Cleaning House - DVDs, LDs, CDs gone.

It is time to re-start, re-focus, and get re-organized.

Phase 1 -- going digital.

First step for me has been to shed unnecessary clutter in my life and convert to digital as much as possible. Last week, I donated over 5,000 DVDs and 2,000 LaserDiscs to my local library. For one, we would never watch most of those movies again (except maybe for the complete Start Trek series in both DVD and LD formats). Second, I actually donated all of my AV equipment as well - LD player, DVD player, DV player, 200 disc CD carousels, HI-8 player, cassette player, VCR player, radio, receiver, power amp, etc -- 3 complete systems. It is all moving digital now or it will not be part of our house. Bulk wise, those DVD's and LD occupied a huge amount of physical space - boxes that moved with us to 3 different house moves now - but no more. If there is a movie we want to watch, I hope it is on iTunes or a similar digital service or it won't be watched.

Our CDs have all been converted to digital files, and the physical media will be donated or recycled - no CDs will be moving around with us anymore either.

Photography wise, all of our photos have been digital since late 1999. Unfortunately, we still have maybe 20 albums full of old photos that must still be converted. This is a slow process that I am hoping to complete within the next 12 months - then the albums will all go - no point in carrying around hundreds of pound of photo albums while digital solutions are so readily available.

Now I better make sure that I have a secure and reliable digital storage solution to ensure that all of this media stays secure.

Cris Pierry

Technorati Tags: Digital

Comments

[philipp]

What a bold move. I would be scared of data loss. I guess to have an actual CD I still have it when the data would be lost. On the other hand I start having my music put into itunes. I use then airport express to listen to it over the amp.
How do you do it with the DVDs? What amount of space do you need for this, and how do you actualy get it on the harddrive?

[PattyCake]

I'm not sure what I think about that, but I'm just hoping they weren't any ones your kids like. Get the point? Yeah, because otherwise I would be buying them back, or I would get slightly annoyed... If I were in their place of course. I would have asked the kids before hand, even if the kids had never watched them or if they had. Even the LDs, but do you still have VCRs? Keep those, I don't think you can download them, and they haven't all been made into DVD format yet, have they? Didn't think so. Bye...

[PattyCake]

I'm not sure what I think about that, but I'm just hoping they weren't any ones your kids like. Get the point? Yeah, because otherwise I would be buying them back, or I would get slightly annoyed... If I were in their place of course. I would have asked the kids before hand, even if the kids had never watched them or if they had. Even the LDs, but do you still have VCRs? Keep those, I don't think you can download them, and they haven't all been made into DVD format yet, have they? Didn't think so. Bye...

[PattyCake]

whoops!