At the risk of making some readers feel a little old, there are now several generations of people who have probably never used or handled optical discs. Add to that, modern Blu-ray discs are much more robust than CD or DVD technology, and there’s a good chance you either don’t know how to handle or store them, or you’ve forgotten.
This wouldn’t matter much if physical media weren’t relevant anymore, but as we’ve argued in the past, physical media have several advantages over streaming, and if we rely on online, cloud-based services alone for access to content, then we’ll lose some forever, or at least for long stretches at a time.
So, if you’ve been convinced that it makes sense to collect and preserve content on disc, let’s talk about how you can make those discs last as long as possible.
Always Handle Discs by the Edge
It’s in the Player or in the Case
Keep Away From Heat and the Sun
Good summary. UV light and heat are the long term dangers to optical media, and scratches from mishandling them is the main short term usage danger.
I have music CDs that are 30+ years old that I bought new in the 1990s that still play just fine. Following these rules preserved them.
At the risk of making some readers feel a little old, there are now several generations of people who have probably never used or handled optical discs.
No, a generation is 20-30 years, so there’s at most one generation that’s never used or handled these discs for music, movies, and video games. The Xbox 360 and PS3 were released in 2005-2006 and Netflix started becoming popular as a streaming service around 2010. So that’s Generation Alpha, starting around 2010.
I know this is pedantic, but these kind of “kids today have never used (somewhat recent technology)!” statements are always silly and made too early, because they’re designed to be shocking. It’s not like this stuff just disappeared the moment they were born.
Now, if you talked about driving with a stick shift, sure, there are maybe two generations of people that have never learned that, generally speaking. But no one ever says that because it’s not shocking and everyone already knows.
At the risk of making some readers feel a little old
Too late.
Really.
