So my family has a few containers of unused blank dvds that are just lying around collecting dust. i know dvds are almost useless because of streaming, but can they still be used. Theses dvds can only be written to once and they only have like 3 gb of storage on them, can they still be used?, do they have a use?
If ya got a DVD player that can read MP4 or Mkv files I’d drop an entire season of 1080p encoded TV shows on a disc. Something that isn’t High Def to begin with like DS9 or old shows so you aren’t missing out on pixel quality.
My mom’s standalone Blu-ray player can read discs with a bunch of files on it and play it and so does my Xbox a bit. Just figure out what it likes and try to download that OR re encode it with Handbrake or something.
Put em in a CD binder for a rainy day when the Internet is out or don’t wanna pay for streaming for a bit.
Something that isn’t High Def to begin with like DS9
Dont mind me, I’ll be crying in the corner here with my dashed hopes of DS9 ever getting re-mastered.
I think it’ll happen eventually. I was shocked when B5 got the sprucing up that it did. The tools to do even a semi-remaster are getting better and cheaper and generative AI is making it a much less labor intensive proposition.
Iirc, part of the problem is that DS9 was filmed on standard definition video, which you can’t really upscale without things getting weird or ugly. TNG was recorded on film, which can be scanned in high resolution.
I don’t think you can fit that many hours of 1080p MP4 on a ~5.4GB disc. In descent quality I would guess 6 hours or less.
Yeah after I posted I remember TV seasons back then had more than 10 episodes.
You’re right gonna have to split that shit across discs.
More I think about it the less useful DVDRs get and I own a DVD burner. That I don’t use.
When I was a kid we used to hurl them as high as we could straight up in the air. The fun was trying to avoid being hit by it on the way down!
I have seen people hang them from string in fruit trees to ward off birds. 😆
Backup photos. Burn Linux isos. Shoot with a shotgun. Maybe donate to a school or library?
Not really for you unless they are unopened and still in their original packaging but engineering compsnies still use Floppies, CDs, and DVDs, for some of their equipment. I have had requests for floppies and DVDs for oscilloscopes for example.
If you have a DVD player or your desktop and/or laptop has a disc drive (or you got a USB disc drive) you can turn them into CDs if you are feeling retro.
Or if you happen to have some videos, you can use some DVD authoring software to make a DVD of them. It’s good if you happen to somehow have the episode files for your favorite TV show. ;)
I haven’t bought a CD in well over a decade but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to think of CDs as retro lol
Considering there are children out there that don’t know what a CD is because of streaming, I’d assume that DVDs and CDs are old enough to be retro.
And I only know there are some that don’t know what a CD/DVD is because of r€ddit posts.
I used them as extra photo backups in case my device and server and backup were to be destroyed. They are cheap and provide an extra option just in case. They are not great for really long but ive found if taken care of they can last for years and they are cheap too so why not take advantage.
The capacity is quite poor though, blu-ray is MUCH better but burners/players are more expensive and I guess the same is true for the discs.
1080p movies can be encoded down to < 3 GB
kinda nice to just pop a disc in the bluray player and know that you won’t be shown ads, recommendations for the latest capeshit, or be upsold to the next tier… just the movie and nothing else
You can put them in a microwave and watch cool designs appear as you destroy them. I remember my siblings and I used to do this with old demo discs that were destined for the trash anyway.
(Disclaimer: this is more of a joke, not an actual recommendation)
frisbee
If Aerosmith’s Revolution X taught me anything it’s that cds are explosive when fired by uzi, so, that. DVDs are somewhere between cds and laserdisc, so I’d say you can expect a moderate explosion.
