Has anyone else here ditched optical media?

[Devilguns]

About two years ago my wife and I were looking for some kind of media storage unit for our DVDs and CDs. We had a couple hundred movies, and well over a thousand CDs. Nothing really looked good to us, and we just didn't like the Idea of having all this stuff. So I said screw it, got about 4 PC's working with two drives each plus our lap tops, and just started ripping media. We put about 200 lbs of plastic to the curb. Between Netflix, Itunes, XBOX Live, and a couple of Western Digital media players, we have never bought or used disk media since then. Just curious if anyone here has done like wise. Also curious as to what your solution was, HTPC or some other kind of media player.

[mapes]

I've thought about it. Heck I just got rid of VHS tapes about three years ago. However between Ondemand and Netflix we really haven't watched any of our old movies and we got about 400 hundred of them in binders taking up a shelf in the closet. As my wife is resistant to change and a Luddite to boot I can't really run a PC in the entertainment center. Which I would need in order to serve up all of the media stored on the server. I do run a squeezebox music streamer because it works like an appliance and not like a computer.

So I don't think I'm gonna go down that route anytime soon. Sounds cool though

[Devilguns]

I'm using a couple of these:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=320

I didn't, more like I couldn't run a HTPC. The ventilation in the style of furniture my wife likes is very poor. These little guys are tiny, almost half the size of an external HD and make very little heat. I have them stream media from a server that I have in the basement. Whats nice about having everything digital, I can stream my collection to my Ipods, or laptops as long as I have wifi connection.

[Duke{CLR}]

I have way too many cds that I like to burn every now and then for me to not have one available.

[mapes]

Actually I've gotten rid of CD's. Luckily for me there are a bunch of open source tools for batch editing the tags. I'm very fussy about how my tags setup. I only have 20 or so genres. Also there was a linux script to do replay gain that took two weeks to run through my collection. This is the main reason I don't pirate music. Usually it's tagged like crap and if I can't find what I'm looking for then it's just a waste of drive space. I'm curisous about the WD device. does it require a special server to stream? Or will it read from a NFS/CIFS share?


So it looks like it will read CIFS (Windows) shame they don't support NFS as NFS is a much better protocol. Still thats not a deal breaker as my linux box could do Samba/Cifs. I'm intrigued. Couple of other things I like are Optical SPDIF out and netflix support. I might have to pick one up. Have you tried the netflix support?

[baconoclock]

I've reduced my usage of optical media but not totally. My truck has a cd changer in it and no jack to plug in my phone / ipod

[Rand{CLR}]

I have a working Intellivision II with working voice box unit in my house. So my answer is "no."

-Rand

[Devilguns]

Actually I've gotten rid of CD's. Luckily for me there are a bunch of open source tools for batch editing the tags. I'm very fussy about how my tags setup. I only have 20 or so genres. Also there was a linux script to do replay gain that took two weeks to run through my collection. This is the main reason I don't pirate music. Usually it's tagged like crap and if I can't find what I'm looking for then it's just a waste of drive space. I'm curisous about the WD device. does it require a special server to stream? Or will it read from a NFS/CIFS share?


So it looks like it will read CIFS (Windows) shame they don't support NFS as NFS is a much better protocol. Still thats not a deal breaker as my linux box could do Samba/Cifs. I'm intrigued. Couple of other things I like are Optical SPDIF out and netflix support. I might have to pick one up. Have you tried the netflix support?

Lol, I might be more fussy, I have about 30 sub genres of just Metal alone lol. I didn't know about those open source scripts, I'm going to look into that. How ever I have used this service:

http://www.tuneupmedia.com/

It's really amazing, fixes album art, song titles, pretty much everything. I have really obscure stuff too and it recognized it.

I think the WD media boxes are worth it, you can pick them up for a 100$ or less, much more economical than a full blown HTPC. The only reason I even got one in the first place was I was getting tired of making video and picture DVDs from camcorder footage of my daughter to show relatives. Between editing, the time it took to encode, the whole process was BS. I was impressed at how well it played movies, pictures and video. You may not even need one if you bought a TV within the last year. My friend bought a new Internet ready Samsung TV and it has the same media player capabilities built right into it. He has it hooked up to a 2TB external drive into the TVs usb port.

As far as my vehicle, I'm using my ipod with a cassette adapter lol. But I'm looking to replace it with an in dash digital media unit, some thing like this:

http://www.crutchfield.com/p_020FZ50...FBrand|Clarion

or this:

http://www.crutchfield.com/p_113KIV7...media+receiver

My friend just got a new Infinity, the factory radio face plate flips down and there's two SD card slots. Two 32gig cards and he's rocking 2,000 cd's worth of storage.

I just think CD, DVD, and BR have become an EOL medium just like VHS and Cassettes.

[bobytt]

My last DVD was used like month and a half ago using 4-5 flash drives of 32GB for small things. Have NAS with 8TB in it. And Popcorn Hour C-200 for movies. have also 2 external HDDs but dont even use them.

[mapes]

How is the Streaming Netflix on the WD unit. For one of our TV's we've been using the PS3 disc which is slow and laggy.

Heres the linux script that fixes replay gain MP3Gain