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!
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.
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!