Good Disk Library Solutions? 371
First time submitter fikx writes "How do Slashdotters manage large collections of disks? I'm hoping for a way to manage a large collection of movies that would give me menu type access to the content, and the only consumer device left seems to be the Sony disk changer, which is discontinued. I would have thought that handling disks would have been a solved problem and on sale in many forms, but I guess not. Have Slashdotters found or built solutions? Or has this problem gone the way of the typewriter?"
Laziness (Score:1, Insightful)
Leave it in disc format and get up and browse your movie collection on a bookshelf for 5 minutes before resuming your sedentary lifestyle sitting motionless for the next 2+ hours. Geez.
KISS (Score:4, Insightful)
Just put all your movies on a shelf in alphabetical order. If you have LOTS of them, then use a more orderly system [ehow.com]. For the 5 seconds it takes to manually swap out a disc to watch a one or two hour movie, anything else is massive overkill.
Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa (Score:5, Insightful)
"Handbrake takes care of DRM for DVDs."
For *some* DVDs. It doesn't handle all of them because the producers of the DVDs keep updating their bogus DRM techniques and thus it is a constant arms race. And it is genuinely bogus, because that's what most of these techniques do: insert bogus sectors and other trickery that trips up a simple ripping program but not most DVD players (and the ones that don't work are collateral damage). Why the media producers bother to keep throwing money at a problem that people will just find a way around in order to use the product they have already bought is beyond my understanding. Do they really think they're stopping anything by spending all that money on DRM? And, no thank you, I don't want to disclose all sorts of unnecessary personal information in order to activate a digital copy that isn't ripped the way I want it anyway.
These days it's easier for a pirate to set up a movie library than a legitimate purchaser, and that situation *sucks*.
Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad more 18th century Bostonians didn't think like you.
Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa (Score:2, Insightful)
Niether Blu Ray or DVD are compressed for storage, they are compressed to fill their respective discs. Please keep this in mind for all future conversations involving home media theaters and internet streaming.
Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa (Score:5, Insightful)
What I do see every day are people who see the law as shades of gray, and see anything darker than the shade they chose to draw their line as being criminal, and anything lighter not counting. This includes me. I consider raping, murdering, and eating your neighbors to be criminal. I don't consider copying the DVD you purchased to a hard drive that you purchased so that you can watch a movie on the TV you purchased without jumping through hoops to be criminal.
Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa (Score:5, Insightful)
Kohlberg's scale has it's uses as an academic model but it's far too naive to apply in the real world.
Take the Heinz dilemma [wikipedia.org] from the wiki. It is implied that stage six (universal human ethics) should be the only consideration despite there being 6 valid points made. Saving a life seems a clear win only in such a sharply defined, stark and simple example.
Conformity is implied to be little more than obedience to perceived expectations, while respecting law-and-order is obedience to a rule book. Obedient people who cannot or will not make a true ethical decision. Putting aside this ignorance for the true value of society and law, both of these are things which have evolved between a lot of people and a lot of time to be protector of rights and a shortcut for morality.
People can seek "universal human ethics", accept that it is impractical for them to make a fair judgement and default back to social expectations/law. People can accept they are ignorant of the full facts and implications, or that their stance on rights and ethics in the situation is too heavily influenced by their personal bias.
A justification based on rights or ethics does not make it a valid or true justification. Usually when politicians and people of power start gesturing excitedly and talking of rights and fundamental values I get concerned about what shit they're trying to pull now. These are the justifications and rationalisations given for decisions that were really made in self interest.
People can also accept that the ethics/rights issues at stake are truly pedantic and accept the law issues as more important. On more important issues, people can take a stand for rights and ethics yet still observe a law that runs to the contrary. Where is the category which said Heinz found a flaw in law and society therefore should seek to address it?
I notice comments promoting the constitution have been heavily upvoted, while the post supporting the rule of law is actually downvoted as flamebait. Anyone else pondering the irony, and just how conformist Slashdot is?
Sounds like a Lego Mindstorms project... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like a Lego Mindstorms project... Start building!