I’ve always thought of myself as an early adopter of technology, or at least part of the early majority. However, I’m beginning to understand why there are folks who stubbornly hold on to 8-track tapes and Atari games.
Change is good and technological advancement has made life much easier in so many ways. I love catching up on Lost online and my iPod is a staple for business flights.
But when you are a music and film lover, the constant format changes can drive you mad.
I’ll admit that we have a few more CDs (1200+) and DVDs (100+) than the average bear. We truly love music and have an eclectic collection. We have a lot of DVDs as a result of living overseas and knowing that good viewing entertainment can make culture shock and homesickness a little easier.
The problem is this: we not only have CDs and DVDs, but we also have VHS tapes that are starting to degrade. We’ve been working through a very time-consuming transfer process to put the tapes on DVD. (If you’ve never done it, simple instructions can be found here.)
No problem, right? Transferring is relatively quick and easy. However, the VHS boxes have a lot of great information that we don’t want to lose. So I’ve been taking boxes to work to scan, front and back, then photoshopping to create our own DVD liners. Again, not hard but time consuming, and the stack to waiting to be scanned seems never ending.
I’ve been reading that DVDs may be not long for this world. You have got to be kidding me! That’s it – I’m packing it in and sticking with my current generation iPod and DVDs. UNCLE!
The good news is that it looks like the Blu-Ray Disc Association is going to be nice and build in backward compatibility with older DVD and CD technology.