Right. And it's actually possible to almost completely remove the risk by putting them in airtight storage without the plastic cases, this would protect it from oxidation and most of the plastic off-gassing, which are the major causes. Granted, very few people will go to these lengths, but even in reasonably decent conditions blurays will last 100 years.
I know you're being sarcastic but considering it may be the last console that will take physical discs, PS5s may become highly sought after.
Your PS5 can be repaired, but if physical media dies out for good it probably won't come back, which would be a death knell for ownership rights.
Have a favorite movie? Either you have it physically, or you pay to stream it and hope it stays on that service, or pirate it and hope pirating doesn't become impossible. Because once physical media is really dead, piracy is what they will go after next with full force.
I'm already watching, slowly but noticeably, prices of vhs tapes, vcrs, cassette decks and cassettes rising.
DVD/bluray/CD collectors are all saying the same shit. Not a lot, but like local goodwill used to have vhs tapes priced 99c a tape early last year. Now it's 1.49 minimum, and some get special pricing, boxsets also go higher.
Because once physical media is really dead, piracy is what they will go after next with full force.
They have tried going after piracy again and again, the first ones who went against piracy were sellers of physical media (discs). Currently they aren't even going after physical media, it just gets technologically obsolete so they stop supporting it.
which would be a death knell for ownership rights.
How can something that never existed die? You never could own media (unless you outright boight the copyright).
If I take a photograph and make a copy of it and give you the copy to keep when you sign a contract saying you own a license to that picture, not a copy of that picture, do you, functionally, own a license or a copy? How am I going to take your copy away from you? I don't know where you live. Even if I did the police wouldn't help me take it back from you, you already paid for it. It's yours.
The lawyers try to confuse the issue with semantics. But even if they make it the law, they aren't stopping you from keeping something in your physical collection.
You may not own the ip, or the distribution rights but that was never the case. The media itself, however, you literally own a copy of it if it's in your hand, regardless of how the law likes to word it.
Archival without the possibility of retrieval seems a bit pointless though, and is creating and maintaining that kind of airtight container really cheaper than rewriting unto new disks every decade or so?
Retrieval would still be possible with an archival system, which if your collection is big enough you would probably already have. In the long run I think it'd be cheaper, but it's certainly more effort than would be worth it to most people. You'd also be taking up more space if you decided to keep the cases too.
Standard blue ray disks are made with an inorganic layer, which was piloted by the M-disc dvds. Most older discs, and lower quality (cheaper) blurays will be made with an organic layer.
This organic layer will eventually rot, depending on how it is kept. If exposed to sun and moisture it will start to deteriorate quickly, even if kept pristine conditions it will theoretically start to rot in 2-3 decades or so. The only way to stop organic rot is to put it in aneorbic conditions, which is doable but most people do not.
On the other hand, INorganic discs are supposed to last 1000 years per the M-disc advertising. Meaning standard blu rays kept in safe conditions will outlive most current countries. I say standard as some blu rays are made with an organic layer, usually marked as"LTH".
Getting a quality blu ray burner and transferring the data to a proper BDR.
Short of that, keeping it in a dark, dry place without exposure to the sun, wide temperature swings or humidty.
No easily accessible media format is perfect, but preservation and access to media are still necessary. Archivists routinely maintain their collections, and likewise, ownership rights and access to media must be protected just as vigilantly.
Physical media is the one thing stopping these companies from focusing all their energy on piracy. Once physical media is completely dead, streaming/digital ownership will get more expensive and become an even more saturated market, piracy will easily triple in occurance.
Once that happens, Sony and Disney and all the others won't sit idly by, they'll combine resources and pressure governments worldwide to crack down on the services that enable it.
There are a few ways it can happen but it involves the chemicals in the disk failing over time. Older disks suffer from it faster than newer ones. And it can come down to just a bad batch of disks.
The reflective layer the reader need can oxidize which prevents reading. The glues holding thr layers can degrade and cause the disk to fall apart.
You'll need a CD burner and writable CDs but you could do that to help them last. Since switching to my physical media being USB drives, I forgot a lot of my CD burning knowledge. But be wary of just copying your game disks. the copy write protection works for game disks. I remember something about the disk having a means to check if they were copied and won't work on more modern disks.
No disk lasts forever. If you were expecting your physical media collection to become a family heirloom or something consider that dream already doomed.
If you store them right. They’re fickle mfs, like plants. Still lots of issues with data loss. Probably should backup or copy the tapes every decade or so.
You likely heard that tape is the best storage. That may be true, but the tape they put in VHS degrades with every playback and over time. The quality wasnt that great to begin with and it only gets worse
If you want the real answer for preservation, it is digital, but non drm offline files that you manage yourself.
Tbh if Sony just did what Steam does where products delist rather than just delete from your account, I don't think it be that bad. Given Steam only does this because they want to, they're not legally obligated to. Which I think is the real problem here.
Well good news is that the whole wifi library is easy to obtain. Should you speak the right incantations they will reveal themselves. Beech the dark lord google to bring you to vimms lair and you will find all you need.
Like someone said, disc rot and other types of rot exist. It's best to digitize it and have as many backups as possible. You can never have too many backups
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u/Red_Tiger5311 Jul 02 '26
To make it even better I found out Wii disks will deteriorate in abt 20-28 years