[waste_monk]

I appreciate the attempt, but have never seen the point personally.

That is, many physical media collectors do it to have nice box sets to display, or in an attempt to have off-line copies of media, but I have never met anyone who goes to the effort of ensuring long-term readability - which is understandable, it is a huge hassle. Unless you are copying the content to new physical media every so often it will eventually rot and become unplayable.

For example, for optical media the expected lifetime is only a couple of decades depending on the type of media [1]. I believe commercially pressed DVD and blueray are somewhere around 10-20 years.

[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-institute/services/con... , see table 2.

[mapontosevenths]

Outside of manufacturing defects you can expect HTL blu-rays to last for more than a hundred years when stored properly. Some estimates are as high as 300 years. Don't buy the cheap ones or store them outdoors and you'll be fine.

Some archival grade disc's are estimated to last 700 years or more and dont cost THAT much more.

DVD's and CDR'S used organic dies that broke down quickly. Blu-rays mostly use inorganic dies that last forever. Cheap LTH disc's being the exception.

MOST manufacturers like Verbatimm do not even produce the organic die LTH disc's anymore as people stopped buying them. There are still some floating around for sale, so avoid them.

[Cpoll]

You're citing a report about recordable CD and DVDs. Movie DVDs should be expected to last much longer than that.

[blihp]

Not necessarily as even the factory produced optical discs have had issues with de-lamination, oxidation etc. Of course a lot of that had to do with companies cheaping out on manufacturing in order to make that last tenth of a cent of profit as they tend to do.

[LtWorf]

I think you're thinking of the CD-R