I have an accessory DVD drive that I can plug into my laptop, but for watching videos, my laptop is mediocre, especially the sound. I bought an inexpensive soundbar, but the whole setup is cumbersome. Finding a laptop with an internal optical drive is almost impossible and small DVD players that I've found are of horrible quality. I think there is definitely a market for decent DVD and/or Blu-ray players. As for converting disks to mp4 files, software is available, but I don't know how much degradation of quality occurs with the compression.

I have several Blu-ray players. My laptop has a read/write drive as does my PC in my office. I can even play movies in my car. "IF" I didn't own a disc player, I'd go to a thrift store and buy one for $10. 🐾 Here's an APP for DVD MP4 conversion

We do have a disc player, bit i will admit we dont use it much.

We also have a VCR--the blue ray was a gift--total waste of money. When we used to go rent movies we would not care enough to pay the extra $ for the blue ray discs. We stopped purchasing movies years ago but continue to have quite a library...so we have players for them all. Lap Top does not have a player.

We have a Blu-ray player which we use occasionally for things that aren't available to stream, mainly TV shows that we love so have on disc (thirtysomething and Northern Exposure, for example.)

We donated most of our DVDs before our last move. Haven't watched one in ages, but there is a DVD player in the LR left by previous owner. We mainly watch cable, Netflix, Discovery+ or through Amazon Prime. I can't imagine buying a DVD player or any more DVDs.

We have a region free 4K UHD Blu-ray player that’s supposed to play any disc, from any region in the world. However, I recently ordered a dvd, Dean Spanley, that was from Germany and it failed to play. Bummer.

I have a DVD player at home, and a Blu Ray player at the cottage. The cottage one gets the most use, because there's no internet service there, so I can't really stream things. I do have some DVDs of things that aren't available to stream that I watch every now and then, but most of my discs are at the cottage.

I do, two Sony BluRay players. Use is limited and mostly restricted to films borrowed from the library.

One that's connected to a TV without smart capabilities was used mostly as a gateway for Amazon Prime and Netflix, since it has those apps. We have a Roku dongle in that TV now so we don't need the Sony disk player for that capability any more.

I just put mine out for goodwill. I hope I dont regret it. But I cant remember the last time we used it.

I assume that you all do know that a Blu-Ray player will also play your DVDs and your CDs.

We have thousands...HAHA...of movies and tv series on discs, bluray and DVDs. We have a Sony Bluray player.

If I wanted to use it with my computer and had nothing built in, I would buy an external bluray player I suppose. My desktop has a DVD player only but my new laptop has nothing. I am pretty sure my husband has an external DVD player for us if we just had to have it. I have not had a use for though. We watch movies on the TV only, it's like 65"!

I have a BluRay player on my dumb (not "Smart") TV in the den. It used to be the interface with Netflix, but now I have Roku to stream Sling and Youtube. Like Elmer, I still use it to play movies I get at the library.

I only mention this because I think a lot of people are in my situation, and will have a Bluray player hooked up (even if it is not used too often).

We do not have cable at our house in Cathedral City, and so we have stored almost all of our DVDs and Blu-ray discs there. We have a 4K player in Los Angeles but very few 4K discs - Blu-ray seems to be sufficient for the TVs that we have.

My brother works for Sony's Home Entertainment department, and so he gets new Sony movies that we watch through Amazon Prime streaming. He used to get discs, but Sony decided just to give codes to the employees so that they can stream the movies. We stream them through Blu-ray players, as they have better menus.

We do not have Netflix or any other streaming service that has a fee, other than Amazon Prime. Netflix does not have anything that I need to see.

We can watch Samsung TV channels in L.A. and Cathedral City, be we only watch those in CC because we don't have cable there.

Thanks for that link, Nicole. I downloaded the program and then tried it on a DVD that Kevin had made from videos taken with his camcorder from 2005, which used tapes that we no longer have. The newer camcorders that we bought save movies as digital files, and then they are easier to edit and upload to Youtube. Unfortunately, the old videos that we have seem to be of poor quality, but they are better than nothing. I have some from before 2005 as well.

The Movavi converter puts a watermark on the videos, unless you pay $65 for the full version. I don't think I want to pay that right now, but I might once I get my budget for the kitchen renovation worked out. It does seem to be a good converter, but I have not tried any others.

"We do not have Netflix or any other streaming service that has a fee, other than Amazon Prime. Netflix does not have anything that I need to see."

I agree about Netflix, but Britbox is a winner; Criterion Channel is pricier, but has some great movies.

We have a Fire TV, no cable, no satellite, etc. We have Amazon Prime. We recently got Peacock as for some reason, at times, that local channel (NBC) goes in and out (HD attic antenna).

At home we use a BluRay to play movies from our public library. A BluRay was our streaming device at the Maui condo. Both had smart TVs.

I think Netflix may be creating some new movies or series, but never found anything we wanted to see (or hadn't already seen) there in the past.

I voted none, but we actually do have a little external dvd drive that we can hook up to a pc if we need to copy a cd to our music library. We only stream shows and do not use cable.

I haven't had cable in over 20 years. I have 2 DVD players somewhere, and 2 Sony Blu ray players hooked up. I'm not getting rid of my DVD's even though I don't watch often. I was taking movies out of the library as well, but lately am too busy at work. When I retire I expect I will again if they still have them. I don't want to pay for streaming services, but then I prefer older movies over most new ones.

We have 3 TVs with DVD players hooked to all of them - and almost never used at all nowadays, because we have Rokus - and Hulu and Netflix subscriptions. 2 are actually combo VCR /DVD players, and 1 of the TVs is a DVD player too. I think I've watched more VHS tapes than DVDs over the years.

Right now, we also have a free subscription to Apple+ TV for 3 months. It was a special offer through my Target Cartwheel account.

I also have a big iMac desktop with a disc drive, not sure if it will burn DVDs, but it can certainly play them.

If I had something I needed to convert, I'd send it to my sister in NY. Both she and my BIL are film/video editors (he's also a TV producer), so they can do all kinds of stuff like that. Or maybe my son, who is pretty geeky and has beaucoup tech devices.

I didn't see you mention flash drives, which can be a convenient way to transfer, store, and access files.

Commercial disks usually have copy protection and cannot be easily be converted to other file formats. Perhaps pros have the tools to disable protection or to record images as they're played.

There was a time some years ago I wanted to rip some movies to a different format (simply for my own convenience and a permitted copyright act) but the software that had been in general circulation to do that had just been withdrawn from circulation by a court action in a complaint by the motion picture industry, who argued it had the potential to violate their copyright rights.

Maybe it's possible now, I haven't paid any attention to it. But for BluRay disks, it would require a BluRay drive in a PC and few have them. External BluRay drives are finicky and often won't work with various hardware types.

I'm not interested in converting commercial discs - I want to convert personal discs that my brother has made into DVDs so that we could make copies to share with our family and friends - nothing therefore has copy protection.

My brother and I have only made DVDs and not Blu-ray discs, although we have the equipment to do both. Most of the DVDs we made from our personal videos are pre-2006.

I have an external Blu-ray-R connected to my desktop, but I have not used it much, other than to watch Blu-ray discs.

I have DVD players. But in recent years I have only used them to play Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas movies in my holiday decoration displays at work. Its a big hit every year. I hope they do not go obsolete anytime soon. I do not want to rely on the company WIFI to stream these movies every night! Imagine the email I would get if I tried that. I would also object to having to repurchase all of the movies I already have on DVD in streaming format for such things.

I prefer streaming, You can pretty much find almost anything you want most of the time. I suppose if ones internet service is interrupted or something DVDs or other players may come in handy, though if our power goes out and therefore the WIFI as well we watch what we want either on our phones or SOs iPad.

We have a ROKU box and I recommend it a lot because it has a lot of free "channels" that people can take advantage of. Things like Tubi, the Roku channel, Crackle, and many others have lots of content for free. We pay for YouTube TV, Prime, Netflix, and I have a free 6 months subscription to Discovery + and 12 months of Disney+. After the free period I will likely cancel Disney+, since I have only used it once or twice to watch some nostalgic favorites, but I may decide to continue with Discovery+. I watch it more than anything else I think.

I still have a VHS player as we still have home movies on VHS tapes, plus a few movies. I also use a PS3 for dvd's both regular, HD and 3D.

I kept a Betamax ;-) I used to work for CBS News, so that really is a bit sentimental to me.

Aside from that, no disc tech left in my house, streaming and thumb drives are the order of the day.

We have a DVR connected to the cable box, so that I can record from cable to a DVD, and I use this mostly to save movies from TCM. I used to send a lot of these discs to my mother (before she died in 2012 because my father would not allow her to have cable TV. She liked to watch a lot of old movies from TCM, but she would only watch them once and then wanted more.

I also sent her a huge collection of Perry Mason TV shows, and she binge watched them until she had gone through the entire collection and then wanted more.

I have a lot of movies from TCM that I have saved on DVD, but we have so many of them that we seldom get around to watching them, but if we had company, they might be interested in watching some of them. We might be able to find them streaming somewhere, but I do not want to pay for that. The last movie I wanted to watch streaming was Felini's Il Bidone, and it costs $3.00 on Amazon Prime in order to watch without commercials, whereas TCM movies do not have commercials. This movie was recently on TCM, but I did not find out about that until the movie was 30 minutes in. I did find it on Youtube, however, and watched the first part of it there, as I had only recorded the last part of it. The first part of this movie is the funniest, and so I might pay the $3.00 to watching it streaming without commercials.

We still have our Xbox 360 and can watch DVDs on that.

My husband actually ripped all of our DVS years ago and put them on a server so we can watch them on demand. We kept the discs as backups and ditched the cases so our entire collection fits into one album. I really wish you could just buy them in cardboard boxes now, we had to throw away SO much plastic!

But we rarely buy anything else. Ripping DVDs is complicated, time consuming, sometimes the image quality is sub-par, and the software to "stream" it sucks. The alternative is the need to maintain at least one DVD player, and one day your newest TV will no longer be compatible. I honestly I feel like maintaining a physical media collection is only worth it if you have some obscure stuff that can't be easily streamed anymore.

I do have a lot of obscure stuff on DVD, and we store almost all of our DVDs in cases, but we have about a dozen cases. We have a collection of Russian films that would be in the "Fantasy" genre and were a bit expensive when we bought them, but they might be streamable by now. We have watched them multiple times, and we always watch them in Russian with English subtitles. They are dubbed in English, but the English dubbing is flat and terrible, whereas the Russian version is extremely dramatic and much more interesting to listen to. Plus I can learn new Russian words this way. When I got my first Russian DVD, the first menu was all in Russian, and so I had to navigate through that to find the subtitles, and then I was able to switch to an English menu. I don't think that would be the case in the streaming versions.

The Russian DVDs can possibly be found at Rusico.com, but this is blocked from my computer. I wonder how many Russian website are now blocked.

I have a DVD player in the livingroom but haven't used it in years. I miss the one on my old computer. It broke years ago too and I replaced it with a laptop that had no dvd thing.

Lars, DirecTV did carry the RT channel but it was discontinued within the first week of Russia’s war with Ukraine.

"and I replaced it with a laptop that had no dvd thing."

You can get an external DVD player (USB connection) for about $30

^That's good know, and I would get one for my next laptop, although I want to delay that as much as possible. I could also use my external Blu-ray player with my next laptop, if it came to that, since I have been using it with my current desktop that it is connected to.

I bought a well equipped and spec'd Lenovo All in One that lacked only an internal drive. I tried to get an external (USB) one from Best Buy and after going through three different ones that I purchased, falied in trying to set up and so had to return, the guy told me that they often experience incompatibilities between USB Bluray drives and PC hardware. I settled for an external DVD drive and called it a day. It wasn't such a pressing need that I felt motivated to trudge on trying to find a Bluray one that would work but it was frustrating.

Maybe it was the brands Best Buy was selling (I think LG or Samsung) but I couldn't get any of them to work. .

I got an el cheapo region independent DVD player to watch the British version of Upstairs Downstairs.

I do stream a lot of shows, but I have all of my holiday movies on DVD. That's really the only reason I still have a DVD player. It's a cheap little box (I think it plays Blu-Ray and regular DVDs) that sits by the TV, and had to be set up through a switch that I have to manually click over to the DVD. My then-husband set it all up back in 2017 when we moved into this house, and I have made it a point to TOUCH NOTHING related to the aging TV/TiVo/AppleTV/Bose soundbar/DVD stuff lest I kludge something up beyond retrieval and find myself at the mercy of the BestBuy Geek Squad.

My earlier comment isn't clear - what I tried to get was an external, USB Blu-ray drive. The problems that I experienced and adescribed by the person at Best Buy had to do with those of this capability specifically.

DVD external drives of the regular kind, that don't read Blu-ray disks, are vanilla and no problem at all to connect and use. That was what I settled for.

Amylou, I read recently that they will be combining Discovery+ w/ HBO Max sometime soon. You might want to keep an eye out because if you renew just the Discovery + before that happens, you might get a good deal! I had CBS All Access, and when they were switching it over to paramount Plus, I was able to get a whole year for half price ($30 rather than $60).

I had been considering buying a new laptop with an internal DVD drive and this thread convinced me to do just that. I love my small laptop with no keypad or internal optical drives for travel, but as I mentioned, it's frustrating when I want to watch a DVD. I know the laptop I'm buying isn't the lastest and greatest, but it should work as a back-up laptop and for watching DVDs. I just hope the sound quality is sufficient for my needs. If not, I will return it.

Sound quality on laptops is fairly bad, but you can use headphones or external speakers, if more than one person will be watching with you. I use headphones with my laptop, and the sound is great.

Meant to mention that when we got our new tv, there is no way to connect the Blu-Ray player, so we can't watch any of our discs. Granddaughter misses the Heffalump movie. I get that they want to make the back nice and clean, but I never see it, so I really don't care. It is a bit of a bummer. Maybe there is a way, but I haven't looked it up on line yet...after about five months. Oh well. Also can't connect the cable box, so we stream everything. Time to cancel Comcast cable and just have internet through them.

ETA: our blu-ray plays dvds too, so why have both?

I swear I posted to this the other day, but don’t see it.

We have a DVD, but rarely use it. We use an ancient Playstation for Netflix and Prime — I think it’s time for an upgrade. :D

cyn427 (z. 7, N. VA) what Elmer is saying is that you might need a converter like this one. cheap and easy -- and you can easily return it if it's not the right thing.

If your cable box isn't compatible, I'm guessing you have an old one and need to upgrade, or ask them how you can get it through your TV w/o a box. But honestly, your instinct to cancel is a good idea! (I'm a TV junkie and don't miss ours at all. When we canceled comcast, we switched to a different company that offered faster internet and unlimited data for way less.)

Some people keep their DVD players after they get a Blu-ray player, possibly to use with an additional TV. We have a 4K player, and it will also play Blu-ray, and we have some DVD players that we have not yet gotten rid of. We have three TVs in L.A. and three TVs in Cathedral City, although I very seldom watch the ones in my bedrooms, even though I have cable in my bedroom in L.A. - it did not cost extra.

We have a region-free DVD player (but not Blu-ray) in L.A., and I use it to watch foreign DVDs of movies that are not available in the U.S. One movie, Stadtgespräch, I saw at a film festival at the Directors' Guild in Hollywood, in German, and so I had to order the DVD from Germany in order to watch this movie again - it's very funny. However, when I saw the movie at the Directors' Guild, there were English subtitles, but the DVD has no subtitles at all, which I thought was strange, since they had already been done and not everyone understands German. My brother won't watch it with me because he does not understand German.

I have a BlueRay (picked up from a neighbor who was discarding it) on my main TV, and my older DVD player on the older, non-smart, TV that is in the spare bedroom with my elliptical. I use the BlueRay to play DVDs from the library - like Dr. Who, or Game of Thrones, since I don't subscribe to those streaming platforms. The one in the spare bedroom is for my exercise DVDs, which I still prefer to use instead of streaming from my laptop. My laptop also has a DVD drive although I haven't used it for anything in a long time.