So if I just kept the DVDs, any time I wanted to watch something on one, I would have to:
1) Physically go to where the DVDs are
2) Locate the specific DVD I'm looking for (can be tricky if I'm looking for a specific episode of a show—I might not always remember what season it's from, and the Plex interface makes it pretty easy to scan through)
3) Get the DVD out
4) Go to the living room, where the DVD player is
5) Take exclusive control of the living room, and also bind myself to being there, for the duration of watching it
6) Put it all back when I'm done
So yes: for simple storage, as long as the DVDs you have will last the length of time you want to keep them, and you have enough physical space to keep them in comfortably, just keeping the DVDs is easier. But for actually using them on a regular basis, for places with less available space, for people who expect to be moving frequently (or just soon), and for collections where the longevity of the physical media is in doubt, digitizing is a better way to go.
Also note that page is referencing releases of Ubuntu from 2008. Maybe take it's information with a pinch of salt.
For a purely Linux way (as you linked to an Ubuntu Page) this[2] is a reasonable guide (giving it a quick skim) using MakeMKV. This should also work on Windows. (Ignore the Haandbrake steps here).
If you're on Windows (or know how to setup a VM with USB passthru for the Bluray drive) and don't mind paying for a license AnyDVD HD[2] is very good.
Both of the above will strip the DRM and leave you with the raw files from the disk (AnyDVDHD also gives the option to make an ISO). You can keep there as a 1:1 backup of the disk or you can further refine.
Without going to a massive rabbit hole and reproducing some (unfortunately private) guides verbatim you have 3 main things you can do from here if you don't want the raw source files.
1. Straight Remuxing: Take the video/audio as is from the `m2ts` container and stick it in an MKV, this won't save you any real space but makes archiving the film alone easier, you'll save some space from extras etc. by deleting the raw source files here. Takes about as long as a copy operation would. You can do this with ffmpeg on the cli in a single command.
2. Audio transcode remuxing. Take the raw video, transcode the audio to something smaller. You use a bunch of tools to strip the Audio[4][5], then transcode it using eac3to, then remux everything[6]. Realistically you've saving maybe a gig here if you're just transcoding the main audio track and dumping the rest. Some time spend recompressing the audio, then remuxing maybe an hour once you know what you're doing. This is usually what you'll see as a "Remux" on the high seas.
3. Compress Audio/Video: This is where you'd use something like Handbrake[7] to recompress the video, you can use the presets and get a watchable file but not the best quality but usually a significant size reduction. You can also tweak a lot of knobs here for excellent quality with little to no visual fidelity loss (a transparent encode) but this will take a lot of time. If you're using a preset you're probably looking at roughly the film's length encoding (more with slower processors). This is usually what you'll see tagged as a "BluRay" release on the high seas.
Obviously this is all for backing up your legitimately owned media in jurisdictions which allow it.
1. https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19634 2. https://www.howtogeek.com/161498/HOW-TO-BACKUP-YOUR-DVD-AND-... 3. https://www.redfox.bz/en/anydvdhd.html 4. https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=125966 5. http://haali.net/mkv/ 6. https://mkvtoolnix.download/ 7. https://handbrake.fr/
1. Bluray drives are becoming increasingly rare. Few people are buying them (because many stream) which is slowly killing the market.
2. Blurays tend to be much more finichy with read errors (unfortunately). A little dust or a bad pressed disk and the entire episode is lost :(
3. Blurays aren't being produced. Sure, you can get bluray movies still, but for tv series it's becoming REALLY rare for a bluray to be produced. Funnily, you'll often find DVDs for tv series before blurays (even for brand new shows).
... but it never has.
I converted them to mid quality mp4s so can keep a copy on a 512gb usb flash drive so I can take my movie collection anywhere I travel.
Donate to the library at least.
> burned DVDs can have a lifetime of less than 5 years in some cases.
My CD-Rs from '97 are in fine shape, thanks.
I had some from around the same time that were becoming unreadable by the mid-2000s.
The point is, you can't count on them lasting unless you specifically go out and buy the archival type.
And if you're not reading them regularly, then you'll only find out they've gone bad when it's already too late.
There is a reason why transferring backups to new media is done on the regular by professionals. They know that the only way to make sure the copies are good is to ... well, make copies.
One of my old photo/video backups is on 100GB Verbatim Bluray. Don't know about these in the future so I did a parity scan on each of them so errors can be fixed if need be. Also on external HD. Let's check in, in twenty years.
Rip the DVDs, keep the digital copies somewhere safe, and discard the physical discs.
If you want to ensure that this remains safe, you'll need to both back up and periodically transfer the digital copies to new physical storage devices (in my case, I just upgraded from the ~4-yr-old 4TB HDD that was holding all my media to a new 16TB HDD). This is, however, kind of a necessity in any case; especially for burned DVDs, for instance of home movies, ripping them and storing the media fully digitally with a plan for long-term archival will have much better longevity. Even pressed DVDs don't last forever (especially if they are used sometimes—scratches happen!), and burned DVDs can have a lifetime of less than 5 years in some cases.
Data, however, if properly treated, can be perfectly saved forever. (Well, barring cosmic ray bit-flips, I guess.)