# Are Movie/TV Collections a Thing of the Past?



## larrs (May 2, 2005)

I have spent the better part of the last couple of years archiving my movies and TV shows on a Media Center PC (10TB) so I can have those movies available on my Tivos to watch at any time. It has always been cool to me (all the way back to the Beta tape and laser disc days) to have things archived so we could pull them down and watch at any time. And, with digital copies on the Tivo, it makes it cool that I don't actually have to go to the closet where I keep my discs any more.

However, as we got ready to drive a few hours on Spring Break this year and started our usual ritual of picking a few discs to play in the car, it became evident that we haven't watched what we own (and as an avid disc buyer the collection continues to grow) much at all in the last couple of years. In fact, the family decided to stop by and pick up some movies from RedBox this year and ended up only selecting two of their favorites for the car. 

This really got me thinking- what am I doing putting money (albeit nowhere as much as in the past as I now buy almost exclusively used) and effort into collecting movies and TV shows given Netflix, Hulu Plus, Vudu, Amazon On Demand and Redbox on every corner and in every grocery store and 7 Eleven in existence?

I am not so sure there is any point to it any more. Maybe the quality of Blu Ray is better, but I can always rent a copy on Vudu for $6 in darn good quality, with DD plus sound (not too bad). Which leads to another question; are we quickly heading to the mp3 quality in movies/TV?

Thoughts?


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## aadam101 (Jul 15, 2002)

I've stopped buying DVD's and CD's. Hard drives are all I need. If I REALLY love a movie I buy it on BD but it's been a while since I've bought one.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

I've bought more BDs in the last few months than I have in years. I bought hundreds in the first few years of BD but then stopped buying more than a few a year. Although the main reason I've made so many purchases lately is because the content is not available to rent in HD on disc or is not available for HD streaming either. I stopped watching DVDs in late 2005. (I've been watching alot of anime content the last few months)
I will continue to put the titles on my servers. I have over 1300 HD titles on my servers now between my HD DVD and BD titles. It's much nicer to have instant access to everything especially since I hate dealing with discs.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Well, I'm behind the curve on putting my library on my WHS, but I expect to continue to do so for serving to Tivo and for my mobile devices. My handbrake settings are such that I can push the same file to tivo as I use on my xoom, which is great for the car, vacations and leaving the disks at home.

I think that many on this folder have been doing what you do for years, but that only now are mainstreamers getting into the act. There are still a ton of first-time tablet users out there who are seeing the value in creating a collection to put on their device and want to avoid issues with their data caps for streaming.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

Has there ever really been a point to having 10tb of tv and movie content? 

Who has the time to watch but a small fraction of it? I can't even keep up with the new content that comes out every year.

I think it has always been a mirage. I am sure there is some psychological need being filled that is behind it all. The tv show Hoarders comes to mind.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

I just watch whatever the Tivo records. I don't even look for movies in the stores or online anymore. I don't bother archiving anything, because there is always something else on TV for the Tivo to record.


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

I still have a movie and music collection on disc but I do think fewer people are maintaining collections in that manner. I won't change and will probably never bother with hard drives full of video and music, other than recorded video from TiVo and PlayLater. Those files are watched and deleted.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

trip1eX said:


> Has there ever really been a point to having 10tb of tv and movie content?
> 
> Who has the time to watch but a small fraction of it? I can't even keep up with the new content that comes out every year.
> 
> I think it has always been a mirage. I am sure there is some psychological need being filled that is behind it all. The tv show Hoarders comes to mind.


The reason I have a lot of video and music available is because I never know what I will be in the mood to watch. I could be in the mood to watch something one day, and the next day I would have no interest in it. So the more content I have available to watch, the more likely I will have something to watch when the mood suits me.

It's the same reason I record so much with my TiVos. I wont watch it all but I want a large selection available to choose from. And with everything available on my network, it makes it very easy to access.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

trip1eX said:


> Has there ever really been a point to having 10tb of tv and movie content?


Yes.



trip1eX said:


> Who has the time to watch but a small fraction of it?


Most people do watch several hours of TV a week. I watch less than a lot of folks, but there are only a very few titles in my library I have not yet seen.



trip1eX said:


> I can't even keep up with the new content that comes out every year.


Neither could I, if I bothered to try, but what would be the point? It's almost all garbage. By comparison, almost nothing whatsoever in my library is garbage. That's the point you seemed to miss above.



trip1eX said:


> I think it has always been a mirage. I am sure there is some psychological need being filled that is behind it all. The tv show Hoarders comes to mind.


You think there is a psychological need that is being filled? What a shock. Watching TV for entertainment is nothing but filling a psychological need.

As far as the desires that prompt me to maintain a video library, they are the following:

I want to watch whatever I want, whenever I want, as many times as I want without having to deal with a lot of hassle and without having to wade through a ton of nauesting garbage to find a program I like. Very few new programs need bother to apply.


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## gastrof (Oct 31, 2003)

I have a bunch of things either storebought or home-recorded, but there's not a lot being added to the shelves.

I still record and keep SOME new shows, but not many.

The NBC series AWAKE and old reruns of SG1 on ThisTV. That's about it, except for the occasional special, usually on PBS.

Part of this may be due to being burned by shows like SURFACE, INVASION, [the nu] V, and TERRA NOVA. "Let's get into a show that ends its season on a cliff-hanger, then doesn't come back."

__________________
Yellow signs are changeable.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

larrs said:


> I have spent the better part of the last couple of years archiving my movies and TV shows on a Media Center PC (10TB) so I can have those movies available on my Tivos to watch at any time. It has always been cool to me (all the way back to the Beta tape and laser disc days) to have things archived so we could pull them down and watch at any time. And, with digital copies on the Tivo, it makes it cool that I don't actually have to go to the closet where I keep my discs any more.


Until the introduction of the DVD Plug-in for pyTivo, I had completely stopped watching DVDs. Since it's introduction, I now occassionally do watch a DVD.



larrs said:


> However, as we got ready to drive a few hours on Spring Break this year and started our usual ritual of picking a few discs to play in the car, it became evident that we haven't watched what we own (and as an avid disc buyer the collection continues to grow) much at all in the last couple of years. In fact, the family decided to stop by and pick up some movies from RedBox this year and ended up only selecting two of their favorites for the car.


Presumably a road trip constitutes a different viewing paradigm than sitting at home. Personally, I never take any video of any sort on vacation. For that matter, I rearely, if ever, stay anywhere that has a TV when I am on vacation.



larrs said:


> This really got me thinking- what am I doing putting money (albeit nowhere as much as in the past as I now buy almost exclusively used) and effort into collecting movies and TV shows given Netflix, Hulu Plus, Vudu, Amazon On Demand and Redbox on every corner and in every grocery store and 7 Eleven in existence?


Those cost money, too. Turn it around: why should I spend money on NetFlix, Hulu, AOD, 7 Eleven, etc. when I have a perfectly good video library at my fingertips? More importantly, those sources have little or nothing available that I find of interest that is not in my library, but my library contains a great many titles not available from those sources.



larrs said:


> I am not so sure there is any point to it any more. Maybe the quality of Blu Ray is better, but I can always rent a copy on Vudu for $6 in darn good quality, with DD plus sound (not too bad).


Do you mean buying hard copy content? I haven't bought a DVD in years.


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## larrs (May 2, 2005)

lrhorer said:


> Until the introduction of the DVD Plug-in for pyTivo, I had completely stopped watching DVDs. Since it's introduction, I now occassionally do watch a DVD.


 We rarely watch teh DVDs any longer, but I do have them and I continue to buy Blu Ray discs as the source for my content...along with conent recorded on my Tivos that I choose to archive (mostly movies).


lrhorer said:


> Presumably a road trip constitutes a different viewing paradigm than sitting at home. Personally, I never take any video of any sort on vacation. For that matter, I rearely, if ever, stay anywhere that has a TV when I am on vacation.


We watch "in the car" as we drive 10 hours to our vacation spot- it is also our second home so we do also watch TV there at night.



lrhorer said:


> Those cost money, too. Turn it around: why should I spend money on NetFlix, Hulu, AOD, 7 Eleven, etc. when I have a perfectly good video library at my fingertips? More importantly, those sources have little or nothing available that I find of interest that is not in my library, but my library contains a great many titles not available from those sources.


I agree. However, the cost per program available on Netflix streaming or Hulu Plus or Amazon Prime is miniscule compared to what I paid for the disc content I own.

I also agree there is always a lot of stuff I don't want to see out there, but again, I am finding the family would rather see something new than something we have seen before more often than not.



lrhorer said:


> Do you mean buying hard copy content? I haven't bought a DVD in years.


Yes, mostly. I am still buying many discs- mostly Blu Rays. I'll admit to having been quadruple dipped by the studios on many purchases- Beta and/or VHS, Laser Disc, DVD, Blu Ray. Heck, I even had a decent collection (25?) of DTheater tapes when HD first came out.


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## WizarDru (Jan 18, 2005)

It's more a question of having what I want, when I want it. Some shows may languish for a few years, then suddenly get watched. Some stuff is in constant rotation (such as the movies my daughter watches repeatedly). Some stuff gets watched every six months or so (hello, LotR and SW). Some stuff we watch and then plan to share when the kids get older.

We are much more selective these days than we used to be, but when we buy stuff now, it's stuff we know we'll enjoy and then get combo-packs, so we can watch it whenever/wherever...whether it be on iPad, iPhone, DVD, BD on PS3 or ripped to the media server and shared anywhere.

Plus, sometimes you just wanna OWN it, you know?


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

gastrof said:


> I have a bunch of things either storebought or home-recorded, but there's not a lot being added to the shelves.
> 
> I still record and keep SOME new shows, but not many.
> 
> ...


This has always been the case with TV shows. I've had this happen with a multitude of shows in the 70's, 80's, 90's and 2000's. It's always frustrating when it happens, but it is nothing new.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

WizarDru said:


> Plus, sometimes you just wanna OWN it, you know?


Well, at the risk of supporting trip1ex' psych argument, yeah.


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## Joe01880 (Feb 8, 2009)

The only Blu-rays i buy these days are 3D. I have what i consider a nice collection on 3D content.


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## Gowan (Apr 13, 2005)

To me, buying DVDs was the same as having a personal library. What I have on DVD and in my library says a lot about me. I think in the past it was a lot more common for people to come to your home and see/browse your print library and learn about you in that way. I think DVDs and BDs serve the same purpose. It's also, like with a favorite book, something I can grab and rewatch or even get new insight into via commentaries and other extras.

Another reason mirrors the print library: I can loan favorites to friends. I buy season sets so I can go back to them, but also so I can proselytize about favorite shows. Want to get into Treme, Mad Men, Breaking Bad? Great! Watch these sets. Never saw Spaced? Here you go! You never saw Big Trouble in Little China? Borrow mine!

As such, I never have made the switch to BD because only a very small portion of my friends have. If I buy a movie, I try to buy combo packs where available, though. I know the common thinking is that hard copy content is going out of style, but until I can get all the extras (hey, a lot of streaming content now doesn't even have CC) through some kind of multi-stream delivery system, it seems DVDs, BDs, imaging cubes or whatever, are going to be around.


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## belunos (Sep 19, 2002)

I don't buy TV shows, but I do buy movies.. BDs to be exact. Two reasons:
1) I want a copy of my movie, to save on a storage device. I've fully made the switch to digital with music, but the MPAA hasn't really let the movie industry go that way yet
2) Until the recent AppleTV update, nothing digital has really come close to BR in quality

But, I do have around 700 DVDs, which I've 'archived'. It's just really nice to be able to switch on my Xbox and watch whatever movie I'm in the mood for (sorry, xbox gui for movie watching is just better than Tivos)


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## westside_guy (Mar 13, 2005)

Generally we rely on Netflix for our movie watching; but we buy a handful of movies every year. Usually what happens is we'll watch a Netflix movie and like it enough that we know we'll want to watch it multiple times in the future - so we'll buy it.

More often than not I just buy the DVD and rip it as soon as I get it; but occasionally I'll buy the one on iTunes if the price for the HD version is comparable to the DVD price (since Requiem lets me remove the DRM from the movies I own - what a concept!).


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

I am actually not excited about the movement to streaming only content. The DRM rules limit your fair use rights to the product and then whatever other restriction the content owner wants to slap in...

Forced commercials a la HULU plus or disabled fast forward as implemented by xfinity. 

As we have seen in the book industry - purchase a physical book and you can do with it what you want, get an ecopy and you can only use it in the specific way the DRM owner has granted. All for the same price!


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## westside_guy (Mar 13, 2005)

bradleys said:


> I am actually not excited about the movement to streaming only content. The DRM rules limit your fair use rights to the product and then whatever other restriction the content owner wants to slap in...


Which is why I've only purchased electronic media when I've known, going in, I could remove the DRM.


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## WizarDru (Jan 18, 2005)

bradleys said:


> I am actually not excited about the movement to streaming only content. The DRM rules limit your fair use rights to the product and then whatever other restriction the content owner wants to slap in...
> 
> Forced commercials a la HULU plus or disabled fast forward as implemented by xfinity.
> 
> As we have seen in the book industry - purchase a physical book and you can do with it what you want, get an ecopy and you can only use it in the specific way the DRM owner has granted. All for the same price!


But DVDs aren't books. I've got Blurays and DVDs that force me to watch commercials when they load (and disable FF) and others that insist I manually bypass their ads and INTERPOL warnings and so forth. And I'm dependent on other technology to use them. 8-track, Beta, S-VHS, laserdisc...having the physical medium doesn't do much good if the players go south, or worse, get engineered to do similar things to what some streaming solutions do now.

On the other hand, I see streaming as a solution, not a medium. The nice thing about having the media is that I can do what I want with it, like you say. I've ripped more than a few movies so I could put them on a portable device or other unit for more convenient viewing/listening. I don't want to see that go away.


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

WizarDru said:


> But DVDs aren't books. I've got Blurays and DVDs that force me to watch commercials when they load (and disable FF) and others that insist I manually bypass their ads and INTERPOL warnings and so forth. And I'm dependent on other technology to use them. 8-track, Beta, S-VHS, laserdisc...having the physical medium doesn't do much good if the players go south, or worse, get engineered to do similar things to what some streaming solutions do now.
> 
> On the other hand, I see streaming as a solution, not a medium. The nice thing about having the media is that I can do what I want with it, like you say. I've ripped more than a few movies so I could put them on a portable device or other unit for more convenient viewing/listening. I don't want to see that go away.


eBooks, and streaming services like Hulu+ and Xfinity are good representations of the future DRM controlled environment we are moving into.

Once the product is all 0's and 1's the concept of ownership that you get with a physical product dies. You have simply licensed the right to use the product based on an arbitrary set of rules that may or may not have been defined as of yet.

And the content owners / content delivery services get to set those rules.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

I stopped buying movies years ago. The small collection of DVDs and Blu-Rays I have mostly still have the shrink wrap on the cases. I get Blu-Rays and a few DVDs from NetFlix with the 2-at-a-time plan and I have amassed more movies than I will ever have time to watch. I rip them all to a 21TB server in mkv format and watch them when my TV viewing slacks off in the summer. Having something to watch has never been an issue for me. I've got movies going back 5 or 6 years that I've never watched.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

bradleys said:


> eBooks, and streaming services like Hulu+ and Xfinity are good representations of the future DRM controlled environment we are moving into.
> 
> Once the product is all 0's and 1's the concept of ownership that you get with a physical product dies. You have simply licensed the right to use the product based on an arbitrary set of rules that may or may not have been defined as of yet.
> 
> And the content owners / content delivery services get to set those rules.


I agree and if the consumer wants any say in what the rules are they are going to have to use Government to create some rules favorable to consumers.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

mr.unnatural said:


> I stopped buying movies years ago. The small collection of DVDs and Blu-Rays I have mostly still have the shrink wrap on the cases. I get Blu-Rays and a few DVDs from NetFlix with the 2-at-a-time plan and I have amassed more movies than I will ever have time to watch. I rip them all to a 21TB server in mkv format and watch them when my TV viewing slacks off in the summer. Having something to watch has never been an issue for me. I've got movies going back 5 or 6 years that I've never watched.


Not sure I would admit to what you are doing.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

On the topic of this thread, I have never purchase much media (VHS, DVD, or blu-ray) as I tend to only watch stuff once (no kids). I am also not that picky when it comes to what content I watch so given all the ways to access stuff now and the limited amount of time I have to actually watch anything I certainly am not planning on purchasing any media.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

My collection: http://connect.collectorz.com/users/dswallow

604 movies (actually 609, but I haven't added the 4 I got yesterday or the 1 that'll arrive today to it yet)

1,710 books.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Wow! That is alot of books.


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## larrs (May 2, 2005)

dswallow said:


> My collection: http://connect.collectorz.com/users/dswallow
> 
> 604 movies (actually 609, but I haven't added the 4 I got yesterday or the 1 that'll arrive today to it yet)
> 
> 1,710 books.


Pretty impressive!

My collecting as of late has slowed dramatically, but I am recording a lot of stuff we almost forgot over the years lately from TV and I am archiving it in HD on my server, so technically I am "collecting" that too, I guess.


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## buscuitboy (Aug 8, 2005)

While I agree that the direction of streaming seems to be the way of the future, keep one thing in mind when collecting and archiving your own material. Back it up. 

Unless you have EVERYTHING on actual discs, having 10TB of hard drive space on a home media server of some kind with thousands of movies and/or TV shows is great, but if that drive fails, you will lose IT ALL. I say this cause I speak from experience. 

A long time ago, I had a simple 250GB hard drive fail on me. It had just movie and TV shows on it. I didn't really mind too much on what was lost as I was pretty much able to obtain the important stuff, but it made me rethink how I store important material. 

Now, I have a hard drive with photos and my music that is backed up to other locations (online and/or additional hard drives). Using some sort of RAID setup is probably another good way to go as well when it comes to backing up all those movies and TV shows.


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## MikeMar (Jan 7, 2005)

buscuitboy said:


> While I agree that the direction of streaming seems to be the way of the future, keep one thing in mind when collecting and archiving your own material. Back it up.
> 
> Unless you have EVERYTHING on actual discs, having 10TB of hard drive space on a home media server of some kind with thousands of movies and/or TV shows is great, but if that drive fails, you will lose IT ALL. I say this cause I speak from experience.
> 
> ...


I have a 4 drive (1.5 TB each) NAS and one drive died on my a month or so ago. Have had it for about 4 years, so a bit early for a drive to go.

But yeah, drives fail 

Photos (i.e. important stuff) is backed up in like 10 places (multi in home, online, parents house)


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

buscuitboy said:


> Back it up.


That has always been essential. It is often overlooked.



buscuitboy said:


> Using some sort of RAID setup is probably another good way to go as well when it comes to backing up all those movies and TV shows.


Be careful, there. Using a RAID array as a backup medium is perfectly fine. Indeed, I have a backup server that does just that. Storing material on a RAID array, as opposed to a simple drive, is *NOT* a substitue for a backup solution, however.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

The sizes involved with the movies and videos and music are too large to back up. Using a RAID or duplication like with a WHS is the best way. I have dozens of Terabytes of content. There is no way I could back it all up. Worst case, I would have to pull the discs out of storage if my WHS or unRAIDs went belly up.


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## larrs (May 2, 2005)

aaronwt said:


> The sizes involved with the movies and videos and music are too large to back up. Using a RAID or duplication like with a WHS is the best way. I have dozens of Terabytes of content. There is no way I could back it all up. Worst case, I would have to pull the discs out of storage if my WHS or unRAIDs went belly up.


I agree, but I have a LOT less than you. My Total space is 12TB right now with 8 useable (8 TB RAID plus an additional set of 2 2TB discs mirroring each other). Still, I only have about 3TB free- and I haven't archived even half of my discs.

Hopefully, I will get by until 3TB discs become the norm, or I end up with a totally new solution.

On another note, everyone in my house has enjoyed the elimination of discs as much as I have been able to. No one wants to trek down to the media closet to choose a movie any more. With pyTivo and Vidmgr, searching from the Tivo is so cool they love to show their friends.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> The sizes involved with the movies and videos and music are too large to back up.


There is no such thing as "too large to back up". Multi-terrabyte tape backup media are available. Solutions like dar can break up the backup into chunks that can fit on individual hard drives. A backup array will no more than double the cost of storage, while securing the data and having it available on line.



aaronwt said:


> Using a RAID


RAID is not a backup solution, period. A RAID N array for N > 0 is less frail than a single hard drive, but it is not fault proof. I can tell you from personal experience RAID arrays can and do fail on a regular basis. If a backup does not exist then POOF! - the data is gone.

Even more to the point, users are even less reliable than hard drives. Even the most competent user will occasionally accidentally delete or overwrite important data. A proper backup strategy stands as decent insurance against data loss in both scenarios.



aaronwt said:


> or duplication like with a WHS is the best way.


WHS? Windows Home Server? You lost me, there. What do you mean by "duplication"?



aaronwt said:


> I have dozens of Terabytes of content.


Every last byte, or some large fraction of which could be lost in the event of an array failure. Even a loss of a small fraction may be serious if the data is critical.



aaronwt said:


> There is no way I could back it all up.


Then sooner or later, you will lose it. It is better to cut your storage in half, using the other half as backup media, and preferentially choose which data to discard than to risk losing all of it.



aaronwt said:


> Worst case, I would have to pull the discs out of storage if my WHS or unRAIDs went belly up.


Pull what discs out of storage? If you are storing a copy of your data in off-line hard discs, then you have a backup solution.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

larrs said:


> I agree, but I have a LOT less than you. My Total space is 12TB right now with 8 useable (8 TB RAID plus an additional set of 2 2TB discs mirroring each other). Still, I only have about 3TB free- and I haven't archived even half of my discs.


My main storage systrem is a RAID6 array built from eight 3T spindles, giving a total storage of 18T. This system has 5T free at the moment.

My backup server hosts a RAID6 array built from twelve 1.5T spindles, with 2.3T free at the moment. Every morning at 04:00, rsync copies over any new or updated friles from the main array to the backup.

Every couple of months, I run dar against the backup system and incrementally archive any updates to 1T and 1.5T hard drives stored off premises.



larrs said:


> Hopefully, I will get by until 3TB discs become the norm, or I end up with a totally new solution.


Actually, right now 2T and 3T discs tie for lowest cost per byte if one does not consider the cost of power and drive slots. After considering the cost of a drive slot, 3T drives win at about $80 per T, but 4T drives arent too far behind at about $90 per T, especially after considering the energy cost of 3T drives.



larrs said:


> On another note, everyone in my house has enjoyed the elimination of discs as much as I have been able to. No one wants to trek down to the media closet to choose a movie any more. With pyTivo and Vidmgr, searching from the Tivo is so cool they love to show their friends.


You're welcome.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

If you don't have off-site backup, you don't really have backup.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

lrhorer said:


> There is no such thing as "too large to back up". Multi-terrabyte tape backup media are available. Solutions like dar can break up the backup into chunks that can fit on individual hard drives. A backup array will no more than double the cost of storage, while securing the data and having it available on line.
> 
> RAID is not a backup solution, period. A RAID N array for N > 0 is less frail than a single hard drive, but it is not fault proof. I can tell you from personal experience RAID arrays can and do fail on a regular basis. If a backup does not exist then POOF! - the data is gone.
> 
> ...


The original BD and HD DVD discs.

And I guess I should have said too large to make a backup practical.

I never said RAID was a backup solution. Just that that is the best thing to use to help avoid data loss. In my unRAID I would have to lose the parity drive and one of the array drives to lose any data. And then it would only be the data on the one array drive that would be lost.

With the WHS it uses duplication(if you enable it). So all the data in the drive pool is located on two hard drives in the drive pool. I currently have thirty one drives in my drive pool. Both the drives with the specific data would need to go belly up to lose that specific data.

But so far over the last twenty years of using hard drives. Close to two hundred, I've yet to have a hard drive fail once put into service. I know it can happen, but so far it hasn't. Even my old 20MB(yes MB) drive from the early 90's still works.


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## 241705 (Mar 9, 2010)

Is your ripped Blu-ray content playing back at the same quality as if you were playing the disk itself? I've thought about putting all of my movies to disk in order to have the collection available through TiVo - but I really enjoy how incredible some of the Blu-rays look and sound. I don't think I'd want to lose that in favor of convenience.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

I use some media players to play back my content. I don't use my TiVos for that. I would probably need to sacrifice quality for the audio and video to do that I do use my TiVos to play back my broadcast HD recorded content though.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

lrhorer said:


> Well, at the risk of supporting trip1ex' psych argument, yeah.


Thanks for the support. 

Contrary to your earlier argument I am talking about the collecting of shows not the watching of shows.

There is some kind of hoarding mentality at work when one will never ever be able to watch but a tiny fraction of a 10 TB and growing collection of shows.

I am assuming one isn't stranded on a desert island or anything. And that one continues to be interested in new programming.

I do understand the need to have something for a rainy day and keep some favorites on hand, but ....I think that is amply covered by a far smaller collection.

I also realize this is digital hoarding. Much less messy than your physical goods hoarding. And technical advancements in storage density keeps the digital hoarding mess in check. 

But there is probably similar psychological reasons for not being able to let go of your digital content.


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## MikeMar (Jan 7, 2005)

I hoard any show/movie that I download/rip and watch, even though majority of the time I don't go back and watch it again.

But I'm down to <1 TB free on my NAS and when that gets close to full I have ZERO problem hacking and slashing a lot of shows I'll never watch again (mainly dramas)
And then onto the movies.

I'd rather delete something I'd never watch again then spend more money to save them.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

trip1eX said:


> Thanks for the support.


Oh, well, why not?



trip1eX said:


> Contrary to your earlier argument I am talking about the collecting of shows not the watching of shows.


Uh, yeah. That's the topic at hand.



trip1eX said:


> There is some kind of hoarding mentality at work when one will never ever be able to watch but a tiny fraction of a 10 TB and growing collection of shows.


Except that one can. Potentially, at least. Of course one never knows how much time one has left, and I may well get hit by a piece of falling space junk tomorrow, but assuming I have at least a decade or so left to go, I woud not be hard pressed to watch every movie in my collection at least one more time. A fairly casual consumption could easily cover 200 unique shows a year, which means the library could be fully watched in substanitally less than 10 years.



trip1eX said:


> I am assuming one isn't stranded on a desert island or anything.


Does "anything" include being physically disabled so that mobility is limited? Those of us who are may well choose to occupy more of our time with watching TV than those of us who enjoy normal mobility.



trip1eX said:


> And that one continues to be interested in new programming.


Not so much. Oh, there are a few good movies coming out, but most of the new stuff is junk. There may be a tendency to feel this is a result of diminishing creativity on the part of those who create films, and perhaps there is some truth in that, but in reality it's not a new trend. Almost all new films have always been crap. Every year, two or three truly quality films are produced, though, and over time those have a massed into a veritable mountain of fine cinema. I enjoy having access to a good fraction of that mountain.

One guy over on IMDB calimed to have watched 45,000 films in his life, and he is not very old. We called him on it, but while 45,000 in 20 years is a ridiculous number, 4500 is not, although it is admittedly a large number.



trip1eX said:


> I do understand the need to have something for a rainy day and keep some favorites on hand, but ....I think that is amply covered by a far smaller collection.


It's much more than that. First of all, most people are subject to varying moods, and a film that one might like to view on Monday may not be one the person would care to view on Friday. Having a selection means the user can really view what he wants and when. Increase the number of viewers to 3 or 4, and the requisite variety increases exponentially. Even with nearly 2000 films on hand, it can sometimes be a challenge to find one everyone in the house wants to view.



trip1eX said:


> I also realize this is digital hoarding. Much less messy than your physical goods hoarding.


Perhaps not. A physical library may be very well organized, and no mess, at all, despite there being perhaps thousands of resident volumes. It takes time and effort to maintain such order, however. It takes much less effort to maintain order in a digital system, though, so your point is ultimately valid.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

unitron said:


> If you don't have off-site backup, you don't really have backup.


OTOH, if you don't have on-site backup, then you may not have acccess to the data in time to make it useful. Backup strategies are a balancing act between cost, availability, and robustness.


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## larrs (May 2, 2005)

lrhorer said:


> You're welcome.


Yep! You 'da man. Your help with pytivo, vidmgr and the metadata really took my collection to the next level!


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> The original BD and HD DVD discs.


Oh. Fewer than 80 of the movies on my server are rips. The vast majority were recorded by the TiVos. That, and I have hundreds of pieces of downloaded software with licenses. 'Not to mention all my financial data and a fair amount of engineering.



aaronwt said:


> I never said RAID was a backup solution. Just that that is the best thing to use to help avoid data loss.


But it isn't. That is the point.



aaronwt said:


> In my unRAID I would have to lose the parity drive and one of the array drives to lose any data.


Not necessarily. I have lost arrays without the failure of even one drive. I have also upon occasion lost more than one drive. A year or so ago, I lost 4 drives simultaneously in a RAID6 array.



aaronwt said:


> And then it would only be the data on the one array drive that would be lost.


Lost is lost.



aaronwt said:


> With the WHS it uses duplication(if you enable it). So all the data in the drive pool is located on two hard drives in the drive pool. I currently have thirty one drives in my drive pool. Both the drives with the specific data would need to go belly up to lose that specific data.


That is mirroring, and it is a robust form of RAID. It still does not guarantee data loss. If the data on one drive does not match the data on the other, then corruption has occurred. The system must then chose which data set it thinks to be correct. If it chooses the wrong one...

It also doesn't help at all if the user deletes the wrong file. I once accidentally wrote over the video of Superman with its metafile, before the sytem had a chance to back it up. I was livid - Superman is one of my favorite films - and it was nearly four years before it was shown again and I could add it back to my library.



aaronwt said:


> But so far over the last twenty years of using hard drives. Close to two hundred, I've yet to have a hard drive fail once put into service.


Then you have been very lucky. I've averaged 3 or 4 drive failures a year, although I deal with somewhat more than 200 drives.



aaronwt said:


> I know it can happen, but so far it hasn't. Even my old 20MB(yes MB) drive from the early 90's still works.


A 20M drive from the 90s? I've never had a drive that small, and I have been buying hard drives since 1985. I think the smallest I ever had was 30M. (Well, actually I did buy some 8M removable media drives for the university back in the early 80s.)


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Early 90s, like 1991. Not sure of the exact year though(it could have been a little earlier or a little later). It was my first hard drive and I remember it costing too much. I only got my first real PC(IBM with 8088 CPU) in 1984 and that was only because it was a requirement at school. And that was the PC I put the hard drive in

WHS v1 uses what is called duplication, not a RAID and they dont call it mirroring. There are pointers that it uses to figure out where each file is located. Ten files could be located on twenty different hard drives. Each file will be located on two separate discs.

Of course the issue with that is if the C drive goes you have to do a restore. And if that fails, you could still access each drive individually to find the content, but you have no way of knowing where each file in a folder would be located. And with 31 drives it would make it more difficult. But forunately for me, the files I would be most concerned about are my ISO files which average 31GB in size. And there are only around 850 of those on my WHS. I would just recover those and forget about the coverart, NFOs, fanart etc. Since I could easily get those back with the NFO program I use (Ember).

I plan on starting to remove alot of the content from my WHS soon and moving it over to my second unRAID setup. Since that is more efficient with the use of hard drive space. I've just been too lazy with getting started on it.


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

unitron said:


> If you don't have off-site backup, you don't really have backup.


In the same vein, a favorite quote, not original to me: "If you haven't tested your backups, you don't *have* backups, you have hopes."



aaronwt said:


> But so far over the last twenty years of using hard drives. Close to two hundred, I've yet to have a hard drive fail once put into service. I know it can happen, but so far it hasn't. Even my old 20MB(yes MB) drive from the early 90's still works.


I have encountered quite a few failed drives. Invariably its from machines that were running fine for years, then were shut down for a week or two during a vacation, and then the drives wouldn't spin back up. If you keep a drive spinning, it does seem to last for many years.

I think I might have a 10 MB hard drive out in the garage. But where would I find an ST-506 controller to read it? And an ISA or parallel SCSI system to talk to the controller? Even if a drive is functional, how do I access the bits? Similarly, I might still have some 8" floppy drives in the garage, but I have nothing operational that can power them up or access floppy diskettes, assuming that any diskettes I could find in the garage are still readable.

If you have data you want to keep, you need to copy it over to newer media every once in a while.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

That 20MB drive is still in my PC from 1984. I power it up once a year and so far everything still works. At least the last time I powered it up which was during the Christmas season last year.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

aadam101 said:


> We found that if someone is actually on NBC they are 4% more likely to watch it.


As someone who has actually been on NBC, your number might be a bit on the high side ...


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

jfh3 said:


> As someone who has actually been on NBC...


I think we're going to need more detail than that, assuming you aren't just talking about being in the Today Show crowd shots.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

unitron said:


> I think we're going to need more detail than that, assuming you aren't just talking about being in the Today Show crowd shots.


Special guest (character, did not appear as myself) on a popular, long running comedy series. Tivo'ed myself long ago and see the reruns every now and then. Not too hard for TiVo fans to figure out the rest, but I just thought the original line about NBC was funny, since members of the crew said the same thing at the time.

Making the post somewhat more relevant to the thread, I prefer the iTunes and disc versions, as they are better quality and commercial-free. I do think that a significant amount of content will be streamed or cloud-based and that in less than a generation, DVD's and Blu-rays will be like 45's and videotapes are today - around, but more collectible than mainstream.


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## larrs (May 2, 2005)

jfh3 said:


> I do think that a significant amount of content will be streamed or cloud-based and that in less than a generation, DVD's and Blu-rays will be like 45's and videotapes are today - around, but more collectible than mainstream.


I don't doubt this. I believe the studios would love to see it happen since even if you OWN it, they could CONTROL it.


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## dboff01 (Feb 5, 2012)

While I use to purchase DVDs regularly and have well over 400 (which I never go back to watch again), I have purchased less than 10 blu-Rays to date. 

I have used Netflix disc rentals for over 7 yrs, which I've bounced between 1 to 3 at a time, given my spare time at any given point in my life. 

However, lately, I find myself using the streaming Netflix service more than any other services for video, including DVR recorded content. Additionally, I've recently added MOG music service on my Roku and have completely abandoned listening to cds/mp3s as a result. I basically have unlimited access to 90+% of music I want to listen to with no restrictions and no ownership management/handling hassles.

The low-cost rental via streaming model with unlimited content consumption is just so convenient and the quality (while not the best a la blu-ray) is pretty darn good, even for this once-proclaimed audiophile/videophile.

In short, I believe my "collection" days are behind me.


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## nexus99 (Oct 17, 2002)

I have 2 devices for cosuming content:

1) Tivo. Record and holds shows for me. I have a bunch of seasons waiting for me to watch.
2) HTPC. Mainly for the kids. I rip their cartoons on my PC and drop them on the server. I haven't watched a disk in the living room in more than a year.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

I also believe that for the most part my collection days are behind me. Little of the new TV or Movie content interests me in the last few years.


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## javabird (Oct 13, 2006)

I think larrs and trip1ex both make good points. I confess I tend to be a hoarder. I had stacks of videotaped TV shows I never watched and finally threw them out when I got my first Tivo. I bought a DVD recorder and transferred my purchased VHS movies to DVDs and then I ended up throwing them out when I got an HDTV because the transfers just didn't look that good on the new TV. One day I was sick and I couldn't seem to find anything to watch even though I had a stack of DVDs on my shelf. It makes more sense to rent. (That's what I tell myself, but lately I have been buying movies in iTunes, it's too easy and is instant gratification).

People are talking a lot right now about "future-proofing" movie collections. I wonder how long that will work before the next new technology. My son and his friends are unconcerned- they use on-demand video streaming and Netflix. He stocks up on books (the dead tree kind) instead.


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## sathead (Jan 12, 2008)

I like many others here use a raid setup (FreeNAS with three 2TB data disks and one 2TB parity disk) for a total of 5.4TB usable storage. I have several media players around the house; a Dune, a PopcornHour, several eGreats, a Patriot Box Office and one other minor brand who's name I've forgotten.
I find it extremely convenient to have lots of media from 1960's to current TV shows and assorted movies available at any TV at any time without disk hunting for some DVD's or BD's.

In my case- all that content (currently about 4TB) came from either DVD's, DVD box sets, BD's, BD box set, or downloaded content via usenet. Now do I need backups? Well, all the content from my purchased optical discs are still on those factory discs- so why should I make yet another backup? The content from usenet is saved onto BD25's after download- so there's my backup for that too. In the three + years of running my raid I have indeed had a disk failure. But upon replacing the failed drive the system did rebuild the array without any data loss. As a matter of fact- we were still able to use the array as normal while it was rebuilding.

Offsite backups? Yeah, nice to have- but that takes real commitment to keep current. Guess most who do off site BU's are thinking flood, hurricane, fire, etc... takes out your house and then you go to your off site backup to rebuild? In all honesty- if my house burns down or blows away- I could care less about my movie & TV collection!


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

lrhorer said:


> Except that one can. Potentially, at least. Of course one never knows how much time one has left, and I may well get hit by a piece of falling space junk tomorrow, but assuming I have at least a decade or so left to go, I woud not be hard pressed to watch every movie in my collection at least one more time. A fairly casual consumption could easily cover 200 unique shows a year, which means the library could be fully watched in substanitally less than 10 years.
> 
> Not so much. Oh, there are a few good movies coming out, but most of the new stuff is junk. There may be a tendency to feel this is a result of diminishing creativity on the part of those who create films, and perhaps there is some truth in that, but in reality it's not a new trend. Almost all new films have always been crap. Every year, two or three truly quality films are produced, though, and over time those have a massed into a veritable mountain of fine cinema. I enjoy having access to a good fraction of that mountain.
> 
> One guy over on IMDB calimed to have watched 45,000 films in his life, and he is not very old. We called him on it, but while 45,000 in 20 years is a ridiculous number, 4500 is not, although it is admittedly a large number.


 I don't think that was my argument that you literally can't watch a ton of content if you set your mind to it.  Mine was more a practical argument. NOt the exception to the rule argument. NOr was I arguing whether new content is junk or not. Just pointing out a few of the assumptions behind my argument.



lrhorer said:


> It's much more than that. First of all, most people are subject to varying moods, and a film that one might like to view on Monday may not be one the person would care to view on Friday. Having a selection means the user can really view what he wants and when. Increase the number of viewers to 3 or 4, and the requisite variety increases exponentially. Even with nearly 2000 films on hand, it can sometimes be a challenge to find one everyone in the house wants to view.


Good point about others in the household. And I understand being in the mood to watch a particular show.

But at some point more choice doesn't mean finding something to watch when you want to watch it.

But rather it means spending more time (or too much time) figuring out what you want to watch.

Ok maybe if you instantly knew the name of the movie you wanted to watch at any given time then the more choice the better.

But what I find is that the more choice the more time I spend wading through my choices.  I often don't know what I want to watch at any given time until I come across it.

So at some point more choice ....doesn't do much for someone. How much time are you going to spend wading through your choices when you are in the mood to watch a show? 5 minutes? 10 minutes? 20 minutes? There are only so many choices you can go through in each of those time frames.

And I Find that even with all this choice I have between my 1.5TB hard drive full of shows, my movies on disc and on the computer, live cabletv, and Netflix I often can't find anything I am in the mood for.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Between my TiVos, several streaming services and the multitude of BD ISOs on my servers I can always find something to watch. It doesn't take long to find the content if it's aggregated well. That is why I like the Boxee Box interface. I can quickly go through my BD isos


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## larrs (May 2, 2005)

trip1eX said:


> ...And I Find that even with all this choice I have between my 1.5TB hard drive full of shows, my movies on disc and on the computer, live cabletv, and Netflix I often can't find anything I am in the mood for.


Problem is that even with 5TB of content and growing, my family is often not willing to watch something we KNOW is good but may have not seen in some time, but would rather take a chance on something new (we do look at ratings on IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, etc. ) that may not turn out to be our cup o' tea.

As the one in the family that archives this stuff (a lot of it automated thanks to kmttg <*shameless plug alert*>), it is frustrating to see sometimes.


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## sathead (Jan 12, 2008)

larrs said:


> Problem is that even with 5TB of content and growing, my family is often not willing to watch something we KNOW is good but may have not seen in some time, but would rather take a chance on something new (we do look at ratings on IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, etc. ) that may not turn out to be our cup o' tea.
> 
> As the one in the family that archives this stuff (a lot of it automated thanks to kmttg <*shameless plug alert*>), it is frustrating to see sometimes.


Hang in there... there's always hope.

A few days ago my (15 yo) daughter told me how "awesome" Breakfast at Tiffany's was. She had just finished watching it off our server and was all choked up at the final scene. She actually said 'why don't they make movies like that anymore?'..


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

larrs said:


> Problem is that even with 5TB of content and growing, my family is often not willing to watch something we KNOW is good but may have not seen in some time, but would rather take a chance on something new (we do look at ratings on IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, etc. ) that may not turn out to be our cup o' tea.


I'm rather the opposite. I have to be fairly bored before I care to risk wasting my time on something I will ultimately regret watching when I have a ton of items I know for a fact are really great sitting there waiting for me.

Of course, I am not so adverse to risk a few minutes just to dip my toe in the water, as it were, so fairly frequently I will watch a few minutes of an unknown recorded piece and then chunk it.

By comparison, I have only walked out of a film in a commercial theater three times in my life, that I recall.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

sathead said:


> Hang in there... there's always hope.
> 
> A few days ago my (15 yo) daughter told me how "awesome" Breakfast at Tiffany's was. She had just finished watching it off our server and was all choked up at the final scene. She actually said 'why don't they make movies like that anymore?'..


Really? A 15 year old? That is amazing. I was shocked the other evening when my best friend brought his wife and 20 year old daughter over for movie night, and she was the one who actully chose How to Steal a Million to watch and loved it.

OTOH, maybe there is just something about Audrey Hepburn.

I take that back. There is no "maybe" about it.


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## Shogun82 (Apr 29, 2012)

I also stopped archiving, except of coarse my favorites. Companies that stream media have made it pointless for me to hoard tons of stuff and buying drive after drive for storage.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

larrs said:


> Problem is that even with 5TB of content and growing, my family is often not willing to watch something we KNOW is good but may have not seen in some time, but would rather take a chance on something new (we do look at ratings on IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, etc. ) that may not turn out to be our cup o' tea.
> 
> As the one in the family that archives this stuff (a lot of it automated thanks to kmttg <*shameless plug alert*>), it is frustrating to see sometimes.


 AT least 75% of what I watch are shows I haven't seen before.

Oh and great old shows that I have seen aren't necessarily homeruns for me the 2nd or 3rd or 4th time around.

STars WArs I have seen many times. Love it of course. But sometimes when I rewatch it or start to rewatch it I find myself bored. And then don't get through it.

And then sometimes nostalgia makes you think an old favorite movie was much better than it actually was. Some of them don't hold up as much as others in other words.

I find there is a lot of great content that I haven't seen. The problem is finding it. There are lots of great foreign flicks. And great lesser known movies. And then on top of it you have the history of American cinema. Plus good tv series as well.


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## Series3Sub (Mar 14, 2010)

aaronwt said:


> This has always been the case with TV shows. I've had this happen with a multitude of shows in the 70's, 80's, 90's and 2000's. It's always frustrating when it happens, but it is nothing new.


Interesting view. I myself accept a cliffhanger ending that was produced because they didn't know if the show would be renewed. I just accept it as I do the suspension of disbelief required for all video entertainment.

However, there are a lot of folks like you. Google the UK show Psychoville and read about the absolute vitriol otherwise supportive fans had to say about the Series 1 ending (somewhat of a cliff hanger). I just accepted the producers were giving themselves some place to go IF they got to make a Series 2, but a lot were furious and there is even a mention of a "pathetic ending" in the first episode of Series 2 that was a reference to the backlash from fans about the final episode of Series 1.


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## Hcour (Dec 24, 2007)

larrs said:


> Problem is that even with 5TB of content and growing, my family is often not willing to watch something we KNOW is good but may have not seen in some time, but would rather take a chance on something new (we do look at ratings on IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, etc. ) that may not turn out to be our cup o' tea.
> 
> As the one in the family that archives this stuff (a lot of it automated thanks to kmttg <*shameless plug alert*>), it is frustrating to see sometimes.


Your post apparently struck a cord on this forum! I know exactly what you mean, I have over 800 movies archived and only save the ones I like enough for repeated viewings. I have a system for re-watching movies: I wait a minimum of 6 months before re-watching something once and at least two years before re-watching it twice. This way they remain somewhat fresh as far as the details of the story, even if I do know how it all turns out. I have a great program on my computer called Movie Collector, which has all the usual movie data, of course, but also allows me to save and sort by the viewed date and number of viewings. So I just sort on that criteria and thus always have a list of great movies from which to choose.

The problem with this system is just what you point out - Do I want to re-watch something I know I'll enjoy or take a risk and watch something new, which may or may not be a waste of my precious time? Again, I have a system: I watch at least 3 new movies a week, which leaves time for another 3 or so from my archive. I try to give a new movie a chance, at least 30 minutes, before I give up on it. Of course some are so bad you can just dispose of them after a few minutes, but with others you're curious where they are going and want to see how they turn out, so you just have to stick it out to the end. And some movies I think are good for one viewing but have no desire to re-watch.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I rarely watch anything more then once. My wife buys DVDs every now and then, but it's pretty rare these days. I only own a dozen or so DVDs/BDs and most of them were gifts. I have a BlockBuster 2 at a time plan but the two discs I have now have been sitting on the table for over a month. I also have dozens of movies recorded on my TiVo that I haven't gotten around to watching. I just can't seem to find the time to watch full length movies any more.

Dan


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## larrs (May 2, 2005)

Dan203 said:


> I rarely watch anything more then once. My wife buys DVDs every now and then, but it's pretty rare these days. I only own a dozen or so DVDs/BDs and most of them were gifts. I have a BlockBuster 2 at a time plan but the two discs I have now have been sitting on the table for over a month. I also have dozens of movies recorded on my TiVo that I haven't gotten around to watching. I just can't seem to find the time to watch full length movies any more.
> 
> Dan


That's really interesting in that my wife and I had the same discussion last night and I decided to cancel the discs from Blockbuster for that very reason. We also cannot seem to watch a movie any more except in pieces over two or three nights right before bedtime. because of that and the fact that there is a lot more compelling TV these days, we have gravitated towards TV shows of an hour- and some of those are more difficult (Game of Thrones, The Tudors, True Blood, etc.) due to them being 50 mins or so without commercials.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Yeah I'm thinking about canceling too. I switched from Netflix to Blockbuster because Netflix started imposing that wait on new releases and that pissed me off. Plus I thought it was cool that BB did games. However, like I said, I've had the same two DVDs for over a month. It would be cheaper to just rent movies one off from Vudu or Amazon as needed then to pay $15/mo for two DVDs it takes me 6 weeks to watch.

Dan


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## buscuitboy (Aug 8, 2005)

I am pretty much in the same boat. I have a Netflix account for online streaming and Blockbuster Express (1 DVD) account for the DVD AND game feature (for our Wii). When I rent DVDs, they tend to sit longer than needed as well. Therefore, I usually just rent games from them instead.

Redbox is another good option. Just rent it when you decide you'll watch something and its only $1-2 per rental, per night. No fuss, no mess. 

As mentioned, Netflix (& Redbox for that matter) both have to wait for a good month for new DVD releases compared to Blockbuster, but that isn't really either of their faults. Rather, it is because Blockbuster was getting KILLED by these two in the market. They were then able to make exclusive deals with most of the movie distributors that allowed them to release titles first and exclusively and for about 30 days before others got it. This was aimed more toward their brick and mortor stores and trying to save them. 

However, I think its too later for them though & they are more or less at the end of their existence. Hollywood Video has gone out of business and its probably just a matter of time before Blockbuster follows. People were just tired of paying $6-7 to rent a movie from Blockbuster for a week when all they wanted was one night and could easily get it from Redbox for $1. Easy pickup and easy return at various locations (gas stations, drug stores, grocery, etc.)

Yea, DISH network bought Blockbuster and is trying to save them, but not sure they will ever get back to the popularity they had in the 90s. I think its more or less become an outlet to try and sell more DISH Network subscriptions at this point. I used to have several Blockbuster stores within 5-10 miles of my home. Now the closest one is about 45mins away. 

Blockbuster is now trying to get into the online streaming game & they have a service, bit for now its limited to DISH subscribers only so not sure how it will do in the long run. Not sure if they will ever open it up to everyone either. Only will time will tell on all of this.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Now, Blockbuster has to buy many of the titles locally to be able to get them to rent for same day release. Since some of teh studios won't sell them the titles until 4 or 8 weeks after release day.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

hoggard said:


> There is some kind of hoarding mentality at work when one will never ever be able to watch but a tiny fraction of a 10 TB and growing collection of shows.
> 
> I am assuming one isn't stranded on a desert island or anything. And that one continues to be interested in new programming.


It's not about hoarding it's about having a wide range of content available so you are more likely to find something you want to watch for the mood you are in at the moment. I could feel like watching a certain movie at one point in the day, and a few hours later I have no desire to watch it, but want to watch a different kind of movie. By having a wide range of content available from either my Servers or recorded on my TiVos. And then add the streaming services into that mix. I can most likely find something I want to watch for almost any mood I'm in any time of the day. I prefer not to settle for watch something, but to watch what I want when the mood strikes me.

I typically watch content daily from my TiVos, and my servers. As well as Netflix, Amazon, and Xbox Live. LAst night I watched a TV show that had been recorded on a TiVo. I watched a movie disc rental from Blockbuster. I watched a show from amazon streaming. And I also watched another show from Netflix streaming. And yet another TV show from a server. I never know what I will be in the mood to watch.


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## MikeMar (Jan 7, 2005)

I have 150+ DVDs, and like 200+ more movies on my NAS. Like aaronwt said, you never know what you are in the mood for, and sometimes I will watch a movie I haven't seen in 10 years.

I'm less so on TV Shows, usually just save comedies as I really have never re-watched a drama (short of The Wire).


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

A big part of the reason I maintain a large file server filled with both current and older content to view is that I have never been happy with the streaming model. I can count on the fingers of ONE hand the number of full length tv shows or movies I have ever seen streamed to any screen I have watched without a single glitch, rebuffer, hickup or other problem. I do not want to deal with network diffeculties or put up with network issues when watching a show. If its stored locally it works. Many shows I only store long enough to watch once and then delete. I will admit to a bit of the 'hoarding' mentality but like others here, never know what I will want to watch. Its nice having choices and for me, pure streaming just does not cut it. I have used Amazon unbox from time to time and been happy with the rentals. But that is a download, play, delete model, not pure streaming.

Before you reply with comments about my network not being up to snuff, let me mention that I feel the same way about sat radio service. I HATE glitches in the program stream. Any service that cannot play through while I go under an overpass or down a tree lined street, does not belong in my car.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

hoggard said:


> There is some kind of hoarding mentality at work when one will never ever be able to watch but a tiny fraction of a 10 TB and growing collection of shows.
> 
> I am assuming one isn't stranded on a desert island or anything. And that one continues to be interested in new programming.


What gives? That is a verbatim quote of trip1ex' post from a few days ago:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=9053493#post9053493


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## minimeh (Jun 20, 2011)

Nice catch. I've seen some similar responses of unattributed quotes from low-count posters and assume it is the product of a bot, but for the life of me, I can't figure out the angle of why.


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## WizarDru (Jan 18, 2005)

aaronwt said:


> It's not about hoarding it's about having a wide range of content available so you are more likely to find something you want to watch for the mood you are in at the moment.


This.

Last night we watched an episode of Castle from last Halloween, an episode of Young Justice with my son from last Saturday and an episode of Top Shot from two months ago. When I went to the gym, my wife watched an episode of IT Crowd from 2007.

It isn't a race to consume content...it's a desire to have content available when you want it, not when someone wants to present it TO you. My Netflix queue is for when I want to watch something, whether it's an episode of Lillyhammer or 'My Man Godfrey'.


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## innocentfreak (Aug 25, 2001)

minimeh said:


> Nice catch. I've seen some similar responses of unattributed quotes from low-count posters and assume it is the product of a bot, but for the life of me, I can't figure out the angle of why.


They do it to build post counts until they can post spam links. It also lets them get by longer before being spotted.

I am like many here. I don't for the most part rewatch content. There is too much out there I am interested in seeing that I haven't seen.

As far as streaming, I prefer my content locally stored since the trickplay is more responsive. I tend to fast forward through various segments in movies and TV so responsiveness and accuracy is very important. I also like to see what I am skipping rather than how Netflix buffers.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

aaronwt said:


> It's not about hoarding it's about having a wide range of content available so you are more likely to find something you want to watch for the mood you are in at the moment. I could feel like watching a certain movie at one point in the day, and a few hours later I have no desire to watch it, but want to watch a different kind of movie. By having a wide range of content available from either my Servers or recorded on my TiVos. And then add the streaming services into that mix. I can most likely find something I want to watch for almost any mood I'm in any time of the day. I prefer not to settle for watch something, but to watch what I want when the mood strikes me.
> 
> I typically watch content daily from my TiVos, and my servers. As well as Netflix, Amazon, and Xbox Live. LAst night I watched a TV show that had been recorded on a TiVo. I watched a movie disc rental from Blockbuster. I watched a show from amazon streaming. And I also watched another show from Netflix streaming. And yet another TV show from a server. I never know what I will be in the mood to watch.


I have Netflix, cable tv dvr and 1.5 tb of content, Redbox, Amazon on-demand and ITunes at my disposal plus a 1 TB of movies and shows and sometimes I still can't find anything that I'm in the mood for. 

I think large collections might have a counter-intuitive nature to them. The larger the collection the more picky you can be about what you're in the mood for. And thus it is all relative.

Less shows, less picky. More shows, more picky. Only difference is you will spend more time finding out that you're actually not in the mood to watch anything the more content you have.


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

trip1eX said:


> I have Netflix, cable tv dvr and 1.5 tb of content, Redbox, Amazon on-demand and ITunes at my disposal plus a 1 TB of movies and shows and sometimes I still can't find anything that I'm in the mood for.
> 
> I think large collections might have a counter-intuitive nature to them. The larger the collection the more picky you can be about what you're in the mood for. And thus it is all relative.
> 
> Less shows, less picky. More shows, more picky. Only difference is you will spend more time finding out that you're actually not in the mood to watch anything the more content you have.


Exactly the Costco example. They found when there were too many choices people just walked out of the store. So they limit the choices within a product to just a couple.

I still question ownership though. How many people really go back and watch something when there is a constant supply of new material.
However if it happens to be on you might then get hooked into watching it again. In many cases that happens to us. I do have about a hundred DVDs. I could pull them out of the drawer but yet if the same movie from my collection is on a channel I might turn to it. Even if I had online storage I think I would behave the same way. Netflix Ondemand is a good example where I rarely watch something I have already seen.


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

When DVD players became affordable, I started buying movies that I really liked. That has waned over the years. I probably haven't bought a DVD in 5 years now. Tivo was a big part of that. Being able to save a lot of content made it harder to keep up with movies.

As to the hoarding, at first I was like a kid in a candy store. I was enamoured with the ability to transfer a show to a computer and burn DVDs.
At first I started burning all the shows I liked. I figured I might re-watch someday (at best) or someone I know will want to see it, so I save it.
Now I've calmed down a bit and have become more selective. 
Shows that I really like (such as Fringe) get saved to DVD. I have no doubt that someday I will go back and re-watch.
Next there are the shows that I think I'll be interested in (Community and Modern Family), but don't have time to watch. Maybe someday.  These get transferred and saved on the computer and will be deleted once I watch them.
Everything else stays on the Tivo. Since it has a 2TB hard drive, it holds quite a lot.


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## minimeh (Jun 20, 2011)

innocentfreak said:


> They do it to build post counts until they can post spam links. It also lets them get by longer before being spotted.


Ah, of course. Good explanation, thanks.


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## stlbluesfan74 (May 2, 2012)

I still collect Bluray movies. Have about 500. 

You can't beat the video and audio quality of playing straight off a bluray disc. Plus the price of blurays are very reasonable now, if you are just a little patient. Plus they are nice to have if you ever want to loan to friends or family.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

stlbluesfan74 said:


> I still collect Bluray movies. Have about 500.
> 
> You can't beat the video and audio quality of playing straight off a bluray disc. Plus the price of blurays are very reasonable now, if you are just a little patient. Plus they are nice to have if you ever want to loan to friends or family.


You can match the quality by playing the BD ISOs from a server. And it's much quicker access to the movies. Especially since I can have it start the movie right away if I want instead of viewing any BD menus.


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## javabird (Oct 13, 2006)

steve614 said:


> As to the hoarding, at first I was like a kid in a candy store. I was enamoured with the ability to transfer a show to a computer and burn DVDs.
> At first I started burning all the shows I liked. I figured I might re-watch someday (at best) or someone I know will want to see it, so I save it.
> Now I've calmed down a bit and have become more selective.
> Shows that I really like (such as Fringe) get saved to DVD. I have no doubt that someday I will go back and re-watch.
> ...


I can relate to that - I burned lots of shows to DVDs for the same reason, but now I rarely watch them-- the quality of downloaded shows is so much better now in HD, and don't have the commercials and graphics on the show.


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## Samantha Kirk (Apr 18, 2012)

I still buy Blueray movies. Can't compare the enjoyment of watching Avatar in Blueray than in Tivo.


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## heatherprotz (Apr 18, 2012)

These are days of cloud computing. Hence no more storage spaces and protecting your digital data.


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## swerver (May 18, 2012)

Re: mailed discs... I've been getting them for years from either blockbuster or netflix, and after seeing a disc sit unwatched for a month too many times, I made a rule. If it sits unwatched for a week, I just mail it back. If I didn't watch it by then, I must not have been that interested.

Re: collections... My collection mainly consists of all the dvd's I collected from the dvd era, ripped to hdd. I will buy a blu-ray if it's a movie I really love, but usually only if it's a really good deal. So while I do still collect, I do it less now that so much streaming is available, but I'm not quite to that point that I don't find it useful anymore. I do think that is the direction, and as pipes continue to increase in size and get cheaper, I think eventually the strong advantage blu-rays have now will diminish or disappear completely, so to answer the OP - not yet, but probably soon.

Re: rewatching... many favorite movies from my youth, up to about 25 years old, I rewatch fairly often, and I love concerts or music related movies/documentaries, and find they have a ton of rewatchability. But newer movies, unless they really strike a chord, I will never watch again.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

swerver said:


> Re: mailed discs... I've been getting them for years from either blockbuster or netflix, and after seeing a disc sit unwatched for a month too many times, I made a rule. If it sits unwatched for a week, I just mail it back. If I didn't watch it by then, I must not have been that interested.
> ..............


I had to do the same thing. I've been with Netflix for almost 13.5 years now.
At one point, around 2007, I had some HD DVDs out for over six months without watching them. I decided after that I would return discs after three or four days, whether I watched them or not.
And that policy has served me well over the last five years.


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## DocNo (Oct 10, 2001)

bradleys said:


> Once the product is all 0's and 1's the concept of ownership that you get with a physical product dies. You have simply licensed the right to use the product based on an arbitrary set of rules that may or may not have been defined as of yet.
> 
> And the content owners / content delivery services get to set those rules.


Do you really think it was any different when it was analog tape (VHS or Beta)?

You don't own the content, you never owned the content and unless you are involved in creating it or paying lots of money you probably never will.

Ditto with books, magazines, etc.

Now I do agree, with physical media like a real paper book or magazine, tape, DVD, BR, etc. you can have more flexibility as far as loaning it out, consuming it multiple times or different ways. But really, in the grand scheme of things does it matter that much? For the vast majority of content, for me, I've found it does not the more I think about it logically. Yes there are a few things that I want that "archival" Bluray or hard cover book... but I find it's increasingly less and less. As long as the DRM-all-digital content is cheaper than the "old ways" and has just enough flexibility, it's a good set of trade off's for me.

And there are some upsides - what Apple has done with iTunes Match is awesome - I can access practically my entire music library from anywhere. I think it's going to be a while before they get there with video - and if you buy video (not rent) from Apple or other providers you basically get unlimited re-downloads which isn't quite streaming, but getting there. But that's not Apple's problem - that's a general infrastructure and bit-shuffling problem since video - especially high quality high bitrate video - is huge compared to everything else and it's all but impossible to download in realtime or faster than to allow for sufficient buffering.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

dswallow said:


> My collection: http://connect.collectorz.com/users/dswallow
> 
> 604 movies (actually 609, but I haven't added the 4 I got yesterday or the 1 that'll arrive today to it yet)
> 
> 1,710 books.


I just spent the last 6 or 7 days updating the books in my collection. The last time I did it was mid-2013 and I had 39 pages of Amazon Kindle purchases to go through and add. I also then went through everything and updated series information and added any missing books from series I'd bought to my Kindle wishlist... it's up to 225 books.

877 movies.

2,058 books.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

dswallow said:


> My collection: http://connect.collectorz.com/users/dswallow
> 
> 604 movies (actually 609, but I haven't added the 4 I got yesterday or the 1 that'll arrive today to it yet)
> 
> ...


Another Collectorz user! I've been using Book Collector so long I'm actually grandfathered under their lifetime upgrade program (sorta like S1 users). Never did go online with it though.

:up:

ETA: Just looked it up... 2003.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

So I'd started to look a at programs a year or 2 ago to track our movies and music and I seem to recall that Collectorz was the main one that I was looking at but I never went through with it and had never thought about tracking books!

So you guys recommend Collectorz?

Scott


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

HerronScott said:


> So I'd started to look a at programs a year or 2 ago to track our movies and music and I seem to recall that Collectorz was the main one that I was looking at but I never went through with it and had never thought about tracking books!
> 
> So you guys recommend Collectorz?
> 
> Scott


I've used them for quite a few years, though not as long as astrohip. I've never encountered anything better. And while there's occasional growing pains, they're really been pretty diligent about continually expanding the features and usability.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

I've never found anything remotely close to the tracking abilities of Book Collectorz. I tried using Goodreads (sp?) once, and it fell far short. But that was before Amazon bought them. I have no idea if they've gotten better or worse.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

dswallow said:


> 2,058 books.


Impressive! I have 1225 books, 255 authors. I need to stop watching so much TV.

After about five years on a Kindle, I've gone back to DTB. I missed real books. Not as convenient, but the emotional fix is worth it.


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## innocentfreak (Aug 25, 2001)

I use Goodreads, but found I prefer Librarything for tracking my actual collection. I also use Fictfact to track my series. Fictfact is more about tracking where you are in a series though.


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