Which is best? Convert to Blu-ray format or leave as MKV?

[Yanta]

As the title says, is it best to just size my MKVs to fit on a Blu-ray disk and just copy them to the disk, or is it worth the time to convert the MKVs to Blu-ray format?
We typically play the optical disks on our PCs, although we have Blu-ray players that read MKVs we don't use those much. Same question for DVDs.

[johns0]

Put your mkv on a hdd and store them that way and play them when needed,blu-ray discs are cumbersome and might no last.

[Yanta]

Sorry, I should have clarified.

I have 90TB of disk on my server. It keeps running out. Storage is $50 per TB. Blu-ray disks are 40c each. I also have a limit of 10 SATA drives on the motherboard. I guess I could buy an add-in SATA card to get more ports. As the size of the HDDs increases so does the cost per TB (oddly enough).

When I run short of space, or I haven't watched something for a long time I move it off the server.

So if I am going to use a Blu-ray disk, am I better to convert it to Blu-ray format, or leave it as an MKV and just copy to Blu-ray disk?

I don't find them cumbersome. I have a couple of portable cases (as on wheels), with 4,800 disk capacity. Lol, they're going to run out of space soon too

[Sharc]

If your mkv fit on a BD25 you could just copy and you won't be loosing any quality. You could re-encode the mkv to blu-ray format any time later if needed.
To make them blu-ray compliant you would most likely have to re-encode the video and audio, and author as Blu-ray disc format. The quality suffers with every re-encoding. The loss may be small though depending on bitrate and encoder settings.

In any case use a high quality disc brand, otherwise the joy may be short.

[lordsmurf]

Blu-ray disks are 40c each.

Quality discs are not 40c, especially not in $AUD.
Using junk is not much different than losing/deleting the data. The DELETE key is quicker.

[sneaker]

I would keep mkv. Converting to "Blu-Ray format" will only incur additional costs (incl. quality when re-encoded). As the others said the biggest worry would be safety of the data/backups.

[Yanta]

Blu-ray disks are 40c each.

Quality discs are not 40c, especially not in $AUD.
Using junk is not much different than losing/deleting the data. The DELETE key is quicker.

Each to his own. I buy TDK disks. I thought they were a reasonable brand?

I just checked my last invoice, and yes, you re right they were not 40c they were 50c each.

I buy in lots of 500 at a time. This is 25gb disks. The 50gb disks cost me $1.80 each for the TDK if I buy 200 at a time.

I've only lost one out of 8,000 disks in the last 10 years, so maybe it's time I started checking some of the older ones.

If TDK are junk what brand would you recommend?

[october262]

Blu-ray disks are 40c each.

Quality discs are not 40c, especially not in $AUD.
Using junk is not much different than losing/deleting the data. The DELETE key is quicker.

Each to his own. I buy TDK disks. I thought they were a reasonable brand?

I just checked my last invoice, and yes, you re right they were not 40c they were 50c each.

I buy in lots of 500 at a time. This is 25gb disks. The 50gb disks cost me $1.80 each for the TDK if I buy 200 at a time.

I've only lost one out of 8,000 disks in the last 10 years, so maybe it's time I started checking some of the older ones.

If TDK are junk what brand would you recommend?

best brand would be the Verbatim brand discs

[johns0]

To burn 1TB of movies it will take 43 disks so even if it's a little cheaper($21.50) it will take around 10 hours to burn,more to verify.

[Yanta]

Yep, that makes it less than half the price of a TB of HDD storage.
I don't mind the time. I have 3 optical drives. They burn while I'm doing other stuff.
Now, since I'm going to just copy the MKVs to disc, I'll save all the time, energy and CPU load on converting them to blu-ray too.
I get where everyone is going - just use HDD storage.
I typically do. Until I run short of space.

500 Verbatim BD25's $372. I'll grab those next time I need more.

Just for the sake of it, I costed 9 x 14TB NAS drives to replace my 9 x 10TB drives - @ $750 per drive = $6750. Less $1800 I could sell the old drives for, leaves me $4950 out of pocket. That's not going to happen any time soon

Thanks for all the feedback.

[jagabo]

500 Verbatim BD25's $372.

8TB drives run about US$140 here (USA). Less when they're on sale.

[Yanta]

<sigh> I wish $350 here for a 8TB NAS drive. I don't remember the last time I saw a sale for HDDs.
The mobo has 10 SATA ports. And they are all used
Maybe it's time to buy a PCie SATA 3 expansion card and add more disk.. I can pick up a decent one for about $140 with 4 SATA 3 ports.
I have 4 spare PCIe Lanes (CPU has 28), so I can only add one