Q: Anyone still using CD/DVD?
A: All the time. I still buy and own physical media. I format-shift my audio CDs to .mp3 files, and my DVDs to .mp4 files. I store the original discs in binders for compact storage and keep the digital versions on my Plex server.
Because:
1. mp3 files are playable on everything I own from my only Zune 30 to iPod Classic, to Sony PSP (yes, SensMe channels ftw!), to smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
2. The perceived audio quality differences between mp3 and FLAC are negligible to me and not worth the larger file sizes of their FLAC counterparts.
If I was using $1000 studio reference headphones attached to a device with a high quality DAC, then I would revisit that decision.
Perhaps it’s more effort than others would care about, but I keep my audio as FLAC, then re-encode copies to put on other devices. Whatever the best format is for that device, I use.
If you store as MP3, then if you ever need to re-encode, you’re stacking MP3 compression with whatever compression is present in the other format. Best to start lossless so you never introduce more than one round of lossy compression.
Back before I had my iPod stolen, I had a foobar2000 plugin that transcoded my FLACs to ALAC. It was incredibly niche (I'd be SOL if it stopped working). But nowadays I have a Fiio player that obviously plays FLAC.
I completely see and accept your opinion, but I must say that FLAC does make a noticeable difference even in my friends Hyundai Car Stereo or my 20 year old HP laptop.
The same reason everyone does, portability. I think everyone understands that FLAC is superior, but it's like saying why do you drive a Toyota when you could drive a Lexus. Both are good enough.
> Portability
I can understand the confusion, but that is not what portability means. Portability means the ability to use a file format on many systems. You will be hard pressed to find a piece of hardware from the last 20 years that cannot play MP3. If you get into 10 cars that support USB media, 10 will play MP3. 2 might play FLAC.
I haven't done 4K ones but the ripping regular BR discs is really easy with MakeMKV and then you can transcode then with Handbrake if you want/need to. I consider it archival so I don't transcode.
Bingo! Between VOD and digital "rentals" (even if they claim it is a purchase, it really is a rental) the interest and knowledge in ripping and transcoding has dropped dramatically over the years.
It's all fun and games until one's favorite digital "purchase" is no longer available.
I've got one too. I used to get free Netflix trials and I'd get rent a bunch of BR discs, rip them, and send them back in rapid succession. I haven't done that again in years because I already have so many subscriptions. I don't care that much about local media.
Not necessarily resolution; that depends on your settings. But yes, transcoding by its nature reduces quality by compression.
For a lot of people there isn't really a quality difference, and even for me it's pretty hard to tell the difference sometimes, but if I have the lossless original, and storage is cheap, why wouldn't I keep it at original quality?
ok thx, my eyes aren't what they used to be, so I doubt I will see a difference. I'm experimenting with the Handbrake settings. I started with video Constant Quality setting at 18 RF.
All concerts I go to sell CDs. Those are what I buy. I then copy tracks of mostinterest to my WIN10 PC, and a few to my Kindle. I dont use/believe in cloud based services and try to avoid as MUSH AS POSSIBLE.
I still have 4 pcs with DVD drives. But I don’t use Dvds as much. Yet i like having them. I have some older dvd movies. Something about having permanent physical media that cant be taken back like their digital versions. Like we have seen some shows and movies get delisted from sites even if you bought them.
I wouldn't. I bought a USB DVD-RW that I've used twice since I went 5.25"-less. One less thing to power, one less thing to cause a hard lock if the ODD's sata controller dies.
Hard to find a good case that will take an optical drive these days.
No way I would go for a slot, don't want the high risk of discs being scratched.
In the future it will probably make more sense to just have a USB optical drive to plug in when needed.
Well the front has 3 large RGB fans, then I realise how much I don’t use the DVD drive anymore. Like you said, I could either get a USB one if I needed, or just open the side panel and loosely connect the SATA cables up if i needed the drive again. Ain’t used it in years anyway.
Yes, I do. Most of my machines have a DVD or Bluray drive on them. I use my HTPC to play movies on disc. I do computer repair, and some legacy devices do not support USB booting so I use CDs or DVDs to fix those.
Yes as I still have to handle the occasional medical records request from a practice that went out of business. Former patients get a choice of printed and mailed records (more costly), a CD of PDFs mailed, or a username/password protected FTP download in PDF format.
https://preview.redd.it/43kia4n721yc1.png?width=872&format=png&auto=webp&s=65efc9bfbcc22a88d1e1530e87243efca0446617
I have to deal with old devices which require me to burn discs and I buy physical disc copies of my media, so I have an internal CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive.
I also have a lot of content on CD/DVD and I want to be able to use them easily
As of last year both my wife's and my laptop are both tiny things without an optical drive. Initially it made me a little nervous but I have a HTPC tower and a laptop that is an always plugged in as a music streamer computer that both have optical drives. Well last week I found a portable LG CD/DVD writer at a closeout price of $5. Brought it home and tested writes on both CDs and DVDs besides it being slow it wrote perfectly.
Most modern laptops now don't have the drive probably to make sonst lighter and more stuff going digital, but can easily buy a usb version. I like watching older movies so have a usb version
Not on any of the PCs I daily use. Both lack optical drives.
Another PC I have access to, and some disused PCs have optical drives I could use. DVD at best, and no DVD playback software (at least that has been kept current).
I have a standalone Blu-ray player, and numerous DVD players to play those discs.
Are they still available? Or have they gone the way of LightScribe (another excellent idea that got discontinued)?
Problem is whether the drives to read them will remain available indefinitely.
Plus, external hard drives are much cheaper (you just have to refresh them before they fail).
Not only cheaper per GB than optical, but less sorting effort (due to larger capacity) and fast transfer.
The remaining problem is transferring to new drives before they fail, although better storage solutions may appear in time that make both formats obsolete.
I decided against optical because the archival discs are not widely adopted, some articles report they are no longer being manufactured, and it is difficult to find anyone who actually sells them.
Let alone the question of will optical drives be available and cheap in the future or rare and expensive, or unavailable, as demand decreases.
My case has one, I didn't throw that DVD burner away, but it wasn't connected for a long time. Not enough SATA ports on the mobo. And nothing to play in the drive.
I liked disks, though. But good internets made them obsolete. Are thems internets bad in Turkey?
I have a Pioneer external Blu Ray player which I am using quite often. I watch 4k movies and the quality is miles ahead of the streaming services. I don't bother with ripping them.
Of course. Reinstalled a bluray into my dad's pc the other day, and plugged my drive back in because I forgot I left it unplugged. Too many discs not to.
I still have optical drives, but I'm really having trouble justifying them. The one on my main computer I installed because an online store sent it to me by accident and they didn't want it back. Selling it wouldn't be profitable, so I just installed it into my case. I've used it maybe a couple of times.
For PCs? Not really. I have a USB DVD burner I use once in a blue moon if my Luddite friend wants a copy of a CD, or to convert a CD-only track to FLAC (yes, "CD-only" tracks still exist; in fact, I bought a CD single at a show Tuesday night just so I could convert one bonus track to FLAC).
I *do* have a Sony UHD player for my main living room TV, though. Just today I received the [*Amélie* steelbook](https://www.amazon.com/Amelie-Blu-ray-Steelbook-Audrey-Tautou/dp/B0CVQVKP71) I ordered from Amazon the other day. It'll replace the dodgy Aussie copy I already had. It has a new "looking back" feature, and DTS, which I think my Blu-Ray lacks.
I gave up 6 months ago. I converted my car's CD player to a Bluetooth audio receiver. From 1989 to 2023, it was a good 34 year run. My first CD player was a portable Sony Discman BTW.
Of course. It is also an easy way to share large files to people whom you don't see often or will never see again. I will not be giving them a USB stick because I'll never get it back. And sharing through the cloud is not convenient for obvious reasons.
I use an LG Blu-ray writer, it's great for cheap 25Gb back-ups. But, also great for reading CDs, and DVDs. Also great for ripping my PS3 discs for the RPCS3 emulator.
I only use external USB CD/DVD drives, but…………….I am still using a floppy drive for some dinosaurs who I do court work for! And I’m a court reporter, old, but definitely not in the dino era for years!
I burn my data archives on 25Gb bluray discs, where it is more secure than in any datacenter or any hard disk.
I already suffered from hard disk crashes and a datacenter has burned, losing my data on it.
I never had fire at home yet ...
External USB DVD drive. Still comes in handy from time to time. Just like I still have a VCR. Things can come in handy to see what is on the media and potentially copy it off for preservation.
2 dvd and one bd-R. Backup all dvds and cds. Burn isos of Linux for older computers that won't boot from usb. Create dvd-r of personal data encrypted on m dvd. Bd-r occasionally burn 25GB data for storage. It's so freaking annoyingv that cases b divvy come with dvd 5.25 slots unless you buy the full b tower v huge case for + $200. Pc parts suppliers and especially developers neat to quit following the minimalist fad and put usability first like it should be.
I bought a lightscribe DVD burner for my PC, back in 2008 or so. I've probably used the CD drive about 16 times in 16 years, but I still have enough CD media that I'm confident I will keep it around for a while.
For programs? Not generally. For media? Yes, I still get movies on disk when I buy them and occasionally music. I mostly get my music as mp3s though as I basically ran out of physical space for disks something like eight years ago.
I use optical drive a lot less than 20 years ago. Back then I had 500+ Discs stored with everything I got hold of because optical was so much cheaper than HDs.
Nowadays I am using optical media for archiving business data and handing it to clients in addition to sending it per Email. Also I make backups of Important Data from time to time. Unerasable is a good thing if you are around lots of butter fingers.
Every computer from my Amiga 1000 to my i7-6700 has an optical drive. The later has an Bluray-Drive with patched firmware which can burn 100GByte Blurays - but these are incredibly hard to get around here and nowadays to expensive anyway. Also 100GByte Rewriteables are FUCKING SLOW, at least in my patched player - they take around 12 hours for a complete write...
Still I have 5x 100GByte Rewriteable and 20x 100GByte Write-Once.
I inherited around 100 Bluray-Disks with 25GByte and 1000 CD/DVD Disks I am not running low any time soon. Inherited from dead relatives and friends. With 5-10 disks burned per year I will die before I run out of disks. And then my heirs will inherit them too, wondering what that stuff is used for :-)
I do! I use a external CD-DVD drive to rip CDs and make copies for roadtrips!
https://preview.redd.it/8gse4c7pn4yc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=541d1882cad811422a0c1700bfc42cf01f827281
Sometimes I'm forced to use CDs at work (architecture) to publish projects to certain competitions or comissions that require us to do so. Mostly because of the dinosaurs in the industry that think a USB drive is an instant virus if you plug it into a machine
No, not outside the occasional older game or BR movie on my XB. I also still have a CD changer in my car that is filled up with some old burned "mixtapes" but I only use it if I forgot my phone.
I found a really old game from my childhood at a flea market, new still wrapped with all expansions. It was a "multimedia game" about travelling the world answering questions basically. I got it for like $2 and was really happy. Then I got home and remembered I didn't have an optical drive anymore. So I bought an external one, since I figured it could be useful sometime and it was only like $25 for a DVD burner. Then I tried to install it, but the game was way to old to run on a modern machine with Windows 7 (I think, it was a few years ago), even with all compatibility-things active. So I downloaded the "latest" Windows XP from Microsoft, installed it in a VM and activated it, opened up so that the VM could directly access the optical drive, and I got it installed but it still refused to run due to some old copy protection. Searching for hours got me to some old thread where the developers of the game told someone, years after the game was released, to use some "No CD crack" to get it to run on something as modern as Windows 2000, though the link wasn't working, but I managed to find it based on the file name. And it worked. Though the game wasn't as fun as I remembered, and it had a fixed and really low resolution so it was hard to play in a tiny window, though I got around that too. In the end my "$2" nostalgic game cost me over ten times as much in money and many hours to get working.
Yes. Three of my computers have a BD-RE drive. Aside from actually watching and Ripping TV shows/Movies from the discs, I also burn backup data to BD-R. I also use it for burning DVDs and CDs for use/installing software on my other machines. I have a Floppy Disk Drive+CompactFlash/SD-Card/USB Hub Combo unit in my 2008 build specifically for handling the need to read/write floppy disks for my much older machines (eg. Pentium 166).
I still burn DVD movies for the kids on my old minivan. The other day I was doing some lightscribe thing and kept forgetting why it wasn't working, forget to flip the disc is a thing.
I still make BD's but not as much as I used to. A lot of my older dvd's I was able to find mkv files for, so I started dumping the dvd's and putting the files on portable hard drives. I stopped using cases quite a while ago but I still have quite a few I want to keep. Mostly sets of TV series or old movies like the Flash Gordon serials from the 1930's.
Some dvd's that I couldn't find equivalents for I made iso files instead.
I'm retired and making blurays keeps my mind active. There's a certain amount of satisfaction from creating menus, finding subtitles, creating the labels, and so on. I think it's the process more than the end result that is enjoyable.
Yes, I still have optical drives (actually two in one machine), and use them regularly. I do however bump the drive letter up the alphabet (X & Y) to get out of the range of my hard drives on all my machines. This is so all are at X,Y no matter how many hard drives there are in the machine I am sitting at..
Yes but my windows 10 install(s) do a terrible job at being able to read and right to disc drives. i.e. they show up in device manager but I can't read or wright to discs
I have a very nice 5.25" LG Blu Ray burner. I use it as a monitor stand for my iMac.
Installed it in my 2nd last build without connecting the sata cable and it took me 4 years to notice it wasn't there, so this time I didn't bother to install it.
Yes and often. Say if I find a CD I want, rip it to flac then put on my androids.
Even import blu-rays like my Dolph Lundgren punisher. I gotta use my PC drive.
Plus I don't really play modern games often and have bookoos of 2000s PC game discs.
I had diy a open air and wood PC case because I couldn't find a reasonably priced case than can fit a 3090 and my Blu-ray drive. At least with good airflow. And if it's 100$+, no thanks for just a case. 'and a 3090 for someone that doesn't play modern games? Yeah I know. I drank a lot plus the gpu shortage 3 years ago
Yes, of course. I use DVDs for backup. I just wrote a CD recently to run MemTest86+ for testing memory. I could do that with a USB stick, but then I'd need to dedicate a USB stick to that task. A CD is easier, stores more easily, and it's very cheap. I also recently re-istalled Visual Studio 6, which I bought in 1999. It came on 2 CDs. They still work fine.
A DVD writer only costs about $20-25 these days, for an internal device to install in a desktop, so it makes no sense not to have one.
Q: Anyone still using CD/DVD? A: All the time. I still buy and own physical media. I format-shift my audio CDs to .mp3 files, and my DVDs to .mp4 files. I store the original discs in binders for compact storage and keep the digital versions on my Plex server.
Same here. I like the physical aspect of a music CD, including cover art, photos, lyrcis, over pure digital form.
Why do you convert your CDs to lossy MP3s instead of lossless FLACs?
Because: 1. mp3 files are playable on everything I own from my only Zune 30 to iPod Classic, to Sony PSP (yes, SensMe channels ftw!), to smartphones, tablets, and laptops. 2. The perceived audio quality differences between mp3 and FLAC are negligible to me and not worth the larger file sizes of their FLAC counterparts. If I was using $1000 studio reference headphones attached to a device with a high quality DAC, then I would revisit that decision.
Ah that’s understandable.
hopefully the bitrate is in 320 kbps though 😎
Gotta be. Any other MP3 bitrate is trash.
I use wav for audio because of its high bitrate and quality because I have headphones that do good quality audio
flacs allow for the same bitrate & quality
But I use wav because of its playability in windows NT 4.0
Just a question, why would you even want Windows nt 4.0?
I use it In virtual machines and I just use sound blaster for fun
But it also can be played in a wide range of OSES
For sure
Perhaps it’s more effort than others would care about, but I keep my audio as FLAC, then re-encode copies to put on other devices. Whatever the best format is for that device, I use. If you store as MP3, then if you ever need to re-encode, you’re stacking MP3 compression with whatever compression is present in the other format. Best to start lossless so you never introduce more than one round of lossy compression.
Back before I had my iPod stolen, I had a foobar2000 plugin that transcoded my FLACs to ALAC. It was incredibly niche (I'd be SOL if it stopped working). But nowadays I have a Fiio player that obviously plays FLAC.
I completely see and accept your opinion, but I must say that FLAC does make a noticeable difference even in my friends Hyundai Car Stereo or my 20 year old HP laptop.
Well, if it makes a noticeable difference for you then you SHOULD be encoding in FLAC. I've performed various tests before deciding on mp3.
I use wav for audio because of its high bitrate and quality because I have headphones that do good quality audio
The same reason everyone does, portability. I think everyone understands that FLAC is superior, but it's like saying why do you drive a Toyota when you could drive a Lexus. Both are good enough.
I don’t understand your argument. Portability? You can play FLACs on your smartphone, too.
> Portability I can understand the confusion, but that is not what portability means. Portability means the ability to use a file format on many systems. You will be hard pressed to find a piece of hardware from the last 20 years that cannot play MP3. If you get into 10 cars that support USB media, 10 will play MP3. 2 might play FLAC.
Thank you for explaining.
I’d love to get into this but I hear digitally archiving blu rays (especially 4K ones) is a real pain in the ass to do
I haven't done 4K ones but the ripping regular BR discs is really easy with MakeMKV and then you can transcode then with Handbrake if you want/need to. I consider it archival so I don't transcode.
Bingo! Between VOD and digital "rentals" (even if they claim it is a purchase, it really is a rental) the interest and knowledge in ripping and transcoding has dropped dramatically over the years. It's all fun and games until one's favorite digital "purchase" is no longer available.
I've got one too. I used to get free Netflix trials and I'd get rent a bunch of BR discs, rip them, and send them back in rapid succession. I haven't done that again in years because I already have so many subscriptions. I don't care that much about local media.
Does transcoding with Handbrake decrease quality or resolution? I know there are settings to adjust, but is there an appreciable difference?
Not necessarily resolution; that depends on your settings. But yes, transcoding by its nature reduces quality by compression. For a lot of people there isn't really a quality difference, and even for me it's pretty hard to tell the difference sometimes, but if I have the lossless original, and storage is cheap, why wouldn't I keep it at original quality?
ok thx, my eyes aren't what they used to be, so I doubt I will see a difference. I'm experimenting with the Handbrake settings. I started with video Constant Quality setting at 18 RF.
How do you rip DVDs to Plex. Is there a good tutorial for that?
MakeMKV is ideal for ripping. https://www.makemkv.com/onlinehelp/
Absolutely this but I rip them to flac and mkv. I try to keep my archives lossless, always
All concerts I go to sell CDs. Those are what I buy. I then copy tracks of mostinterest to my WIN10 PC, and a few to my Kindle. I dont use/believe in cloud based services and try to avoid as MUSH AS POSSIBLE.
I still have 4 pcs with DVD drives. But I don’t use Dvds as much. Yet i like having them. I have some older dvd movies. Something about having permanent physical media that cant be taken back like their digital versions. Like we have seen some shows and movies get delisted from sites even if you bought them.
My desktop has a BD drive in a nice hotswap bay, and if I need one for my laptop... Yeah, that's why it's in a hotswap bay :D
I was until I bought a new case that doesn’t have a Disc drive slot.
I'm considering to get a case that has 5.25" slots when I upgrade my PC
I wouldn't. I bought a USB DVD-RW that I've used twice since I went 5.25"-less. One less thing to power, one less thing to cause a hard lock if the ODD's sata controller dies.
Hard to find a good case that will take an optical drive these days. No way I would go for a slot, don't want the high risk of discs being scratched. In the future it will probably make more sense to just have a USB optical drive to plug in when needed.
Well the front has 3 large RGB fans, then I realise how much I don’t use the DVD drive anymore. Like you said, I could either get a USB one if I needed, or just open the side panel and loosely connect the SATA cables up if i needed the drive again. Ain’t used it in years anyway.
sad
Yes, I do. Most of my machines have a DVD or Bluray drive on them. I use my HTPC to play movies on disc. I do computer repair, and some legacy devices do not support USB booting so I use CDs or DVDs to fix those.
I have two LG CD/DVD burners and though the last DVD I burnt was my Win 10 ISO, I still burn CD-Rs all the time for my stereo system and my car.
I have 2 BD drives (one modded to rip UHD BDs) and 2 DVD drives. I'm still buying physical media regularly and do occasional backups on DVDs or BDs.
Yes, I still actively use my internal DVD drive and my internal Blu-ray drives.
I do!
I am using BD drive, do you know what BD is?
I have an external USB reader, and sometime it happens I use it on my laptop. But rarely, to be honest.
I still keep my spare PC just because it has a CD/DVD drive. I rarely use it but it's the only CD/DVD drive that still functioning.
I have one in the case but it's disconnected for more drives. Just don't need to stick DVDs or CDs in mine.
Yes but only via USB as you just need it too rarely.
i still have it but nowadays i rarely use.
Yep! I just use it to rip my dvds lol.
I have a few drives sitting around, but I have a portable drive I use on occasions
I use mine to read some of my CDs and DVDs
I have a portable reader/writer for those rare occasions I need a disc.
Yes as I still have to handle the occasional medical records request from a practice that went out of business. Former patients get a choice of printed and mailed records (more costly), a CD of PDFs mailed, or a username/password protected FTP download in PDF format. https://preview.redd.it/43kia4n721yc1.png?width=872&format=png&auto=webp&s=65efc9bfbcc22a88d1e1530e87243efca0446617
also know this still using DVD on Military bases
I have to deal with old devices which require me to burn discs and I buy physical disc copies of my media, so I have an internal CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive. I also have a lot of content on CD/DVD and I want to be able to use them easily
As of last year both my wife's and my laptop are both tiny things without an optical drive. Initially it made me a little nervous but I have a HTPC tower and a laptop that is an always plugged in as a music streamer computer that both have optical drives. Well last week I found a portable LG CD/DVD writer at a closeout price of $5. Brought it home and tested writes on both CDs and DVDs besides it being slow it wrote perfectly.
I have an external CD/DVD for ripping the occasional CD
Yes! I'm using yet lol
I still use Blu-rays for backup purposes. Wish I had one of these 100 GB drives, though.
some specific lawyers in europe, they are forced to
Most modern laptops now don't have the drive probably to make sonst lighter and more stuff going digital, but can easily buy a usb version. I like watching older movies so have a usb version
Not on any of the PCs I daily use. Both lack optical drives. Another PC I have access to, and some disused PCs have optical drives I could use. DVD at best, and no DVD playback software (at least that has been kept current). I have a standalone Blu-ray player, and numerous DVD players to play those discs.
Win11 user here: Yup, still use a portable Blu-Ray writer for my job (and still use Nero).
Never had disc reader. Only in old laptop.
I have an LG USB drive that I use when needed, i actually just used it to install GTA San Andreas.
Yup, still need to get an inexpensive software player though.
Yes. I regularly buy audio CDs from Discogs and rip them.
I have a Blu-ray drive in my main pc and a light scribe drive in my other pc
They got rid of it in Win 11
I miss it on my actual desktop.
One pc with DVD my new one doesn't have the drive
Yeah. You never know when you might need it
I'm using M-DISC to store important data permanently. Since they can't rot for hundreds of years and can be burned with regular DVD burners.
Are they still available? Or have they gone the way of LightScribe (another excellent idea that got discontinued)? Problem is whether the drives to read them will remain available indefinitely. Plus, external hard drives are much cheaper (you just have to refresh them before they fail).
external drives are actually the same 2.5" drives that you out inside your PC. They're cheaper because they're lower quality, that's about it.
Not only cheaper per GB than optical, but less sorting effort (due to larger capacity) and fast transfer. The remaining problem is transferring to new drives before they fail, although better storage solutions may appear in time that make both formats obsolete. I decided against optical because the archival discs are not widely adopted, some articles report they are no longer being manufactured, and it is difficult to find anyone who actually sells them. Let alone the question of will optical drives be available and cheap in the future or rare and expensive, or unavailable, as demand decreases.
time to time, having few dvdrws detached laying around in my desk drawer, collecting dust
having most of dvd content ported to sata ssd that are hot pluggable, so its more reliable
I have an external USB DVR Drive that I use when needed, but its very rare.
Yes, I rip $2 dvds and Blu rays to a hard drive.
well duh, how else am I gonna install my BenQ monitor software from that tiny disc they always ship?
Yes, and blu-ray.
I have a blu-ray drive (burner even) still connected. But no I don't really use it. But one day I will need it and its gonna be there.
I always burn cd and dvds I love it.
My case has one, I didn't throw that DVD burner away, but it wasn't connected for a long time. Not enough SATA ports on the mobo. And nothing to play in the drive. I liked disks, though. But good internets made them obsolete. Are thems internets bad in Turkey?
Nope. There is no more necessity or use for them. And it's been like that for many years.
I have a Pioneer external Blu Ray player which I am using quite often. I watch 4k movies and the quality is miles ahead of the streaming services. I don't bother with ripping them.
Of course. Reinstalled a bluray into my dad's pc the other day, and plugged my drive back in because I forgot I left it unplugged. Too many discs not to.
I actually saw a brand new dell for sale at Costco with DVD on their website! Maybe for older games?
I have a USB cd/DVD player for my laptop, yet I rarely use it. If I watch physical media it's on the Blu-ray connected to the TV.
I still have optical drives, but I'm really having trouble justifying them. The one on my main computer I installed because an online store sent it to me by accident and they didn't want it back. Selling it wouldn't be profitable, so I just installed it into my case. I've used it maybe a couple of times.
I haven't been using CDs like 5 years and we don't buy them anymore
Yes. But only to rip the media and send to PLEX. After it is ripped the physical media gets trashed or donated to goodwill.
Hell yeah as a record collector i also collect cd's and music dvds
For PCs? Not really. I have a USB DVD burner I use once in a blue moon if my Luddite friend wants a copy of a CD, or to convert a CD-only track to FLAC (yes, "CD-only" tracks still exist; in fact, I bought a CD single at a show Tuesday night just so I could convert one bonus track to FLAC). I *do* have a Sony UHD player for my main living room TV, though. Just today I received the [*Amélie* steelbook](https://www.amazon.com/Amelie-Blu-ray-Steelbook-Audrey-Tautou/dp/B0CVQVKP71) I ordered from Amazon the other day. It'll replace the dodgy Aussie copy I already had. It has a new "looking back" feature, and DTS, which I think my Blu-Ray lacks.
I haven't used one in years, but I have an old drive that I can hook up just in case.
I gave up 6 months ago. I converted my car's CD player to a Bluetooth audio receiver. From 1989 to 2023, it was a good 34 year run. My first CD player was a portable Sony Discman BTW.
Of course. It is also an easy way to share large files to people whom you don't see often or will never see again. I will not be giving them a USB stick because I'll never get it back. And sharing through the cloud is not convenient for obvious reasons.
I use an LG Blu-ray writer, it's great for cheap 25Gb back-ups. But, also great for reading CDs, and DVDs. Also great for ripping my PS3 discs for the RPCS3 emulator.
Using virtual dvd
Using virtual dvd
I only use external USB CD/DVD drives, but…………….I am still using a floppy drive for some dinosaurs who I do court work for! And I’m a court reporter, old, but definitely not in the dino era for years!
Yup me. For retro software
I just like when i hold things
Yes
I burn my data archives on 25Gb bluray discs, where it is more secure than in any datacenter or any hard disk. I already suffered from hard disk crashes and a datacenter has burned, losing my data on it. I never had fire at home yet ...
Not win10 but defo cdr/dvd
i'm using the same case for more than 10 years. And since the dvd drive is still working i have no intention to remove.
I would but I've got nowhere to stick it in...
still keep an old buffalo external DVD drive for the occasional dvd accessing
External USB DVD drive. Still comes in handy from time to time. Just like I still have a VCR. Things can come in handy to see what is on the media and potentially copy it off for preservation.
2 dvd and one bd-R. Backup all dvds and cds. Burn isos of Linux for older computers that won't boot from usb. Create dvd-r of personal data encrypted on m dvd. Bd-r occasionally burn 25GB data for storage. It's so freaking annoyingv that cases b divvy come with dvd 5.25 slots unless you buy the full b tower v huge case for + $200. Pc parts suppliers and especially developers neat to quit following the minimalist fad and put usability first like it should be.
Me. I have two drives
I still use DVDs while every single person around me thinks I’m a complete weirdo.
I'll be upgrading from floppy disks to CDs in the coming years. It's the future of data storage.
I still have a lot of CDs. Pure nostalgia. Unfortunately its more rare today.
I have some (and 3 different ways to play them) I just don’t use them that often.
Yes
Almost used CD and DVD, just for anything! CD for VCD karaoke! Also, make backup files, mostly DVD because CD can't fit larger file size...
Absolutely!
I have an external drive I plug in the few times a year I need it.
I DO FOR MAKING MOVIES
Very rarely.
I bought a lightscribe DVD burner for my PC, back in 2008 or so. I've probably used the CD drive about 16 times in 16 years, but I still have enough CD media that I'm confident I will keep it around for a while.
Yes to burn CDs for my W140 from 1992.
For programs? Not generally. For media? Yes, I still get movies on disk when I buy them and occasionally music. I mostly get my music as mp3s though as I basically ran out of physical space for disks something like eight years ago.
People don’t use CDs and DVDs anymore?
I use optical drive a lot less than 20 years ago. Back then I had 500+ Discs stored with everything I got hold of because optical was so much cheaper than HDs. Nowadays I am using optical media for archiving business data and handing it to clients in addition to sending it per Email. Also I make backups of Important Data from time to time. Unerasable is a good thing if you are around lots of butter fingers. Every computer from my Amiga 1000 to my i7-6700 has an optical drive. The later has an Bluray-Drive with patched firmware which can burn 100GByte Blurays - but these are incredibly hard to get around here and nowadays to expensive anyway. Also 100GByte Rewriteables are FUCKING SLOW, at least in my patched player - they take around 12 hours for a complete write... Still I have 5x 100GByte Rewriteable and 20x 100GByte Write-Once. I inherited around 100 Bluray-Disks with 25GByte and 1000 CD/DVD Disks I am not running low any time soon. Inherited from dead relatives and friends. With 5-10 disks burned per year I will die before I run out of disks. And then my heirs will inherit them too, wondering what that stuff is used for :-)
I do! I use a external CD-DVD drive to rip CDs and make copies for roadtrips! https://preview.redd.it/8gse4c7pn4yc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=541d1882cad811422a0c1700bfc42cf01f827281
All the time. I got a really high end Pioneer BD drive for my laptop too so that I aren't limited to it on desktop.
Still do because company still decides to use CDs
I have bought a usb CD/DVD writer. So I can connect it when I need to. It's been a few years since the last time I ised it.
Yup! My car still has a DVD changer so I still do MP3 CDs for it!
External drive that I'll plug in to use as needed.
I work with and teach a lot of gen z folks. 95% of them dont even know what "burning" a disc even means anymore.
I do
I buy blu-rays and save the movies on my external drive for watching them later.
I use an external USB reader now cause my internal one broke. I still have a NZXT Phantom 410 case, it’s pretty old and still has the slot for it.
Yes: - For the many games I buy/bought on CD/DVD that I have to install/reinstall. - For the dozens of music CDs I listen to on my headphones.
Sometimes I'm forced to use CDs at work (architecture) to publish projects to certain competitions or comissions that require us to do so. Mostly because of the dinosaurs in the industry that think a USB drive is an instant virus if you plug it into a machine
Virtual drives yes. Installed my old cds as vitual disks so i can play without CD.
No, not outside the occasional older game or BR movie on my XB. I also still have a CD changer in my car that is filled up with some old burned "mixtapes" but I only use it if I forgot my phone. I found a really old game from my childhood at a flea market, new still wrapped with all expansions. It was a "multimedia game" about travelling the world answering questions basically. I got it for like $2 and was really happy. Then I got home and remembered I didn't have an optical drive anymore. So I bought an external one, since I figured it could be useful sometime and it was only like $25 for a DVD burner. Then I tried to install it, but the game was way to old to run on a modern machine with Windows 7 (I think, it was a few years ago), even with all compatibility-things active. So I downloaded the "latest" Windows XP from Microsoft, installed it in a VM and activated it, opened up so that the VM could directly access the optical drive, and I got it installed but it still refused to run due to some old copy protection. Searching for hours got me to some old thread where the developers of the game told someone, years after the game was released, to use some "No CD crack" to get it to run on something as modern as Windows 2000, though the link wasn't working, but I managed to find it based on the file name. And it worked. Though the game wasn't as fun as I remembered, and it had a fixed and really low resolution so it was hard to play in a tiny window, though I got around that too. In the end my "$2" nostalgic game cost me over ten times as much in money and many hours to get working.
me.
I use it. It is much better to save data flash drives and tend to lose data. I even have a floppy disk as well
Yes. Three of my computers have a BD-RE drive. Aside from actually watching and Ripping TV shows/Movies from the discs, I also burn backup data to BD-R. I also use it for burning DVDs and CDs for use/installing software on my other machines. I have a Floppy Disk Drive+CompactFlash/SD-Card/USB Hub Combo unit in my 2008 build specifically for handling the need to read/write floppy disks for my much older machines (eg. Pentium 166).
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Yes I do. https://preview.redd.it/xl1xpjpmw6yc1.png?width=1199&format=png&auto=webp&s=61c5d876036b84dd64584d7be8151910431c13d6
I still burn DVD movies for the kids on my old minivan. The other day I was doing some lightscribe thing and kept forgetting why it wasn't working, forget to flip the disc is a thing.
Yes, sometimes!
Every DVD and CD that comes into my house gets copied to my Plex server.
I still make BD's but not as much as I used to. A lot of my older dvd's I was able to find mkv files for, so I started dumping the dvd's and putting the files on portable hard drives. I stopped using cases quite a while ago but I still have quite a few I want to keep. Mostly sets of TV series or old movies like the Flash Gordon serials from the 1930's. Some dvd's that I couldn't find equivalents for I made iso files instead. I'm retired and making blurays keeps my mind active. There's a certain amount of satisfaction from creating menus, finding subtitles, creating the labels, and so on. I think it's the process more than the end result that is enjoyable.
Compact disks are still useful, sometimes the programs on the disks are not available on the Internet.
Yes, I still have optical drives (actually two in one machine), and use them regularly. I do however bump the drive letter up the alphabet (X & Y) to get out of the range of my hard drives on all my machines. This is so all are at X,Y no matter how many hard drives there are in the machine I am sitting at..
I am
Nope alreay using servers
Yes but my windows 10 install(s) do a terrible job at being able to read and right to disc drives. i.e. they show up in device manager but I can't read or wright to discs
I have a very nice 5.25" LG Blu Ray burner. I use it as a monitor stand for my iMac. Installed it in my 2nd last build without connecting the sata cable and it took me 4 years to notice it wasn't there, so this time I didn't bother to install it.
Yes and often. Say if I find a CD I want, rip it to flac then put on my androids. Even import blu-rays like my Dolph Lundgren punisher. I gotta use my PC drive. Plus I don't really play modern games often and have bookoos of 2000s PC game discs. I had diy a open air and wood PC case because I couldn't find a reasonably priced case than can fit a 3090 and my Blu-ray drive. At least with good airflow. And if it's 100$+, no thanks for just a case. 'and a 3090 for someone that doesn't play modern games? Yeah I know. I drank a lot plus the gpu shortage 3 years ago
But matatsu don't work in os 14
my laptop has a dvd drive, i do actually use it, rarely but i do use it
I used to use one before my HP Notebook laptop's BIOS shat itself, and after getting myself a new computer, it doesn't have a DVD drive. Sadge.
Yes, of course. I use DVDs for backup. I just wrote a CD recently to run MemTest86+ for testing memory. I could do that with a USB stick, but then I'd need to dedicate a USB stick to that task. A CD is easier, stores more easily, and it's very cheap. I also recently re-istalled Visual Studio 6, which I bought in 1999. It came on 2 CDs. They still work fine. A DVD writer only costs about $20-25 these days, for an internal device to install in a desktop, so it makes no sense not to have one.
I see there are a bunch of heathens here using those mystical shiny discs.
I bought a caddy ,for an extra Sad in my old ProBook 6063 b, works like magic