From the OCD projects file, I’m happy to report that I’m well on my way to ripping, and converting my 400+ disk movie and TV series collection. In fact the bookshelf where those disks live is actually starting to look a little bare, with about half the shelf space cleared off. Let me say up front, that while I’m very pleased with how this effort is turning out, getting it done has become a giant pain in the ass.

I’ve got two DVD drives, one in my laptop and the other acquired specifically for this purpose, running pretty much full time whenever I’m home. The conversion software lets off a distinctive “ding” when each disk is finished converting at which point I dash off like one of Pavlov’s dogs to load a new disk and repeat the process. On the average Sunday, I’m averaging eight disks a day between the two computers. That’s more or less one season of a TV show to give you a little perspective. Weekdays seem net about 4 or 5 disks. That doesn’t seem like much until you start really thinking about volume of data I’m slinging around the house wirelessly.

As of this afternoon, there are 687 GB of video sitting on 2TB external hard drive that’s running as my media server. By the time the conversion is finished, I’m expecting to need a 3TB drive (and another as a local backup), because most of what’s left are high definition movies rather than standard definition TV shows. The future might be in the cloud, but I’m old school enough to want a physical copy of all of my data, even if that doesn’t mean hundreds of DVD’s sitting displayed on a shelf.

By the time you add in metadata, cover images, and deal with the occasional other conversion issue that jumps up, I guess this isn’t an undertaking that most people would want to bother with. I’m doing it mostly because I’m a dork and like the idea of being able to access all my media all the time from any device in the house. If you’re the kind of person who’s already inclined to go give up on disks and go fully digital, the effort may well be worth it to you too. After all, who wants to be bothered by such old fashioned tasks as finding a disk, putting it in the DVD player, and waiting for it to load, when the alternative is just finding a comfortable spot, scrolling through the playlist, and hitting the select button?