Movies - Thumb drives ? DVD?

[maxingout]

The last time we were out cruising we had a large collection of movies on DVD.

Since most computers today don't have DVD optical readers, how are people watching their movies? Are they using thumb drives or external DVD players?

Once you are out of range of Netflix, do people still watch movies?

I don't particularly want to put our large C/D DVD collection back on board Exit Only if there are other options available.

What are the options this time around?

[SVRocinante]

We did bring our DVD collection (perhaps not as large as yours) onboard Rocinante - seemed like a heck of a lot of work (and a lot of thumb drives) to convert our movies over... yes, my OLD 2012 iMac has a built in DVD drive

I did, however, rip all our music CDs (much easier & faster process) and left them all behind.

Not sure if it will help you in your decision process, but that's what we did.

Good luck!

[maxingout]

So you would have to rip the movies to thumb drives or to an external hard drive that you just used to play movies?

I rarely watch movies, but members of the crew do watch them. Maybe I should tell them to rip the movies to a hard drive if that would work. That would take a big job off my to do list.

[SVRocinante]

Yes, but it’s a bit more involved because they need to be “converted” to a suitable computer format... probably the most popular & free software to do it is called Handbrake.

[svrevelations]

We have over 3000 movies onboard - originally, all on DVD. The DVD covers took up a LOT of space and we then decided to store them in bulk DVD containers of 100 each. We later found that most of the DVD's were getting scratched - vibration and the DVD's in direct contact with each other. We then converted them all to MP4 format and saved them on external hard drives. With a USB cable, we plug the hard drive to our TV and select the movie we want to play. This is by far the best solution - saving lots of weight and space.

[SVRocinante]

Originally Posted by Revelations

We have over 3000 movies onboard...

Holy Mackerel!

Yep, perhaps “collection” was the wrong choice of words on my part.
Not sure how many I do have, but lets just say it’s well under 100 DVDs

[sailingunity]

Before we took off I ripped all of our movies to MP4 using a pay for software. It did take a long time, but mostly ran on its own. In retrospect I should have just taken the discs in one of those cases with the felt pages. We had not one but two hard drives crash while we were out (in only 8 months time).

[snort]

Originally Posted by Revelations

We have over 3000 movies onboard - originally, all on DVD. The DVD covers took up a LOT of space and we then decided to store them in bulk DVD containers of 100 each. We later found that most of the DVD's were getting scratched - vibration and the DVD's in direct contact with each other. We then converted them all to MP4 format and saved them on external hard drives. With a USB cable, we plug the hard drive to our TV and select the movie we want to play. This is by far the best solution - saving lots of weight and space.

Any idea how long it took to do that?

[puffcard]

Our TV has a built in DVD player, so we take about 200 disk that we get from the kids each winter. We watch a movie most nights. We use to use the Laptop but I like the bigger screen and louder sound of the TV. Once in awhile we'll do the laptop in the cockpit, like a drive-in.

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by maxingout

The last time we were out cruising we had a large collection of movies on DVD.

Since most computers today don't have DVD optical readers, how are people watching their movies? Are they using thumb drives or external DVD players?

Once you are out of range of Netflix, do people still watch movies?

I don't particularly want to put our large C/D DVD collection back on board Exit Only if there are other options available.

What are the options this time around?

Great to here you are gearing up to cruise again.....we are in the same process.

What I have found is that most of the technically savy younger cruisers have switched to portable hard drives.
There are already amazing libraries of high quality music and movies/TV series out there in the cruising world for copying.
Music beautifully engineered so that the sound levels remain constant and Indexed for easy search.
The music fills almost 2 TB and I have yet to find an artist song or genre that is not on there.

Same with the Movies

Networking amongst local younger cruisers (admittedly hard in Arizona[emoji4] ) is worth the effort.

[Panacea2183]

Originally Posted by maxingout

The last time we were out cruising we had a large collection of movies on DVD.

Since most computers today don't have DVD optical readers, how are people watching their movies? Are they using thumb drives or external DVD players?

Once you are out of range of Netflix, do people still watch movies?

I don't particularly want to put our large C/D DVD collection back on board Exit Only if there are other options available.

What are the options this time around?

Ripped all mine to laptop and then copied to thumb drive.
My TV has a USB port to insert the drive.
All movies on line at all times takes o space
Back up on laptop
So far never had a thumb drive fail.
Good luck and safe travels

[maxingout]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

Great to here you are gearing up to cruise again.....we are in the same process.

What I have found is that most of the technically savy younger cruisers have switched to portable hard drives.
There are already amazing libraries of high quality music and movies/TV series out there in the cruising world for copying.
Music beautifully engineered so that the sound levels remain constant and Indexed for easy search.
The music fills almost 2 TB and I have yet to find an artist song or genre that is not on there.

Same with the Movies

Networking amongst local younger cruisers (admittedly hard in Arizona[emoji4] ) is worth the effort.

We have been away for many years as I was working as a flying doctor with the Indian Health Service in the US southwest with more than 23 Native American Tribes.

We took a break because our parents needed help and we knew that they would not be around for very long. That phase is now past and it's time to move on to another adventure.

We have debated driving around the world in a Land Rover Defender or setting sail once again on Exit Only. My son and daughter in law want to have a sailing adventure, and so we decided to go sailing once again. They accompanied us on our circumnavigation, and so they know what they are getting into. We are starting the refit of Exit Only in the next few weeks. This will be a biggie, but at least my son will be there to help this time around.

Things have majorly changed in the past ten years, and I have been utilizing the forum to get up to speed on what is happening in the world of ocean cruising. Sailing is still sailing, but radios, MMSI, AIS, computers, wifi, chart plotters are either new or there have been major changes from when we were last aboard.

I have to admit that being a flying doctor going to windward at four miles a minute was really nice. Sailing at five knots will seem really slow.

And so the refit and reeducation begins. Refitting is like lighting hundred dollar bills on fire, and so my stack of Freedom Chips is about to hit the fan.

If it was just me going sailing, I think I would be happy keeping this extremely basic. But when you are responsible for the safety of other people, you have to do everything top notch.

[astokel]

We don't watch a lot of movies so we just downloads couple from Google while we still have Wi-fi.

[ArmyDaveNY]

Why suffer from the tyranny of OR when you can have the genius of AND?

Several have mentioned having drives that failed. I am in the process of digitizing all of my movies and music but I keep the CDs and DVDs. I would digitize all and then have a few CDs and DVDs in case (when?) the drive fails. I have a lot of music and some movies on my external hard drive but occasionally a copy goes bad.

By having a few of your favourite DVDs and CDs around, you'll always have something you can watch or listen to. Most people have a few movies and CDs that they rarely get tired of. Those would be the ones to have on board as a back up.

[Greg Mason]

We recently bought 2 TB external hard drive to copy movies, music, TV shows to rid ourselves of the DVD and CD collection that we had collected. If you recorded these onto a windows based computer, they will play as AVI, MP4 format, and if you recorded or captured them on a mac computer they will play as a quicktime format. If you need to convert from one format to another, as I did, there are programs to do that, so I would load a bunch of them for conversion and go to bed. In the morning they were ready, as it seemed to take up to 45 minutes each to convert. But now they are all in a cel phone sized package that will play on computer or directly into a smart tv. Good luck.