A Question of Quality vs Quantity

The general problem we all face at some point is Quality or Quantity? Seeing as HDD space is limited and every day new content arrises- whether it is music, movies, books, pictures we need to address the issue from an objective point of view.
If we gather resources based on what these can teach, is it wise to store them in quality? Or Quantity? A documentary, autobiographic movie just needs to be listened to. Perceive it's message. Will this impair your understanding by watching it in low-quality on an ultra big screen TV/monitor?

My response is NO: a valuable DVDrip from 30 years ago will be perceived the same today as well as beyond another 30.
Why would you keep an HD collection of something meant only to be studied or learn something from it? Take the movie Fight Club, you learn stuff by watching it, learn about the society in which you are involved. It is not an action-flick filled with cheap whores with implants and racing cars meant only for entertainment.
Would you say, it matters more to have these in any quality but a lot of them?

I don't feel like HDD space is limited. Is it really?

I think you need a good ratio of both. Quantity is not important if the quality isn't bearable. Quality is not important if you only have 1 item.


Also, fact is that that 30 year old dvdrip will not have the same quality as the bluray re-release. This is because those movies are on tape, which is an analog signal. Analog signals don't have compression issues.

_{and "cheap whores" is a bit offensive.}

For movies: quality. I used to archive any movie that wasn't absolute crap in case I ever wanted to rewatch it. But then I realized I never actually did that, and slowed down. Later on, I'd accidentally run RD /S in the wrong directory and wipe all the movies (along a few other things, before realizing the command was taking too long to finish), but that ended up being a good thing. Now I only keep a select few.

As for quality, anything with a good size-to-quality ratio will do. DVD rips used to fulfill that requirement, but nowadays there's a lot of mHD or Blu-Ray rips providing much better visuals for a couple hundred extra megabytes, so I go for those.

For music: quantity. Even though I listen to most of it just once, to have something playing in the background while working, sometimes I end up digging through old stuff and revisiting albums with newfound appeal. Disk space is less of a concern, as you can fit a lot of songs within what would be used up by a single movie.

Storage space is pretty cheap these days, anyway.

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Originally Posted by Sazzy

_{and "cheap whores" is a bit offensive.}

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"You're a whore?" "I'm not a whore. I'm a call girl. There's a difference, you know?"

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Originally Posted by Master Razor

Would you say, it matters more to have these in any quality but a lot of them?

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very easy to answer, quality counts:
- lots of crap movies = still crap
- few good movies = good

as for music it's a little different as anon pointed out already. in that case it depends on what you want it for

We are missing the point.

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very easy to answer, quality counts:

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I am reffering to the quality of a medium like DVD, blu-ray etc.
Say each of us have a collection of quality movies, does the medium of these matter?

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As for quality, anything with a good size-to-quality ratio will do. DVD rips used to fulfill that requirement, but nowadays there's a lot of mHD or Blu-Ray rips providing much better visuals for a couple hundred extra megabytes, so I go for those.

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Exactly, a good size-to-quality ratio.

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Storage space is pretty cheap these days, anyway.

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No it is not. A HDD with 4TB is expensive. 8TB is unreacheable.
A firend of mine has 16TB of space dedicated to movies. Still not enough... Think it was cheap?

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I think you need a good ratio of both. Quantity is not important if the quality isn't bearable. Quality is not important if you only have 1 item.

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That is the question here... what is an unbearable quality? If you can distinguish the main characters and have perfect sound, does it matter?
For instance, take the movie Wolf-Man (1941), if you will see it right now you'll notice it is unbearable, your chosen word. Does it matter? That movie was a masterpeice. Frankenstein was another great piece with bela Lugosi as the main character.
The quality of the medium is crap but, again, does it matter?

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Originally Posted by Master Razor

I am reffering to the quality of a medium like DVD, blu-ray etc.
Say each of us have a collection of quality movies, does the medium of these matter?

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the medium doesn't matter because digital data is always the same no matter where it's stored

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Originally Posted by Master Razor

No it is not. A HDD with 4TB is expensive. 8TB is unreacheable.
A firend of mine has 16TB of space dedicated to movies. Still not enough... Think it was cheap?

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Of course not, but those are extreme cases. I don't know what I'd do with 16 terabytes. I haven't even managed to fill 1/8th of that amount yet.

Though in the end it all depends on each person's specific needs, and even the cheapest disk will be too expensive if one can't afford it.

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That is the question here... what is an unbearable quality? If you can distinguish the main characters and have perfect sound, does it matter?
For instance, take the movie Wolf-Man (1941), if you will see it right now you'll notice it is unbearable, your chosen word. Does it matter? That movie was a masterpeice. Frankenstein was another great piece with bela Lugosi as the main character.
The quality of the medium is crap but, again, does it matter?

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Well, if there aren't any better digital copies available, what can you do anyway? As long as it's watchable, and I've eagerly watched 240p TV rips of series that were not available in any other form, it is good enough.

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and even the cheapest disk will be too expensive if one can't afford it.

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That's the hard truth of our world.

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Originally Posted by Master Razor

Say each of us have a collection of quality movies, does the medium of these matter?

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no, a good movie is a good movie on any medium (unless we're talking about extremes, like: barely watchable very low quality, huge barely manageable sizes,...)
what is a good movie? subjective opinion of the viewer (example: no bela lugosi stuff for me ;) )
what is good quality of a movie? subjective opinion of the viewer (get the best quality that you're comfortable with)

quantity: only if you're very interested in such material and if chances of getting it again are rather slim or uncertain
quality: preferred, but if it makes sense (as already mentioned by others)

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Originally Posted by Master Razor

a valuable DVDrip from 30 years ago will be perceived the same today as well as beyond another 30.

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assuming your taste stays the same or similar enough
assuming the world stays the same or similar enough
assuming there were dvdrips 30 years ago ;)

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Originally Posted by anon

There's a difference, you know?"

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which can be interpreted in a number of ways...
is that what you did there? ;)

Semi-related article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_video_quality

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Originally Posted by slikrapid

which can be interpreted in a number of ways...

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In their case, the difference was huge. :happy: