Blu-Rays?

So I have been around this website for a bit and I have seen a pc part picker builds that included a $50-$60 Blu-ray reader. I want to know how many of you actual buy and watch blu-ray movies. I mean, I have an optical drive I picked up from a yard sale for a few bucks that doesn't even have a sata cable connected to it, and I have not bought a DVD, well, in about 10 years. So is it wrong if I have a chuckle when I see someone spending money for an expensive optical drive?

 

TL|DR: Do you have a blu-ray reader in your PC and/or do you buy and watch blu-ray movies?

I do buy and watch blurays/DVDs but I don't have a bluray drive in my PC. I watch them on my PS3 in the living room. I have a pretty standard CD/DVD combo drive (harvested from a really old office PC)in my PC, since I still have quite a few older games lying around on optical media.

I buy and watch blurays. It's more convenient for me to call to a shop and pick up a film than it is to download a bluray.

I don't watch them on my PC though. I use my PS3 and I have a pretty good bluray player I picked up on sale for £20 but I've lost the remote so it's a little useless at the moment.

I have a Blu-Ray drive and buy Blu-ray movies on occasion, but only for movies I really like or are excited for.  Dark Knight trillogy, Mel Brooks collection, Pacific Rim, Skyfall, The Avengers etc etc. or if I find something on a stupid sale (I got Boondock Saints and Resevoir Dogs for like $2.50 a piece).  But like Nohrellas, I mainly watch them out in the living room.  My Blu-ray drive mostly pulls data back-up duty...  and because of that, it's more than worth it's cost to me.

Just because we live in a digital age doesn't mean physical media is no longer relevant.  I quite like having physical copies of some things, if for no other reason than to have them on display.

How much are you able to back up on a blu ray disk?

Single layer, 25GB.  Dual layer, 50GB

Thats not too bad. Although I will stick to using my 2 TB external hard drive.

Blu-Ray is nice because once the data is burned to the disc, it stays that way forever (unless the disc gets trashed).

It pretty much boils down to if you want a few pieces of large storage or many pieces of small storage. Few pieces of large is nice because there's less of a chance of stuff breaking, but if it does you lose more data, whereas a bunch of small is nice because there's less of a chance of losing a lot of data, but the chance of losing some is higher.

I use Blu-rays largely for double redundant backup (along side my file server).  Then anything important goes in the fire safe, just in case.  Carries a bit less risk than a hard drive.  But, I've lost things in the past due to multiple hard drive failures striking in short order, so I've learned to embrace keeping things on multiple mediums lol.