Let’s talk about media collections: How do you keep your library of your favorite movies and TV shows?

I recently started buying movies on Vudu. I was struggling for a long time with whether or not I wanted to collect media on physical disks or digitally.

Right now that’s what I’m doing but there’s always the looming fear of anything I buy being taken away if the service gets shut down.

I’m curious how others keep their media collections. Are you a Blu-ray or 4k UHD collector? Do you use a digital service like Vudu or something similar?

Tell me your thoughts!

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@[email protected] Back in the early 2000s, I remember my dad spent 💰 and so much time buying and organizing physical DVDs into one of those huge carousel machines. He then made a printed catalog of all the movies with pictures, details, and disc numbers to browse and select a movie from his collection. So much manual work considering the whole thing needed to be reprinted each time a new movie was added.
Nowadays, I'd recommend a Plex server haha.
- Yeah your dad definitely went through a lot of work for that DVD collection! 📀
  There’s something really special about that though. A labor of love I guess.
  Something else too is that formats are always evolving. I feel like it would hurt a little to build a big DVD collection and then have Blu-ray and 4k come out. 🫤Of course I guess resolution-wise there’s only so far we can go before it doesn’t matter too much.
  
  Yep! He was a casualty of the HDDVD vs. Bluray battle at the beginning of the hi-def disc wars. 🤣
  It was definitely a labor of love and a love of organization. Something I've picked up as an adult.
  
  I have something like 250 DVDs that I never watch that I've been lugging around with me for more than a decade. The binder of them is currently in my closet on the office, collecting another tree ring esque layer of dust. IDK why but I refuse to get rid of them. Any time I think of something I want to watch that I have on DVD I just download it and add it to Plex anyway.

Buy stuff to support the creators, but always have a seperate personal storage/library, don't use services.
There's recently been some drama on twitter, where media providers have changed the parts of some movies. Movies that were in the libraries of those who purchased them. They replaced them with a different version - some with censors, some with commentary removed, or some with whole different endings.
You never acutally own the media copy if you depend on an external service.
- Exactly why I've been scrubbing secondhand outlets for all my favorite older movies and TV shows.

I have a Plex server for film, tv, audiobooks and music and and a Calibre server for ebooks. I have shelves for my physical book collection that now need re-organising, since I have recently moved. Getting the Plex and Calibre server up and running was a lot quicker, I have to say.
At some stage, I expect that I will move to Jellyfin, but Plex is still ok for now.

I started getting into Blu-rays of favourite shows and films a while ago, recently made the switch to 4K UHD discs as well with my external 4K reader. Ever since the fragmentation of streaming services compared to music, I've started buying those Blu-rays to keep them in my collection for whenever I wanna watch them.
I tend to make a back-up copy of my discs to watch it through any device for flexibility. Especially as that's my way of enjoying 4K films on my 4K TV at the moment. HDR colouring definitely wow'd me when trying my first 4K disc. Not regretting it so far. 👍

I keep all my movies and tv shows on my custom NAS I built. I use Plex to organize and watch the content. Plex has had issues with colormapping on some 4k HDR movies so I end up picking up both the 4k and 1080p versions of those movies.
I've recently started digitizing old video tapes that I used to record shows and movies on tv. The quality doesn't come close to comparing to today's standards, but I like the nostalgia of it all. Even the old tv commercials are fun to watch. I feel old now...

Basically entirely digital. I have an Emby server hosted on a Synology NAS. My parent's have a bit of an obsession with buying Blu-Rays, so I usually can just borrow whatever I want and then rip it onto my NAS. For the things they don't buy, I will buy, rip, then resell or donate. Certain things that are unable to be purchased, are... generously donated by... peers.

One of my biggest side projects this spring was setting up my first NAS (Synology, since I’m a beginner) and all the *Arr apps funneling to Plex, with Overseer to manage actually adding movies and tv to the queue.
There’s a lot of ductwork involved up front (set up x many docker containers, get them all to talk to each other, make sure you’ve got auto-updating set up, what about a VPN, and so forth) but I’ve been super pleased with the end result’s ease of use.
There’s a lot more in the self-hosted space I want to explore too, now that I’ve dipped my toes in – mostly around music and photos. I’ve a pretty manually organized music library and would like to be able to store on my NAS and access in a nice way from every device.
We also have a small collection of Blu-ray movies and TV, but 95% of those are my partner’s – much more into physical media than me. It has a precise organization on the shelves that I don’t touch! 😂

I don't really watch movies or TV Shows, but I'm really big into music. I try to download all of the music that I care about, and I listen to it through Jellyfin or Navidrome. I keep all of the files on my server in digital form, although I do own some records on vinyl.
- Do you tend to get FLAC releases through Qobuz/7digital/bandcamp, or do you stick with MP4s from iTunes or MP3s from else where? I tend to grab FLAC releases myself or get the music I want on disc to rip them into FLAC through Exact Audio Copy.
  
  It's a mix between getting 320Kbps mp3s and FLACs from soulseek and buying from artist websites/bandcamp/qobuz/amazon.
  When I was in highschool I also used to be on piratebay and a few other websites for my music so I have a lot from that time period too lol.
- Oh that’s cool! Self-hosting is something I’m curious about.

I use a combination of Jellyfin (Video), Beets (Audio), Hydrus (images), and finally Obsidian (text files/notes).
Everything is extensively and accurately tagged. I'm a digital hoarder because I don't trust anyone to keep content available for any length of time. If I like something - I download it and tag it. I may only look at it once 7 years later but I'll be glad I did because 7 years later it doesn't even exist outside of my local copy or is much more difficult to find.
Some time over a decade ago a popular file host shut down and took a huge chunk of content with it - not only mine but a ton of bookmarks I had to other people's content. This made me realize the importance of having local backups of anything I care about or wish to share/reference at some point in the future. So now I operate my own file host and digitally hoard everything and anything that I might care about.
- Accidentally posted too soon - wanted to touch on this bit.
  Right now that’s what I’m doing but there’s always the looming fear of anything I buy being taken away if the service gets shut down.
  Never trust a company to remain solvent. Always own your data and always own any media you care to own. They can revoke your right to view the media at any time - or they may lose rights to broadcast media. Very few companies last 20-30+ years, especially internet companies and when they inevitably shutdown you'll lose access to all of your data/media. Always keep local copies unless you don't care if you lose it or not.
- Oh neat, I’ve been keeping notes on options for self-hosted image tools, and hadn’t run into Hydrus before. Definitely adding to my list to check out!

I use Trakt.tv to make lists, and Kodi addons compatible with Real Debrid for watching anything. Streaming is just more adapted to my use case.

I buy bluray, usually the steelbook versions because they tend to have cool art on them! Then I just watch them with a bluray player.
It's something that started growing on me as anime streaming licenses are often unstable and some shows just get licensed by no one anymore. I wish to keep the anime I liked so I just buy physical copies.

I have a bunch of physical copies that I store standing up in one of those 200+ DVD binders. I don't have the space by the tv to store the boxes. So this solved that concern.
Also, for streaming, I have digital copies of movies that came with the physical, but I do not purchase anything digital. I have the same concern that one day my purchase will disappear.
For movies I watch a lot (kids) I put those on my jellyfin server to watch via the Roku. It's just easier and doesn't need to look or sound the best.

I’m on Vudu too and constantly wondering when it’s going to disappear on me, especially when the website crashes. I just can’t get past the convenience though. My external hard drive requires all these extra steps and cords to hook up to my laptop. It won’t hook up to my iPad at all, even wirelessly. None of my tech except the PlayStation even has a disk drive anymore.
It’s just too easy to pull up the app or website and hope it works for another day. Although the sellout from Walmart to Fandango was frustrating, it still wasn’t enough to give up the convenience.

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