I absolutely torrent as a way to discover new content, but I want favorites on a shelf on very long shelf life media where it does not require internet access and is never going to get altered or deleted as streaming services often do, or end up unavailable in the future with no seeders.
There are piles of obscure things for which physical (sometimes bootleg) media exists but no seeders.
For example the mexican hacking drama Control Z, I found 0 complete rips even on private trackers, but I did find some nice blu ray bootlegs with cases and cover art.
Even with blu-ray rips in hand, burning a disk myself and putting it into a nice recognizable case that fits in my blu ray wall cases is a pain in the ass and I would rather pay someone else for this service.
Plus it makes it way easier to hand select shows to hand a kid to play in a portable media player, and avoids the need to give them unrestricted alone time with an internet capable device.
I prefer official copies but if the studios do not allow them and thus do not want my money then bootlegs it is.
Warm storage with checksums and redundancy is the only long-term safe option.
I would recommend making a pair of HFS boxes, that storage will last far longer than pressed cold media.
I mean, I do both. But physical disks make it easier to stay away from the internet when I want a simple entertainment experience without distractions.
I absolutely torrent as a way to discover new content, but I want favorites on a shelf on very long shelf life media where it does not require internet access and is never going to get altered or deleted as streaming services often do, or end up unavailable in the future with no seeders.
You're on a site called Hacker News, and don't know how to burn a video file to DVD?
I literally burned and sold bootleg software to churches as one of my go to hustles as a kid, and have a blu ray burner handy.
Knowing how, and being willing to do it for piles of titles and make cases that are nice to display and browse in the real world alongside mass produced copies, takes a lot of effort and I have better things to do with my limited time.
As is tracking down very rare titles in blu ray quality. Often easier to just buy the most decent cased copies I can and rip for long term storage.
Writable DVD longevity seems to be a bit of a crapshoot. There are stories of people reading 20 year old burned DVDs just fine and others getting errors on discs only a few years old.
If I were worried about longevity, I would not personally rely on a bunch of DVDs I burned.
