Why I prefer watching Plex over my physical media collection

Patrick Campanale

Fri, August 14, 2026 at 5:15 PM UTC

Jason Montoya / How-To Geek

I believe that physical media will always have the best quality compared to streaming from an online service, and that's why I collected so many Blu-ray and DVD discs. Eventually, though, I switched to watching my media on Plex instead, and I won't go back.

I used to have a massive physical media library

"Used to" being the key phrase here

The Avengers Infinity War Collectors Edition Steelbook Blu-ray. — Patrick Campanale / How-To Geek

Before the age of streaming everything, physical media was my scene. I was a huge physical media collector, and SteelBooks were my all-time favorite to buy. During the Infinity Saga portion of Marvel movies, I would buy the SteelBook of all movies as soon as they released.

This hobby was expensive, but I really loved it. Displaying the SteelBook cases on my shelf next to my POP! figurines were part of the appeal. Plus, I could watch the movies whenever I wanted. I loved the hobby.

I got tired of re-buying DVDs and Blu-rays when they got lost or damaged

Sometimes you loan things, sometimes you drop things. It happens.

Hand holding a DVD in front of a bookshelf.

Collecting physical media has its drawbacks, though: damaged movies . While Blu-ray discs were more resilient to scratches than DVDs, both could potentially be damaged (or lost) through normal use.

This became annoying to me, and I started trying to figure out how I could stop getting damaged discs. It wasn't often, but I definitely had to re-buy multiple movies because the discs either got lost or damaged.

I hated doing this because it got expensive, but streaming wasn't a viable option for movies and buying both the digital and physical copies of the movie was even more annoying—especially because there wasn't a great way to unify movie purchases across platforms.

Making backups and burning copies got annoying

The alternative to replacing discs: Spend a lot of time copying discs

DVD burner with pile of blank discs — Sydney Louw Butler/How-To Geek

I started ripping movies as ISO files to my desktop because this allowed me to back up movies and re-make discs if they got damaged. This worked, but having to re-burn a DVD was annoying as I'd have to keep blank discs around and then label them manually.

It is a viable method for preserving movies, however. When I was younger, my parents used this method to keep us kids from damaging movies. We'd buy a new DVD, and my dad would rip it to the computer and burn a DVD for us to use. If we damaged it, he'd burn another. It was cheaper and easier than re-buying movies that we kept destroying.

Making new copies works, but isn't ideal. There's still a cost associated, and you still have to use the physical media to watch the movie. That's when I learned about Plex , and Plex completely changed the game for me.

Plex unified my entire media collection and gave me access to it everywhere

Streaming with ownership

Plex app icon on an Apple TV — Justin Duino/How-To Geek

After discovering Plex, my family took all the DVDs and Blu-rays that we had ripped to the computer and converted the ISO files to traditional movie files (typically MKV format ). These files were then moved to our Synology DS416j NAS and a Plex server was started.

With Plex, our family could then watch all of these movies on any TV , even if we didn't have a Blu-ray player in that room. This opened up new doors for us, as we then started to damage discs less, and movies stopped getting lost.

While building our Plex library still required manually ripping the movies as we purchased them, it was a one-and-done thing. There would be no burning of DVDs and no more physical media. Just insert the DVD or Blu-ray disc, rip as MKV, and then store on the shelf.

My physical media library became a display piece only after it was ripped, and that's exactly what I wanted it to be. It was something to look at and enjoy, not something to use.

Plus, with Plex, I was able to enjoy my movies on not just on my TV, but also on my phone, computer, Xbox, PlayStation, and any other internet-connected device. I could even watch my movies at a friend's house without bringing a Blu-ray over and then forgetting it in their Blu-ray player (which happened far more than I'd like to admit).

Plex simply transformed how I consumed content, and I couldn't imagine living without Plex now. TV shows are another area that Plex revolutionized. My family loves the Full House series, and we had it on DVD. The problem is, each season was spanned across multiple DVDs, so we'd constantly be changing out DVDs and trying to figure out which disc a specific episode was on.

With Plex, the process was completely streamlined as we could browse the entire series at once, and pick an episode from season one, then jump to season five, and back to season one if we wanted to—all without changing the disc one time.

Start your own Plex server and regain ownership of your collection

Not sure how to set up a Plex server? It's actually pretty easy, and you can use almost any modern hardware to do it. From a Raspberry Pi to a dedicated server, it's simple to get Plex up and running on whatever hardware you have.

Once Plex is running, you can even set it up to allow you to access your media outside your local network . The steps for that are also pretty straightforward, letting you watch your movies and TV shows from anywhere.

Check out Yahoo's latest streaming advice, based on hands-on testing.

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