Why make a copy of BD discs?

[Deane Johnson]

Why make a copy of a BD disc, or regular discs for that matter (for back up, of course). It's something I've long wondered about.

Don't BD blanks cost quite a bit? Isn't it costly to make back up copies, even if you are able to do so?

I have 1700 titles in my collection (no HD), watch a movie almost ever night, and I've never damaged one. Wouldn't it be cheaper just to "self insure", that is, if you accidentally damage one, replace it?

I don't want to start a discussion of copying, copy protection, etc. in this thread. For the purpose of my question we'll assume the copies are made in a legal manner. I'm just wondering why it would make sense to make copies. What am I missing?

[Ascended_Saiyan]

Originally Posted by Deane Johnson

Why make a copy of a BD disc, or regular discs for that matter (for back up, of course). It's something I've long wondered about.

Don't BD blanks cost quite a bit? Isn't it costly to make back up copies, even if you are able to do so?

I have 1700 titles in my collection (no HD), watch a movie almost ever night, and I've never damaged one. Wouldn't it be cheaper just to "self insure", that is, if you accidentally damage one, replace it?

I don't want to start a discussion of copying, copy protection, etc. in this thread. For the purpose of my question we'll assume the copies are made in a legal manner. I'm just wondering why it would make sense to make copies. What am I missing?

The only thing you are missing is the fact that blank BDs will become cheaper over time like blank DVDs have. To "Self insure" would cost more to do at that time.

[JonBoy]

I only have just under 900 titles but it's still a pain in the butt dragging them back and forth from the living room to the playroom. Storage is also a big problem. Racks are expensive and ugly. I keep as many titles as I can on my hard drive and network the living room and the playroom computers.

[Blue]

Media servers are on the way for HD (I relise there are some out there), but integrated with managed copy are yet to come BD managed copy is supposed to have been finalised, however I think it's not yet ready for production release. The biggest problem is going to be storage space.

A 100 DVD's would take up approx 800GB, not that big a problem with toady's HDD, however the problem with blu ray is going to be space. Assume each BD is 35 GB on average that is 3.5 TB. Sure 1TB HDD are on the way and will become common (and affordable) over the next few years. So BD storage will be pretty unmanageable for a few years. I guess you could capture the 480p stream, but then why not just stick with DVD if you are going to shred the quality. From the inference of your post you watch movies on your computers BD will only really look impressive on 40" displays and bigger. If feeding from a video card to a monitor, there lies another problem as a HDMI (with HDCP) will be required, of which at the moment there are very few (and expensive) cards that can do that. I guess this is a wait and see. I'm unsure if the current collection of titles will be backwardly compatible with managed copy - it's buyer beware territory at the moment.