The Room 101 thread - for things you hate or just having a bloody good moan

[Stormbringer]

I despise physical media. Absolutely despise it.

I think I hate physical media more than the inconvenience of streaming services dropping their films after a while.

Whatever for? It’s my primary hobby at the moment, so I’m naturally curious what could warrant such ire.

I used to be a physical media collector, 20 years ago. It sort of defined my existence back then. Daily trips to HMV after work.

To be honest, I struggle to explain it. I don't even fully understand it myself. Some deep psychological issue, no doubt. But I literally shudder now when I see shelves of DVDs, CDs or even the outside of an HMV store...

[Wrathbone]

How odd. I can understand someone not wanting to have physical media for a bunch of reasons (space, perceived convenience, etc), but I'd argue it's categorically a better option than streaming services in almost every case:

- You own your content forever. It doesn't suddenly vanish.

- It's the highest possible quality (with a couple of exceptions) and the quality doesn't diminish. Streaming services will as standard now reduce quality and bitrate for anything that isn't new or as popular as it once was. Breaking Bad originally presented in stunning 4k on Netflix; now it looks like shite.

- Unless you watch a vast amount of unique content on streaming, it's typically cheaper to buy what you want to watch than perpetually subscribe to a couple of services (especially if you buy second hand, which I frequently do).

- Content is usually unedited and uncensored from its original presentation (with some notable exceptions, such as Star Wars). Some of my favourite shows have multiple episodes that can only legally be watched via disc as they've been pulled from streaming services, in some cases for truly stupid reasons. It's Always Sunny has five episodes missing from Netlix. Five! That's half a season.

- You get bonus material, especially on older discs or on new boutique labels such as Arrow Video, who go the extra mile to produce new interviews and documentaries for classic films.

- You can also do what I'm doing and build your own streaming server, so you have the convenience of streaming with all of the above benefits, all for the cost of a USB DVD or blu ray drive and a decent size hard drive. Especially useful if space is a concern, as you can sell your discs once you've ripped them.


I'm sorry you despise physical media. I've collected it my entire life and it deserves championing in an age where you're told you own nothing and you'll be happy about it, all while getting a worse deal and being charged through the nose for it.

[Lenny Solidus]

Back when I had seven shelves of carefully purchased blu rays I'd find myself strangely obsessing over them all - we are talking regular stints of taking them all from the shelves and polishing the boxes one by one so they looked flawless, cleaning the discs to perfection and even just randomly reorganising them by release date or importance or any other random reasons that popped in my head making me obsessively look at them as some kind of treasure or trophy. I'd buy multiple new ones every single month without fail, but only ever buy films that I felt I had a very deep connection with - and the cycle would repeat. It was mentally exhausting yet I'd convinced myself all was normal.

I didn't own that blue lined up collection, it owned me.

One day I went to do the same action as always and something in my brain just said stop, realised what I had been doing all that time bagged them and sold the lot of them for far less than I paid to put it to bed, it was...it was just unhealthy. If you've ever seen High Fidelity and witnessed Rob's record collection organising, you can figure where I was at.

Glad I got out. Also, I'm not saying everyone becomes that way with physical media. It can just turn some of us into something that's beyond being merely an avid collector.

[Wrathbone]

My house would likely horrify you both.

I have much more than seven shelves worth. To be fair to myself, though, I only do a reorganisation once a year (loosely by genre) to put new purchases somewhere I'll easily find them again.

[Hatredsheart]

- You own your content forever. It doesn't suddenly vanish.

- It's the highest possible quality (with a couple of exceptions) and the quality doesn't diminish. Streaming services will as standard now reduce quality and bitrate for anything that isn't new or as popular as it once was. Breaking Bad originally presented in stunning 4k on Netflix; now it looks like shite.

- Unless you watch a vast amount of unique content on streaming, it's typically cheaper to buy what you want to watch than perpetually subscribe to a couple of services (especially if you buy second hand, which I frequently do).

- Content is usually unedited and uncensored from its original presentation (with some notable exceptions, such as Star Wars). Some of my favourite shows have multiple episodes that can only legally be watched via disc as they've been pulled from streaming services, in some cases for truly stupid reasons. It's Always Sunny has five episodes missing from Netlix. Five! That's half a season.

- You get bonus material, especially on older discs or on new boutique labels such as Arrow Video, who go the extra mile to produce new interviews and documentaries for classic films.

I'll show this to my other half, she's never understood my collecting physical media. She especially can't understand me upgrading something to 4k when I already own the bluray. When I try to explain bitrates/resolution/hdr her eyes glaze over.

[Stormbringer]

What Dave says definitely touches on a big part of the issue for me.

There's a deep sense of being owned by the collection, rather than owning it. It became for me a yoke of oppression and enslavement. I know that might sound overdramatic, but that is what it became for me, psychologically.

Dave, I have nothing but the greatest respect that you were able to part with that Blu-Ray collection. I got rid of my own physical media collection in 2008, and it was one of the best things I ever did.

You own your content forever. It doesn't suddenly vanish.

But here's the thing; you don't, and it does. There is no forever in life. Death is inevitable, and then what will become of your collection? The reality of this haunts me deeply and makes me extremely reluctant to be too attached to anything in this life. Nowadays I try not to own anything that I am not willing to throw away (with extreme prejudice) in due course. The less 'collections' I have, the easier this is to manage.

Old habits die hard, though. Some years ago (2011) I went through a phase of collecting Papo figures (90mm tall plastic models; knights, pirates, cowboys, etc). A bit of a strange hobby for a grown and married man to have, but I had a sort of mad childish impulse that I apparently needed to process.

I adored my ever-growing collection, which over the course of four years turned into massive 100+ army of figures. I had told myself that I was going to wargame with them, make actual use of them (not just have them sit on a shelf), and while I did pull this off a little, most of the time they just sat on a shelf, taking up valuable space and ever reminding me of my strange, compulsive need to collect things I didn't need.

I got to a point where I felt chained and shackled by the things I owned and instead of being something of joy, my collection had become my prison. I had this albatross hung around my neck (to borrow an image from Coleridge's poem) for a whole decade until I found the strength to rid myself of it.

When I moved house in 2022, my wife took my kids to America for two months to stay with her family, to give me space to tidy everything away and show the house to prospective buyers without the kids getting underfoot.

While I had this golden opportunity, with great mental effort I put all the models in plastic bags and carted them in a wheelbarrow to the nearest public bin (this was before we had a car) and hurled them in. Man, that was a monumental occasion. I never want to be that enslaved to collections ever again.

I do have a small collection of board games at present, but it is small and I know that if it ever gets too large I will purge it. I am now committed to fighting this previously unrestrained part of my mind which I know will only cause me misery should I indulge it.

Also, in the case of media, whenever I see it, it reminds me of the miserable days of my youth; my early 20s where I basically 'failed to launch', and ended up living in my parents' house for way too long, hiding away from life because I was too intimidated by the world outside to take life by the horns and embrace adulthood. I built a media collection as an alternative life for myself; a den to hide myself in. But what was supposed to be a den quickly became a prison. Or perhaps a tomb.

Never again!

[Wrathbone]

You own your content forever. It doesn't suddenly vanish.

But here's the thing; you don't, and it does. There is no forever in life. Death is inevitable, and then what will become of your collection?

It'll probably go to a charity shop. Or, if I specify someone it should go to in my will, they'll be handed a treasure trove which they can do with as they please. I don't lose sleep over it.

I'm sorry you've gone through all that, though. My experience of collecting has only been positive, but I expect that's largely because it's an autistic special interest of mine and my brain is inherently wired towards collecting and organising things. It makes me happy, but moreover I get to enjoy a fantastic library of films and TV. I've never felt like the collection owns me.

[Mantis]

I enjoyed having a physical collection of everything until I moved home and circumstances surrounding it required that I move back to my old flat and then back to the new one within a month or so of my initial moving date. It just about killed me hiring a van and lugging all those boxes back and forth three times.

I've since pruned the collection quite drastically so that I only maintain a modest number of my absolute favourite movies and shows so that I can always have them on hand when streaming services inevitably remove them all. I took a lot of stuff to charity (or sold the rarer stuff online) when we finally got round to unpacking here.

I didn't have any psychological hangups over having a bigger collection, they just stayed on the shelf in alphabetical order; but it is also quite nice to have a slightly more minimalist living room and the knowledge that I don't have to cart so much around with me if I move again.

It was the books that were the real killer anyway.

[Rusty]

I bought a 4k blu ray player a few years back (thanks to you guys) and then bought every film that I wanted to watch in 4k. That ended up being a surprisingly small number of disks.

I still have those disks but ended up downloading them all via torrent and have them on a HDD with everything else that I care about. They were big downloads (50 or 60gb each) and I now find it much easier to suddenly get the urge to watch them and just click play rather than trying to connect up the player again, find the disks, waiting for them to spin up, get to the menu, select play, watch trailers etc.

[Animalmother]

I have 2 bank cards and I've forgotten the PIN's on both. This happens to me every so often where I just forget passwords and codes I use everyday. I really hope I remember soon..

[Alan]

You can usually look them up via online banking

[Raid]

Yeah, the app for mine lets me check debit and credit card PINs, and said bank is usually slow to add features to their online banking systems, so it's probably something yours will do.

[Animalmother]

Cheers for the advice. Have it now.

[Hatredsheart]

I have 2 bank cards and I've forgotten the PIN's on both. This happens to me every so often where I just forget passwords and codes I use everyday. I really hope I remember soon..

For that reason mine are my wedding anniversary. I'll forget my birthday before I forget that bugger.

[Stormbringer]

Marathons.

Marathons in the city of Edinburgh, closing down the city centre with road closures left, right and centre, causing huge backlogs of cars choking up the streets filled with people who have places to go and people to see, just to accommodate a bunch of other people who want to run around.

T'int right, t'int fair, t'int fit, t'in't proper.