I started my DVD collection many years ago and I have all my discs in nice clean Sterilite boxes. Mary King coded up a little database for us to use in tracking which box contains what disk. Back in 2024 I had a sense that the market for optical drive mechanisms was shrinking fast so I ordered several of my favorites.... good thing because they're ALL GONE!
Why would someone want optical media (like CD's and DVD's), they're awkward, they skip, easy to damage and they're fragile. You can get an online subscription and listen to whatever you want anytime you want...right?
I'm not a doomer and I don't think the internet is going away but what if it does? What are you listening to then?
I like to listen on a high quality stereo, the tinny sound of a phone makes me cringe and wireless ear buds don't fit my ears (thank heavens). Even my kitchen stereo has a subwoofer because I like FULL sound.
RIPPING TO MP3? - not so fast!
I have relatives who ripped their CD collections to MP3 and then gave away their CDs (they never asked me, I would have paid the shipping). No, not only are they listening to inferior sound quality (MP3 vs Wav), they're breaking the law (it's a gray area if you have the discs but if you ripped and ditched the media you're for-sure a bootlegger). I'm not an attorney so if you need legal advice find a lawyer. If you need SOUND ADVICE you're in the right place.
PAYING THE PRICE
Maybe you're planning on getting a brain implant to listen with or some other upgrade in the future, but here's the sad truth about streaming: you're paying forever!
Streaming services are quick to point out how much you previously spent on buying CDs and now you can listen to anything.
Lets say it's only $10 a month, that's $120/year and $1200 over the next 10 years. Do you think they will keep the price this low? When all the media goes away and after all the disk drive mechanisms are gone my crystal ball says prices WILL be going UP!
DISCS, DISKS AND DISK-DRIVES ARE VANISHING
Today Mary King went on a deep dive into drive mechanisms because she thought they would always be there. Nope. The nice tray loading drawer type drives are nowhere to be found except a bunch old "untested" used gadgets from eBay.
I noticed a couple of years ago that fewer TV show collections were being sold on Amazon. Wow, what a surprise, Amazon is now heavy into streaming. These days you're hard pressed to find a show on DVD for a reasonable price or in the correct region (on Amazon).
Another of my discoveries (the hard way), eBay is flooded with counterfeit new DVD products that are so error-filled that up to half the disks don't play...really sad. It's a bummer watching a serial TV program that flows from show to show and suddenly one disk does not load. I look for clean preowned content to put in my collections, those are higher quality disks with lower errors.
WHICH MASTER?
I have a LOT of disc's and disk's, I've been collecting them since the 1980's when audio CDs took over from vinyl records and became the defacto way to distribute music. Back then we thought 16-bit uncompressed wav files were pretty good. Now, everything is compressed. Lossless? Not so fast... I compare things and sometimes newer releases come from newer masters? Comparing older Robin Trower CD releases to newer distributions reveals differences.
Roger Nichols talked about this back in the early 1990's (record companies using the wrong masters), he pointed the finger at careless and greedy record companies who were in a hurry to get something out and did not take care in which version of the master they used.
And then there was the tape archive that burned down and took out a lot of music, film and video masters leaving us with copies of copies as consumers. Pretty soon it won't matter because CD and DVD drive mechanisms will be gone from the market.
EPILOGUE
Got CDs or DVDs? Better get a couple of drives while you can because optical media is going away and when it's gone.... it won't be back!
Thanks for reading High on Technology, Good Music To You!
©October 30 2026 by Mark King, it is NOT ok to copy or quote without written permission from the author.
Originally published 103126
