How much physical media do you have left?

[bristolracer]

bloomen said:

Interesting that the music services have deterred piracy through straightforward convenience and availability yet the film/tv services are going the other way.

Spotify havent made a profit yet and pay the musicians tiny royalties, Film and TV companies need huge amounts of money to make films and TV so have to keep flogging physical media and expensive subscriptions to keep the cash coming in. Therefore they invest heavily in keeping pirates fingers out of the till.

[Oakey]

captain_cynic said:

Half a suitcase full of games (probably about 10-12 TB on it's own there), 2 60L boxes of DVD's on a shelf back in OZ and a hard drive full of content.

Much of it cant be had on streaming services, given it was produced 20+ years ago, it's going to be the same quality anyway. Some of the old video games I have are hard to find, even to pirate. I'd be certifiably daft to chuck them out, especially as old stuff regularly disappears from Netflix/Amazon Prime.

BTW, if your device can't upscale very well, it's your TV/display device that's the problem.

I've never bought a Blurry, erm, Bluray because I recognised that going forward, physical media didn't have a future and it seemed like a solution looking for a problem. In the fight between Bluray and HD-DVD, it was MP3 that won.

Please tell me you meant mp4?

[paulrockliffe]

GeneralSinn said:

To a local charity shop, they sold the lot over the space of about 6mths and sent me a letter (donations are licked to gift aid etc...) asking if I wanted the cash for them - it was in the region of £800 after them taking a paltry £140ish for their efforts. Naturally I declined as it was for charity originally - I wasn’t even aware charity’s did such!

If you donate goods to a charity, they don't qualify for Gift Aid. You didn't donate the goods, you asked them to act as your agent in selling your goods, which they charged you £140 for. The amount left over was then your money for the sale of your goods, as evidenced by them offering you the money back. Your declination amounts to a separate donation in cash to the charity, which can then be Gift Aided.

Lot of Charities don't understand this nuance and don't do this, but what they did was the correct way to Gift Aid your donation.

[Derek Smith]

captain_cynic said:

This is quite true. In order to be prosecuted for copyright infringement in the UK you have to either be distributing on a massive scale or profiting from (read: selling) copyrighted material.

Format shifting (making a copy) is also quite legal, you would be obligated to destroy it if you ever sold on the original media but even if you didn't, a UK court wouldn't even bother to hear it.

The music (and film) industry loves to tell people they'll be prosecuted for making a copy, but that's just their fantasy that they'd like everyone to believe in.

There was a chap outside the Brighton Centre selling T-shirts and CDs of a famous boy band. We were informed by the band's PA and a PC went along to warn the chap off. He ran. The lads caught him and brought him to the nick. I was called to give permission to search his house. On the desk were two T-shirts, one the 'official merchandise, the other the bootlegged one. The chap had bought white T-shirts from Asda and they were much better quality than the official rubbish, and about a third of the price.

At his flat we found banks of CD copying gubbins, all brought back to the nick. A good job - except the PA refused to support a prosecution, saying it wasn't worth his time. No-one, we were told, in the 'business' would bother. So we gave back to the offender all his gear so that he could continue copying CDs. All those hours of documentation and search wasted.

That's when I researched the legislation and found that one is allowed to copy CDs and DVDs for one's own use.

I now use a proprietary ripper, WinX professional (or similar name). It was cheap enough, very quick and with an intuitive UI. I recommend it.

I hardly use it now as I've copied most of my DVDs.

I would have thought that Netflix, Prime et al would have put an end to bootlegged DVDs.

I've nicked, processed and supervised loads of drug arrests in my time and not one of them professed an interest in bootlegged music and films. I don't know which drug cartel can't make enough selling coke to druggies but I would have thought few would have looked at the prices of bootlegged DVDs at a Sunday bootfair and thought; That's the way to go.

[Bullett]

I would have thought that buying bootleg videos and music was dead. It's all available online and for free if you look.

You can only make home copies if you don't break any copy protection.

[kingston12]

I'm a bit of an anomaly here.

I buy quite a lot of CDs and UHD Blu-rays but all are ripped to my NAS and put away immediately. On the other hand, I have a large (and growing) collection of records which I listen to all the time.


The legal side does bother me a bit, as I'd like to get rid of the physical CDs and Blu-rays altogether but that seems a stupid thing to do given that would make it illegal to keep the copies I have made. I know that nothing would ever become of this in terms of enforcement, but still...

[kingston12]

Bullett said:

You can only make home copies if you don't break any copy protection.

I've always been a bit confused about the law in this situation:

If I have an album on CD, rip it to my NAS, dispose of the CD I ripped it from, BUT I still own the same album on vinyl.

Where would I stand?

I do appreciate it when a vinyl album comes with the CD version included or a link to a lossless download, but relatively few do so.

[LimaDelta]

kingston12 said:

Where would I stand?

Alone on plain of loneliness, as the only person who would care about such a trifling matter.

[kingston12]

LimaDelta said:

Alone on plain of loneliness, as the only person who would care about such a trifling matter.

That is probably very true! It just seems strange have spent many thousands of pounds on something that I could feasibly then be accused of possessing illegally.

[bakerstreet]

bloomen said:

Makemkv is the one. I've never had anything mention DRM with that.

A DVD uncompressed will come out about 2-4 gb with that.

I used Xmedia recode to compress if needed, and sometimes DVDs need the frame trimming as they can have artefacts on the borders. Xmedia can do that too.

If find it faster and more user friendly than Handbrake.

What hardware and OS did you use? I've thought about buying an old iMac and maxing the RAM and adding a SSD purely for ripping DVDs

[anonymous-user]

Don't own any DVDs (or blurays for that matter) as I left them behind when I got divorced and never missed them. Also left behind all my CD's and eventually got back the ones the ex wife didn't actually want. Put them all in a CD wallet, threw the cases away and they now live in the car.

The only way I have of playing any physical media is a DVD player in my 7 year old laptop and the CD player in my 12 year old Shed.

I suspect that when I buy a new laptop and finally own a car with bluetooth/USB I will have no phyical media whatsoever.

[bloomen]

Bullett said:

I would have thought that buying bootleg videos and music was dead. It's all available online and for free if you look.

You can only make home copies if you don't break any copy protection.

A mate of mine still buys bootleg DVDs. A bunch of mongolians or something go round the pubs in Coventry selling them from carrier bags.

Unfortunately every time he triumphantly gets one out I have literally never heard of a single one of any of the films. Maybe the mongolians make them themselves.

Derek Smith said:

I would have thought that Netflix, Prime et al would have put an end to bootlegged DVDs.

Not when they disappear or are reclaimed by the original rights holders. With Netflix I watch what turns up. If I actually want to see something specific the chances are very high it's not on there.

[bloomen]

kingston12 said:

I've always been a bit confused about the law in this situation:

If I have an album on CD, rip it to my NAS, dispose of the CD I ripped it from, BUT I still own the same album on vinyl.

Where would I stand?

I do appreciate it when a vinyl album comes with the CD version included or a link to a lossless download, but relatively few do so.

I would assume when you paid for the CD and the vinyl you bought the right to listen to that music using them as the vehicle to do it for the eternity of the universe.

Anything beyond that is private copying and that's illegal, not that anyone cares in the slightest. It looks like exempting private copying was considered for a while but was overturned by a few bodies like musician's unions.

[GetCarter]

kingston12 said:

Anything beyond that is private copying and that's illegal, not that anyone cares in the slightest. It looks like exempting private copying was considered for a while but was overturned by a few bodies like musician's unions.

Believe me, we care, and that is not true!

[kingston12]

bloomen said:

Anything beyond that is private copying and that's illegal, not that anyone cares in the slightest. It looks like exempting private copying was considered for a while but was overturned by a few bodies like musician's unions.

That wasn't my understanding. I thought that if I bought a CD and copied it to my Mac for listening on my own devices, then I was within the law as long as I kept the CD?

[bloomen]

kingston12 said:

That wasn't my understanding. I thought that if I bought a CD and copied it to my Mac for listening on my own devices, then I was within the law as long as I kept the CD?

This may be out of date but that's what this has to say https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#United_Kingd...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/33566933/rip...

[kingston12]

bloomen said:

This may be out of date but that's what this has to say https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#United_Kingd...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/33566933/rip...

Thanks. Actually enforcing that would surely lead to the even faster demise of physical media, especially CDs. I buy them for two reasons - firstly because it is the best way of getting a lossless AIFF file onto my NAS rather than paying to download an MP3, and secondly they are often much cheaper than the MP3 anyway (£0.01 plus postage at Amazon).

I'd never buy them (regardless of price) if I had to actually physically listen to them (no CD player in the car, no Discman for the train!).

[GeneralSinn]

paulrockliffe said:

GeneralSinn said:

To a local charity shop, they sold the lot over the space of about 6mths and sent me a letter (donations are licked to gift aid etc...) asking if I wanted the cash for them - it was in the region of £800 after them taking a paltry £140ish for their efforts. Naturally I declined as it was for charity originally - I wasn’t even aware charity’s did such!

If you donate goods to a charity, they don't qualify for Gift Aid. You didn't donate the goods, you asked them to act as your agent in selling your goods, which they charged you £140 for. The amount left over was then your money for the sale of your goods, as evidenced by them offering you the money back. Your declination amounts to a separate donation in cash to the charity, which can then be Gift Aided.

Lot of Charities don't understand this nuance and don't do this, but what they did was the correct way to Gift Aid your donation.

Ahhh makes perfect sense then ... yeah the old dear volunteering in the shop definitely didn’t articulate that to me at all!

[rxtx]

GetCarter said:

Believe me, we care, and that is not true!

Nobody else cares though. Personally I still buy CDs (mostly from Bleep), I get an instant lossless download and the CD arrives in the post a couple of days later. I pop the CD safely away unopened, but I most certainly don't get rid of them. Why would I? Often it comes with nice artwork or something, I like that.

[stemll]

bakerstreet said:

bloomen said:

Makemkv is the one. I've never had anything mention DRM with that.

A DVD uncompressed will come out about 2-4 gb with that.

I used Xmedia recode to compress if needed, and sometimes DVDs need the frame trimming as they can have artefacts on the borders. Xmedia can do that too.

If find it faster and more user friendly than Handbrake.

What hardware and OS did you use? I've thought about buying an old iMac and maxing the RAM and adding a SSD purely for ripping DVDs

MakeMKV will run on Windows or Mac and is free (need to download a new copy every month or so but still free). No need for loads of RAM or an SSD, I've run it on my 2012 Macbook Pro for years. If you want to transcode it to MP4 using Xmedia or Handbrake (available for Mac, Xmedia doesn't appear to be) then you might notice a difference but probably not. I didn't see any improvement in speed from either MakeMKV or Handbrake when I upped the RAM and put an SSD in the Macbook. MakeMKV takes 20 minutes or so, Handbrake takes pretty much however long the film is.