Hey @MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca, I just wanted to let you know that I bought a 4k UHD movie the other day and my blu-ray player that I updated the firmware on could not play the disc as well.

I found answers online pointing to updating my volume unique keys (VUK). These keys are necessary to decrypt the discs. To make a long story short, there is a database online that you can use to update your keys to read your 4k UHD disc. I used this script in particular because I was able to echo the output the HTTP website. I didn’t want to click on a link that is not using HTTPS.

I’m using linux so this was the solution that worked for me. I think there are other ways to update these keys. If you do go this route of using this bash script, please keep in mind that it’s going to be a few hours. The transfer speed was in the kilobytes. Towards the end of my patience, I just hit ctrl-c to skip the keys for other nations that I don’t see myself using.

Once all was done, I was able to get VLC to run my 4k film on my PC :)

I’ve stored them in a TV cabinet for years. Nothing special. I’ve created a Jellyfin server so if I was burning my DVD and blu-ray already, I may as well back up to files. And to point out austinfloyd’s comment, disc rot was the other reason to back up the DVDs.

Also don’t go with an Asustor 1102TL. I can’t access the BIOS so I can’t flash open media vault. I had a whole plan to have an automated Borg backup script running on the NAS but alas, I guess not. If someone can prove me wrong, please let me know.

I recently got into the rabbit hole of digitizing my DVDs after discovering that disc rot is very real. I bought an LG blu-ray external driver, followed steps to flash firmware, bought a MakeMKV license to support the software, and bought a NAS to run a RAID 1 configuration to hold the backups of the DVDs.

I do think with Netflix buying out Warner Bros, optical media will take a hit. But companies like the Criterion Collection keeps optical media alive. Also CDs are alive and well when it comes to music.