What's your approach to disc-only games?

[Retrodude]

Blu Ray rips would be murder on HDD space!

Not as much as you'd think. The few I've downloaded are 1-2 GB apiece if it's just the movie, so if you have a large HDD like I do (I invested in a 3 TB awhile back so I wouldn't have to buy another HDD for quite awhile), it's not a big deal.

[AppleQueso]

Blu Ray rips would be murder on HDD space!

Not as much as you'd think. The few I've downloaded are 1-2 GB apiece if it's just the movie, so if you have a large HDD like I do (I invested in a 3 TB awhile back so I wouldn't have to buy another HDD for quite awhile), it's not a big deal.

You can only get it that small if you first rip and then re-encode every movie. That will take an insane amount of time. We're talking 10-20 hours per movie for the re-encode, which would add up REALLY quick. Plus, you'd be losing a bit of quality from the compression. The way I see it, if I'm going to lose quality, there's not much point to doing it, I might as well just use my discs.

I would want to keep all of my rips lossless.

[Retrodude]

You can only get it that small if you first rip and then re-encode every movie. That will take an insane amount of time. We're talking 10-20 hours per movie for the re-encode, which would add up REALLY quick.

That's why I download them. Let someone else do the work for me.

[SNKnicotine]

I try to get complete in box games for the most part (even if it’s a couple dollars more),but if a game is rare and the difference in cost is huge or I just can’t find one with a case. I opt for disc only.
I actually got Rule of rose For free in a buy 2 get one free deal, all i did was print its insert and (to me) it’s as good as new although I would like to get my hands on the case.

[AppleQueso]

You can only get it that small if you first rip and then re-encode every movie. That will take an insane amount of time. We're talking 10-20 hours per movie for the re-encode, which would add up REALLY quick.

That's why I download them. Let someone else do the work for me.

Fair enough, but like I said, lossless or bust if I do this.

How long until we have 10TB drives?

[isiolia]

Fair enough, but like I said, lossless or bust if I do this.

How long until we have 10TB drives?

Probably not for another few years. Last I saw they were anticipating 6TB drives in 2014 or so based on platter densities possible with tech demoed late last year. There has been tech demoed that could give us 60TB drives eventually though.

[fastbilly1]

Fair enough, but like I said, lossless or bust if I do this.

How long until we have 10TB drives?

Probably not for another few years. Last I saw they were anticipating 6TB drives in 2014 or so based on platter densities possible with tech demoed late last year. There has been tech demoed that could give us 60TB drives eventually though.

My friends at WD have said we might get 6tbs late this year, but they wont be affordable for awhile.

[Hatta]

All the BluRay rips I see are like 6-12 gigs. I don't see how you'd encode them down to 1-2 gigs without scaling the resolution down, which defeats the point of getting BluRay. Perversely, I do exactly that with the BluRay rips I download. I can't find any good movie trackers that specialize in SD video, all the good trackers are all about HD it seems. So I joined an HD tracker, and transcode to SD mpeg4 to play on my oXbox.

But to stay on topic, I'm with fastbilly. I play disc games from CDRs and hard disks. Disc only games provide no added value, and complete games feel like a burden to care for. I want to play, not curate.

I do buy cart games, but it's getting harder to justify with the availability of flash carts. I almost never touch my Atari 2600 games anymore, and I'd just as soon get rid of them. But it took a decade to find those 350 unique carts at good prices, and I'd feel bad about parting with them, even though I'd probably make a decent profit.

[k.vlaros]

I only consider CIB disc games (GC and Wii). I agree that the condition in the wild is very often disappointing. Fortunately for my little niche of collecting, a good portion is still available new or nearly-new. I've also returned a rather large number of eBay purchases that were listed as like new and had multiple disc scratches (eBay defines what the catagory levels entail for video games and CDs). I've also bought used first-print copies and new Player's Choice copies to use the new disc with the old box art.

As for binders, I swapped over to them a year ago and I'm paranoid they might be leaving tiny micro swirls on the discs, especially the GC ones. I bought one of the gel scratch remover kits (name brand) that was reccomend in an older RB thread and didn't get great results. I later sent in a Windwaker / Master Quest disc set in to one of the larger disc refin places and for under ten bucks they DID make the game playable, but the finish was not mirror-like and some of the wet polish residue remained along the edge of the disc. What I want to move all my desks next too are cshell/discsavers slim cases and a shoebox or three.

But what I thought the thread would be about was disc rot. That really does give me the creeps. If I notice more than one or two GC games develop that in the coming years, I'll immediately figure out whatever is required to hack a Wii and rip my collection to USB. But so far that hasn't come up for me.

[FerretGamer]

But what I thought the thread would be about was disc rot. That really does give me the creeps. If I notice more than one or two GC games develop that in the coming years, I'll immediately figure out whatever is required to hack a Wii and rip my collection to USB. But so far that hasn't come up for me.

That worries me as well. Mostly because I'd like my collection to be enjoyed by either my family or gamers in the coming generations. I treat my collection not only as something to collect, play, and look at but also as a piece of history to preserve. Unfortunately, we also don't know the true life span of any of these storage formats, which is why backups, emulation, etc are all so important to our hobby.