# DVD's: RIP? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 31, 2011, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvds-rip/590938 "2011-07-31T17:42:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Fourtyfold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f475e1/32.png) [@Fourtyfold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fourtyfold)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvds-rip/590938/21 "2011-08-01T20:22:09Z")
> [@DMark](#): > > …recently I went to buy a new DVD burner/tuner to make copies of TV shows and movies for friends in Germany. There used to be several models and styles to choose from; last month there was one single model available at my local Fry’s Electronics… DVD burners (for AV recording) are certainly on the way out - they’ve pretty much been replaced by HD recording, as it’s a lot more convinient. DVD movies will be around for a long while yet, as there is nothing yet with a sufficiently better price/performance advantage to be worth abandoning the DVD. My 2p’s worth : If the movie makers really want to kill the DVD, the best thing they can do at the moment is to not put all of the unavoidable adverts/warnings that infest DVDs these days in whatever new format they’re trying to push forward. ---
**Author:** ![antonio107](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7ea924/32.png) [@antonio107](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antonio107)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvds-rip/590938/22 "2011-08-01T20:47:47Z")
> [@Fourtyfold](#): > > DVD burners (for AV recording) are certainly on the way out - they’ve pretty much been replaced by HD recording, as it’s a lot more convinient. DVD movies will be around for a long while yet, as there is nothing yet with a sufficiently better price/performance advantage to be worth abandoning the DVD. > > My 2p’s worth : If the movie makers really want to kill the DVD, the best thing they can do at the moment is to not put all of the unavoidable adverts/warnings that infest DVDs these days in whatever new format they’re trying to push forward. Yeah. If I’m copying movies (in the public domain, of course), you convert them to .avi, and put a dozen of them on an 8GB stick. A ps3, laptop or xbox 360 can play them relatively easily onto a TV! ---
**Author:** ![Alley\_Dweller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alley_dweller/32/430_2.png) [@Alley\_Dweller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alley_Dweller)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvds-rip/590938/23 "2011-08-01T22:55:06Z")
> [@Fourtyfold](#): > > DVD burners (for AV recording) are certainly on the way out - they’ve pretty much been replaced by HD recording, as it’s a lot more convinient. Do you mean DVRs? I haven’t heard of any HD recording devices for TV other than DVRs that are commonly available to consumers. Can you give me an example of what you mean? I’d be really interested. ---
**Author:** ![Fourtyfold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f475e1/32.png) [@Fourtyfold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fourtyfold)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvds-rip/590938/24 "2011-08-01T23:18:04Z")
@Alley Dweller Yes, that’s the sort of thing I was thinking of. Just a device where the recording is made to an internal HD rather than removable media. I would guess that here in the UK, the most common types are ones built into digital TV decoders, rather than a seperate box like a DVD recorder. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvds-rip/590938/25 "2011-08-02T02:52:04Z")
> [@KneadToKnow](#): > > This is my sentiment exactly. Anything that is online today can just as easily be not available tomorrow. So what IS the best way to ensure my _Harvey_-viewing future? If I can’t trust [largewhitemagicrabbit.com](http://largewhitemagicrabbit.com), and if I can’t play my Betamax of it, is there hope? Will a digital version on a hard drive be playable in thirty years? Or would it be just as pointless as stopping by that garage sale where I saw _Harvey: The Director’s Cut_ on Laserdisc? ---
**Author:** ![Alley\_Dweller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alley_dweller/32/430_2.png) [@Alley\_Dweller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alley_Dweller)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvds-rip/590938/26 "2011-08-02T03:32:49Z")
> [@digs](#): > > So what IS the best way to ensure my _Harvey_-viewing future? > > If I can’t trust [largewhitemagicrabbit.com](http://largewhitemagicrabbit.com), and if I can’t play my Betamax of it, is there hope? Will a digital version on a hard drive be playable in thirty years? > > Or would it be just as pointless as stopping by that garage sale where I saw _Harvey: The Director’s Cut_ on Laserdisc? Well, I would think that it would behoove you to update your irreplaceable items to the latest technology while you still have access to the old technology. For example, you should have copied your valuable Beta tapes to VHS before your last Beta player went bad. Then your VHS tapes to DVDs before your last VHS player went bad, etc. That does bring up the question of conversion loss. When copying an analog tape, you do lose some data and picture quality. The same seems true of copying between hard drives and DVDs. I never really understood why I can’t just rip a movie from a DVD to disk or copy a movie from disk to to DVD losslessly like you can with an audio CD. Why does the movie have to be re-encoded at each transfer? I don’t know how much picture quality you will lose in your journey from Beta to Format-2030 or even how much you’ll lose converting between digital formats (which always seemed to me you should be able to do without loss). Anyway, even if you could still easily get a Beta player, Beta tapes don’t last forever. Anything you need to keep long-term needs to be periodically recopied (which, of course, raises the question of getting around copy-protection schemes, I guess it’s hopeless). ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvds-rip/590938/27 "2011-08-02T06:17:41Z")
There was a point at which I was asked to survive a customer’s home from an EMP. This does not happen any more because, without bragging but with statement of fact, it’s what I do. Commercially there is little call for protecting supermarkets or offices from nuclear anihillation. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvds-rip/590938/28 "2011-08-02T06:28:04Z")
And the LD version is SLIGHTLY more available. “What are you doing with all these LD movies?” “Putting them on eBay. Are you stupid? Take the $10k of broken audio shit I’m giving you and shut up.” ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvds-rip/590938/29 "2011-08-02T06:36:29Z")
> [@digs](#): > > If I can’t trust [largewhitemagicrabbit.com](http://largewhitemagicrabbit.com), and if I can’t play my Betamax of it, is there hope? Will a digital version on a hard drive be playable in thirty years? A movie on a hard disk will be just as playable as a laserdisc or a Beta - provided you have the physical media and the player. The problem with streaming is you no longer have the media, and it’s at the mercy of other forces. You’ve still paid for it, it still has all the features, but at any moment it may be unavailable, unplayable, or completely removed from your possession, through no fault of your own. In certain situations, the streaming from “the cloud” (I hope that phrase disappears soon) has advantages, but the satisfying tangible practicality of physical media has too much going for it to be superseded just yet. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvds-rip/590938.md?page=1)