I just tossed my DVDs. That was not the first DVD library I had, nor the second. First got stolen, I lost my second one in a move, and the third is now in the dumpster. Pretty sure I hit five digits of money spent on them.

This last one was just the discs. I was tired of the physical space they were taking, and lugging them around in moves, so had this great plan to digitize it. I of course, never did. I don't think I have even owned a device that can play a disc in like 6 or 7 years. So I came across this pile of discs probably at least 3ft high in a box in my closet and I just sighed and finally tossed them all. I realized they have been dead weight for years and years and just want them gone at this point. The time and expense spent on them though definitely had me clinging to them for far too long. And I have another move upcoming so made the kneejerk decision and now I feel nothing but relief. Sunk cost be damned......mostly. Still wince on how much I blew on it over the years.

Though my phone obsession some years ago comes in a close second.

Y'all?

ETA: Better way of asking is what is your biggest tech rabbit hole expense that went exactly no where. Maybe just left you with weird devices/products you can't even give away and a massive hole in your bank account that can only be filled by regret.

I still have a big tub of DVD and VHS

boy09 said:

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You couldn't donate them somehwere? A library or something?

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I didn't have the cases. I nixed them long ago since they took up so much space. Just a literal stack of discs.


And I think that my biggest issue and why I am *****ing about it is I did not get my money's worth. I went on a collectinging spree and maybe only watched about 60% at most. And the majority of those was a one and done.

aTm2004 said:

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If your logic is you spent the money and enjoyed it at the time, but technology enhancements has made it obsolete, then the answer would be everything. DVD players made VCRs obsolete. CD players made cassette decks obsolete. MP3s made CDs obsolete. Smartphones made (or are making) several things obsolete.

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Definitely true, but I just lament on how deep that rabbit hole I went and how it just didn't pan out over time. I am facing the same issue with firearm night sights oddly enough. I dropped a lot of coin on tritium based stuff and I always knew they would degrade of course. But me in my 20s couldn't think past the next day and here I am a decade plus now.... with a bunch of weak or dead night sights. I knew but it just seemed so far off in the future. Now that future is today and my sights are poop. Albeit, well made ones but the main purpose of them is mostly gone. Have some regrets now.

Pman17 said:

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HDDVD

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Still have my player and some disks that I bought from Blockbuster for $3 each when HD-DVD lost the format war to Blu-ray.

aTm2004 said:

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Time flies as you get older, doesn't it? I'm in my early-40s now and things I remember from college seems like yesterday, but in reality, it was half my life ago.

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On the wrong side of 30s and man, things are definitely changing.

Rex Racer said:

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Pman17 said:

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HDDVD

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Still have my player and some disks that I bought from Blockbuster for $3 each when HD-DVD lost the format war to Blu-ray.

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Same here, plus the XBox HD-DVD drive I used to be able to rip my HD-DVDs.

Building a home lab I needed for testing and went the ebay used market route for it to be cheaper. Had multiple CPUs, motherboards, and RAM go out at completely different times over the span of 3 months but had to keep buying back into the older architecture because I already had started down that road. Ended up spending around $2000 total for a server that I could have gotten the equivalent of new for about $900. Then I ended up having to recycle 2 different server motherboards, 2 different CPUs, and few sticks of RAM that ended up all dead

I have an irrational need to own physical discs for every album I purchase although I just rip them onto my ipod and never play the disc again.

Now I have stacks of CDs of progressive metal bands taking up more and more room in my house. A lot of these discs are out of print and probably worth some cash to the right collectors but it's too much effort to try to sell them.

One day my son is going to have to go through all of this stuff like, "who the f is House of Spirits and Eternity X?" Lol

While I get the hassle of moving physical copies, I recently heard someone talking about what is going to happen to movies that don't make the cut on a streaming site? If there aren't any physical copies readily available, what then?

My laser disc story is a true one, but every time I've told it, I've thought of that DVD to LD post. So there was some intent here.

ifI had to do it all over again I never would have bought my kids an xbox

CapCity12thMan said:

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ifI had to do it all over again I never would have bought my kids an xbox

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Why?

Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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When I was in my 20s, I dropped roughly $6k on a laser disc player and a bunch of movies. The drive behind my initial decision was my favorite science fiction movie, Alien, featuring extra footage that I knew to exist but had never seen. That was 1993; in 1998 or 1999, the movie came out on DVD with all that extra footage but for a lot cheaper than many laser discs sold for.

I still have all the movies (including a big box set of the original theatrical releases of the Star Wars movies) because I have never found a place to either sell them or donate them. I can't bear to set them at the trash. They are essentially worthless.

Wish I could go back in time and kick younger me in the ass and put all that money into that first IRA I established at about the time I was done buying laser discs.

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Which player? Some have a fairly easy time of being converted for LD-Decode purposes. Laserdiscs are starting to rot away, so if it can be backed up, the sooner the better!

I've been working on a similar project for backing up VHS tapes (using a fork of the LD-Decode project, VHS-Decode). Depending on location/cost, I might actually be in the market to acquire what you have.

nwspmp said:

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Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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When I was in my 20s, I dropped roughly $6k on a laser disc player and a bunch of movies. The drive behind my initial decision was my favorite science fiction movie, Alien, featuring extra footage that I knew to exist but had never seen. That was 1993; in 1998 or 1999, the movie came out on DVD with all that extra footage but for a lot cheaper than many laser discs sold for.

I still have all the movies (including a big box set of the original theatrical releases of the Star Wars movies) because I have never found a place to either sell them or donate them. I can't bear to set them at the trash. They are essentially worthless.

Wish I could go back in time and kick younger me in the ass and put all that money into that first IRA I established at about the time I was done buying laser discs.

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Which player? Some have a fairly easy time of being converted for LD-Decode purposes. Laserdiscs are starting to rot away, so if it can be backed up, the sooner the better!

I've been working on a similar project for backing up VHS tapes (using a fork of the LD-Decode project, VHS-Decode). Depending on location/cost, I might actually be in the market to acquire what you have.

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No love for Betamax? My uncle has the entire collection of Star Trek episodes on Betamax. He never throws anything away.

I had a Beta, and still have 2 or 3 Beta movies stored away somewhere.

nwspmp said:

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Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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When I was in my 20s, I dropped roughly $6k on a laser disc player and a bunch of movies. The drive behind my initial decision was my favorite science fiction movie, Alien, featuring extra footage that I knew to exist but had never seen. That was 1993; in 1998 or 1999, the movie came out on DVD with all that extra footage but for a lot cheaper than many laser discs sold for.

I still have all the movies (including a big box set of the original theatrical releases of the Star Wars movies) because I have never found a place to either sell them or donate them. I can't bear to set them at the trash. They are essentially worthless.

Wish I could go back in time and kick younger me in the ass and put all that money into that first IRA I established at about the time I was done buying laser discs.

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Which player? Some have a fairly easy time of being converted for LD-Decode purposes. Laserdiscs are starting to rot away, so if it can be backed up, the sooner the better!

I've been working on a similar project for backing up VHS tapes (using a fork of the LD-Decode project, VHS-Decode). Depending on location/cost, I might actually be in the market to acquire what you have.

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The player I have is a Pioneer. I am in the Houston area, but no idea what I would want to sell these for. If you want to know what I have, you can reach me at username @ gmail.com

Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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nwspmp said:

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Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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When I was in my 20s, I dropped roughly $6k on a laser disc player and a bunch of movies. The drive behind my initial decision was my favorite science fiction movie, Alien, featuring extra footage that I knew to exist but had never seen. That was 1993; in 1998 or 1999, the movie came out on DVD with all that extra footage but for a lot cheaper than many laser discs sold for.

I still have all the movies (including a big box set of the original theatrical releases of the Star Wars movies) because I have never found a place to either sell them or donate them. I can't bear to set them at the trash. They are essentially worthless.

Wish I could go back in time and kick younger me in the ass and put all that money into that first IRA I established at about the time I was done buying laser discs.

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Which player? Some have a fairly easy time of being converted for LD-Decode purposes. Laserdiscs are starting to rot away, so if it can be backed up, the sooner the better!

I've been working on a similar project for backing up VHS tapes (using a fork of the LD-Decode project, VHS-Decode). Depending on location/cost, I might actually be in the market to acquire what you have.

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The player I have is a Pioneer. I am in the Houston area, but no idea what I would want to sell these for. If you want to know what I have, you can reach me at username @ gmail.com

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I remember for a while there was at least a theory that those Star Wars would be worth a lot as they are the only digital copies on the original Star Wars before the new scenes were added in the early 2000s.

Yep, and that's a big part of why I kept all my DVD and Blu Rays. My content isn't going to get pulled, edited or disappear. No trying to remember which streaming service happens to have what I want to see at the time included either, and if I don't have it that's what bit torrent is for.

Biggest high tech expense waste was trying to make ARC work with my 2016 Samsung TV and Onkyo receiver. It worked... most of the time. Then it didn't, or would depending on if the cable was plugged in the receiver just right. Not a big cost, but a monumental source of frustration until I finally gave up.

The Fife said:

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Yep, and that's a big part of why I kept all my DVD and Blu Rays. My content isn't going to get pulled, edited or disappear. No trying to remember which streaming service happens to have what I want to see at the time included either, and if I don't have it that's what bit torrent is for.

Biggest high tech expense waste was trying to make ARC work with my 2016 Samsung TV and Onkyo receiver. It worked... most of the time. Then it didn't, or would depending on if the cable was plugged in the receiver just right. Not a big cost, but a monumental source of frustration until I finally gave up.

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What is the difference between an optical disk of the bits and bytes and one stored on a magnetic disk of bits and bytes or an online storage of bits and bytes?

I could understand analog recordings on physical media, but digital storage is digital storage is digital storage.

If you search hard enough, you can find a digital copy of just about anything on the interwebs.

BTW - Many DVDs, CDs, LaserDiscs, VHS tapes and BetaMax significantly degrade over time. So if your goal is to retain your own copy, moving those bits and bytes off your physical media particularly optical discs and magnetic tape / disk and such would be wise.

Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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Quote:

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If you search hard enough, you can find a digital copy of just about anything on the interwebs.

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Yep. I found Disney's Song of the South somewhere, probably gone by now, and watched it one afternoon for the first time in many years. I was struck by how simply not racist that movie is.

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I wanted to watch Lucas a couple of years ago and literally could not locate a digital copy. I think I finally resorted to a torrent site using an old laptop in order to not give my main computer AIDS.

But I consider myself tech savvy and could NOT locate it anywhere. After all that trouble, it shows up on one of the streaming apps a few months later.

My son also has a knack for wanting to watch some show / cartoon he watched years ago that is no longer streaming or is in the process of moving from one platform to another.

So to add to the money waste, we have wasted his first year of college tuition purchasing the Transformer movies on about 3 different streaming platforms. Maddening.

Song of the South --> https://texags.com/forums/13/topics/3407376

This probably doesn't really count as a tech expense, but maybe?

Sleep Number bed. We got it because my wife has bad hip pain. Thought it might be the solution. But, it didn't really help. I forgot how much it cost, I think around $7-10K, but it turned out to not be the solution. And, for some reason the remotes (bluetooth) are usually flaky.