Are Blu-ray & DVD Formats Dead?

Are Blu-ray and DVD Formats Dead?

  • Yes. Streaming is taking over.

    Votes: 17 23.3%
  • No. People will always want Physical Media too.

    Votes: 42 57.5%
  • Can't we all Coexist and sing Kumbaya?

    Votes: 14 19.2%

  • Total voters
    73
isolar8001

isolar8001

Audioholic Field Marshall
Magnetic tape is actually not a good archiving medium. By far the most reliable and durable is the good old vinyl LP.
How many vinyl lp's would it take to store my 80tb of movies shows and music ?
I must be doing things wrong. ;)
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Audioholic Jedi
How many vinyl lp's would it take to store my 80tb of movies shows and music ?
I must be doing things wrong. ;)
LPs can only store audio, but it is used as a vital audio storage medium especially for items of great historical significance.

Just personal experience. I have a significant number of digital discs that are now unplayable that are in the 20 to 40 year old range. I have LPs over 70 years old that play fine. I have shellac 78s that are 80 or so years old that play.
 
Steve81

Steve81

Audioholics Five-0
Magnetic tape was an IT standard for backup and archiving for a fairly long time. The equipment wasn’t cheap, but those tapes had no apparent issues lasting a decade+ in my experience.

LP’s aren’t exactly perfect since playing them results in degradation. It is a glorified stone carving, except to read it, you drag a needle across the carving, damaging it. A digital format is far more suitable for ensuring that things remain pristine. The easiest way to get things done is to accept that maintaining tens/hundreds of TB of data is best dealt with by large companies that have the resources to store it with multiple redundant sites, with regular backups. It’s not really feasible for an individual consumer to achieve a comparable level of redundancy/disaster recovery, though you could do alright if cost wasn’t an object.

And yeah, physical media is deader than a doornail to my generation (I’m the vanguard of the millennials), never mind Gen Z. A few think my rig is cool, but by in large, a phone/ipad/laptop and some headphones are perfectly adequate… and in truth, they are. I’ve watched plenty of stuff that way, and a good set of headphones / earbuds easily throws down with far more expensive setups qualitatively.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Audioholic Jedi
Magnetic tape was an IT standard for backup and archiving for a fairly long time. The equipment wasn’t cheap, but those tapes had no apparent issues lasting a decade+ in my experience.

LP’s aren’t exactly perfect since playing them results in degradation. It is a glorified stone carving, except to read it, you drag a needle across the carving, damaging it. A digital format is far more suitable for ensuring that things remain pristine. The easiest way to get things done is to accept that maintaining tens/hundreds of TB of data is best dealt with by large companies that have the resources to store it with multiple redundant sites, with regular backups. It’s not really feasible for an individual consumer to achieve a comparable level of redundancy/disaster recovery, though you could do alright if cost wasn’t an object.

And yeah, physical media is deader than a doornail to my generation (I’m the vanguard of the millennials), never mind Gen Z. A few think my rig is cool, but by in large, a phone/ipad/laptop and some headphones are perfectly adequate… and in truth, they are. I’ve watched plenty of stuff that way, and a good set of headphones / earbuds easily throws down with far more expensive setups qualitatively.
Archived LPs re not played at least very often. They are a record for posterity put away in a vault. Actually the LP is durable. I have quite a few very old LPs that actually play perfectly still and they have had a lot of playings.

Cecil Watts showed back in the fifties that at playing weights below 3 GM there was no permanent groove deformation.
 
BoredSysAdmin

BoredSysAdmin

Audioholic Slumlord
Magnetic tape is actually not a good archiving medium. By far the most reliable and durable is the good old vinyl LP.
Like I said earlier - stone carving, or plastic carving in this case :)
edit: Darn, Steve beat me to same jab
 
BoredSysAdmin

BoredSysAdmin

Audioholic Slumlord
Jokes aside and LPs aren't suited for storing anything but pre-manufactured audio recording, the actual best long-term data storage media is apparently M-DISC. They claim durability of 1000 years or more.
A high-quality backup tape is expected to last and store data reliably for 50 years.

(Somewhat Questiable) Source:
 
Paul DS

Paul DS

Full Audioholic
Archived LPs re not played at least very often. They are a record for posterity put away in a vault. Actually the LP is durable. I have quite a few very old LPs that actually play perfectly still and they have had a lot of playings.

Cecil Watts showed back in the fifties that at playing weights below 3 GM there was no permanent groove deformation.
LPs are made from vinyl which can degrade over time. I have had a few LPs that were over 30 years old that looked like new but didn't play well. There was a lot of surface noise. Motion picture film suffers from the same problem. Some films can last for many decades while others start smelling like vinegar and are decomposing in only 20 years or less.
 
Happy Joe

Happy Joe

Audioholic Intern
I agree LPs are durable as long as they are not used... If they are not used what good are they; really?

'Way back in the stone ages of the last century the "rule" was only play vinyl lPs no more than once every 24 hours to give the grooves that were distorted by the forces on the needle time to recover somewhat.

One of the best things that I did was move from vinyl to CDs, better sound, no dust problems (in fairly good equipment), and much more re-playability. those eary CDs still sound ok (though dated).

From there I archived to hard drives for my media storage...
Alas; over the last 20 years or so the data (especially sound, but also movies) has degraded... now some of the music sounds clipped to the point where I am afraid to play it..

...I have returned to CDs for music and hope that technology advances will keep my blue ray 4k movies viable.
Currently my quandary is whether to pitch the turn table or give that rumbling beast to goodwill...
Tried audio recovery software but the highs and lows disappeared before the rumble and other artifacts...

Vinyl is dead; at least until the groves can be read by laser.

Enjoy!
 
Mikado463

Mikado463

Audioholic Spartan
LPs are made from vinyl which can degrade over time. I have had a few LPs that were over 30 years old that looked like new but didn't play well.
LOL, 'a few LP's over 30 years old', hell I have hundreds that are over 40 and many over 50 years old. Properly cared for LP's will in fact, last a very long time. Like fine wine and cigars, you need to know what you're doing ............
 
Paul DS

Paul DS

Full Audioholic
LOL, 'a few LP's over 30 years old', hell I have hundreds that are over 40 and many over 50 years old. Properly cared for LP's will in fact, last a very long time. Like fine wine and cigars, you need to know what you're doing ............
I was using the 30 year old vinyl record as an example. I also have records well over a hundred years old. They are made of bakelite, not vinyl. Here is a shot of one of my older grammophones. It is a brunswick and will play both lateral cut and vertical cut records. And yes, I know what I am doing with my record collection.
 

Attachments

Verdinut

Verdinut

Audioholic Spartan
I was using the 30 year old vinyl record as an example. I also have records well over a hundred years old. They are made of bakelite, not vinyl. Here is a shot of one of my older grammophones. It is a brunswick and will play both lateral cut and vertical cut records. And yes, I know what I am doing with my record collection.
Where is your photo?
 
BoredSysAdmin

BoredSysAdmin

Audioholic Slumlord
There was a laser vinyl turntable. I think it was pretty expensive (thousands). Not sure if it's still manufactured.

Yeah, I heard about them before. In the past, they had stock and listed prices (never were cheap). Now it's so niche that every unit sold is "bespoke," aka hand-made, aka costs much more than original runs

P.S.: It's fascinating to seethat elpj.com is apparently one of the older internet sites, going back all the way to 2000.
 
Happy Joe

Happy Joe

Audioholic Intern
There was a laser vinyl turntable. I think it was pretty expensive (thousands). Not sure if it's still manufactured.

Yep; the last time that I priced them they were unrealistic.

Given that I only have a 50/50 chance of living another 10 years according to the statisticians; I'm not going to worry about it....

Enjoy!
 
newsletter

  • RBHsound.com
  • BlueJeansCable.com
  • SVS Sound Subwoofers
  • Experience the Martin Logan Montis
Top