boxes and are never used, same with all my CDs. I'm that lazy these days that I'd rather download a film or CD specifically to prevent having to rifle through boxes and swap discs...what has the world come to :pac:

Sad Professor

I'm running seriously low on shelf space and have no room to add more, so I may have to do this myself before long, at least with my (non-collectible) DVDs in order make room for Blu-rays.

Oh and as much as I love the idea of not having physical media, I just couldn't be bothered having to maintain crappy, mass produced hard drives. I have enough of the bloody things connected to my computer as it is.

I ripped most of my discs and put them away in storage. I wouldn't throw the discs away but the boxes were just taking up too much space on my shelves.

Myrddin

I got to that stage a few years ago, & left without any options of increasing storage space, twas the perfect excuse to build myself a HTPC. Best thing I ever done, like krudler above, I havn't looked back. Combined with Win 7 Media Center, the convenience of having my whole collection at the touch of a remote is just too good to want to go back to using discs.

Mind ripping the whole collection, including tv series with multiple seasons etc was a journey in itself. But really worth the time & effort.

Gamayun

So I just thought that I would post a rambling update to this.

It is done. I've filled 2 x 208 disc wallets, retaining around 50 or so complete DVDs (Choice BFI/Eureka/Artificial Eye titles) and 10 fancy boxsets, and I brought 20 or so dodgy titles that I forgot I owned to the charity shop (The Hebrew Hammer, Duece Bigelow: European Gigilo, what was I thinking?)

The wallets/DVDs and boxsets now all fit on one shelf, a massive space saving. Just a couple more recycling bin collections and all the cases will be gone (I'm topping up the recycle bin with them).

My Dad is a bit of a hoarder (not quite Channel 4 documentary level...yet) and keeps a tonne of useless crap in his garage and shed, ranging from broken electronics and boxes of video/audio cassettes (never to be played again) to manuals for long forgotten/obsolete tech (Beginner's Guide to Windows 95) collecting dust.
This has put me right off the amassing of unused possessions, and downsizing like this has really been a cathartic experience, much more so than I would have thought. I'm not off to become a Buddhist ascetic in the mountains or anything but I'm definitely more conscious of how much crud I'm collecting and have also cleared out loads of books that I would never re-read and clothes I don't wear anymore.

So anyway, if anyone was thinking of doing this themselves then I highly recommend it.

Sad Professor

I’m thinking about moving my DVD collection (for starters) into flatpak sleeves like this:



http://www.dvdbinders.co.uk

Seems like a good option as it allows you to keep the disc and artwork together.

The only problem is the lack of numbering on the sleeves, which would make cataloguing everything difficult. A DJ-style case would be better for this, but most of them seem to be of very poor quality.

Fysh

Sad Professor wrote: »

I’m thinking about moving my DVD collection (for starters) into flatpak sleeves like this:



http://www.dvdbinders.co.uk

Seems like a good option as it allows you to keep the disc and artwork together.

The only problem is the lack of numbering on the sleeves, which would make cataloguing everything difficult. A DJ-style case would be better for this, but most of them seem to be of very poor quality.

When I moved to the UK six years ago I moved all my DVDs to crappy wallet cases. Some time after arriving I decided up upgrade to cases like the ones Daemos linked to up-thread (except I went for two of the 500-disc ones, since between myself and the OH we've got almost 1000 discs of TV shows and films).

This only really works if it's a pure storage thing, though - it's fine for the TV stuff as I have everything ripped to the media centre server that lives under the TV, but I'm not finished ripping the films yet so it's a bit of a ballache - yes, the space overhead is small, but getting films out to watch them is annoying. (I haven't even started the tedious process of scanning the cover artwork which will be stored in the same directory as the rip for visual identification purposes, because I've just not yet been that bored...)

Sad Professor

Did you catalogue all the discs? Those Neo Media boxes (like Daemos linked to) come with numbered sleeves. If I went that route I was thinking I’d just record everything in a database file. It would mean not having to worry about organising the discs alphabetically, etc.

I don’t really like those DJ cases though. They all seem to be cheap, Chinese crap that probably wouldn’t even survive the post. I prefer the binders sold on the site I linked to above, but they are bit small.

I wouldn’t have the patience for ripping and scanning everything. I’d go nuts. Plus I don’t want the hassle of messing around with piece of sh*t hard drives. I'd need a pretty decent 4 bay NAS at least, which, along with large enough hard disks, would cost a fortune.

Fysh

Sad Professor wrote: »

Did you catalogue all the discs? Those Neo Media boxes (like Daemos linked to) come with numbered sleeves. If I went that route I was thinking I’d just record everything in a database file. It would mean not having to worry about organising the discs alphabetically, etc.

I don’t really like those DJ cases though. They all seem to be cheap, Chinese crap that probably wouldn’t even survive the post. I prefer the binders sold on the site I linked to above, but they are bit small.

I wouldn’t have the patience for ripping and scanning everything. I’d go nuts. Plus I don’t want the hassle of messing around with piece of sh*t hard drives. I'd need a pretty decent 4 bay NAS at least, which, along with large enough hard disks, would cost a fortune.

I got myself a Proliant microserver from HP a while back and stuffed it full of drives. I don't RAID it because I don't need redundancy (I've got everything on it copied on another machine, and am working on sorting out a tertiary backup as well) but it lives under the TV and handles playback, etc. The ease of being able to find stuff already ripped rather than digging out discs is worth it to me, but is fairly time-consuming so I can totally understand not being bothered to do it

TheIrishGrover

Fysh wrote: »

I got myself a Proliant microserver from HP a while back and stuffed it full of drives. I don't RAID it because I don't need redundancy (I've got everything on it copied on another machine, and am working on sorting out a tertiary backup as well) but it lives under the TV and handles playback, etc. The ease of being able to find stuff already ripped rather than digging out discs is worth it to me, but is fairly time-consuming so I can totally understand not being bothered to do it

I did that with my DVD collection a few years ago. Ripped them all onto my NAS and stashed the discs in the attic. Now when I get a disc I straight away do this. (Don't sell ''em after lads, that's illegal. AFAIK you can have your own digital backup).

Best thing I ever did. Have a little HTPC with XBMC on it now reading from the NAS. I don't do this for Blu-Rays 'cos I only have a few (About 90 odd) and they would take up too much space and I don't want to compress them anyway since that would defeat the point of them in the first place

Antar Bolaeisk

Sad Professor wrote: »

I wouldn’t have the patience for ripping and scanning everything. I’d go nuts. Plus I don’t want the hassle of messing around with piece of sh*t hard drives. I'd need a pretty decent 4 bay NAS at least, which, along with large enough hard disks, would cost a fortune.

I've been thinking about this and I reckon you'd be better off going down the low powered server route rather than a NAS device as you'd have much more flexibility plus the capability to run other items on it, downloading or hosting files for instance.

I've been backing up some of my stuff as I go but it's such a mammoth task at the start that I have to build myself up to it.

I was thinking of getting a wallet to bring some DVDs over here but I've heard horror stories of people having their collections confiscated and destroyed by customs.