Whether you’re moving, short on cash, or running out of storage space, you’ve got plenty of reasons to ditch your physical media. Hard drives are cheap; here are our recommended methods of saving, selling, and trading your CDs, DVDs, and video games.
Photo by mutednarayan.
Audio CDs
Backing up: If you’ve only got a few CDs to digitize, either because you’re already on top of your backups or just want a few sacred albums, go ahead and use whatever music manager you’ve got. We’ve found some decent explanatory guides for iTunes, WinAmp, and Windows Media Player, all of which suggest you make sure you’ve got your format settings tweaked to your liking before you commit the time to swapping discs in and out. Photo by joelogon.
What format should you back up to? We can’t tell the future, nor do we know how much of an audiophile you are. The safest bet is to go with a lossless compression method, which doesn’t compress audio information for file size, and so has a better likelihood of being rescued and re-converted if a new format takes over from MP3. Both iTunes and Windows Media Player offer their own lossless formats to convert to in their settings.
The free, open-source alternative is to convert to FLAC, which, while popular among serious music fans and the open-source community, isn’t quite a readily-playable format on MP3 players and devices. You can convert audio CD tracks to FLAC, or most any other audio format, using the free VLC Media Player.
If you do decide to stick with MP3s for your conversion, aim for a higher bitrate—perhaps 256 kbit/s. Some notice audio "artifacts" on files compressed at 192 kbit/s and lower. On most modern hard drives, a library full of MP3s encoded at the 256 rate can readily be fit.
Selling and trading: Your best deals will depend on your collection, with rare or hard-to-find discs, of course, likely to fetch a better dollar. We’ve previously posted that disc-by-disc Amazon selling can be worth the effort, if you’ve got the time. In my own brick-and-mortar experiences, I found that one locally-owned record store (in a different town) wouldn’t bother giving me more than a cursory estimate for about 60 CDs, while another took the time to look for any gems with resale value and provided a final estimate. Photo by brewbooks.
I found the best deal at an FYE, because they can quickly scan CDs, match them against a national database of inventory, and offer you firm disc-by-disc prices. A Tina Turner hits collection owned by my wife, and Black Flag’s The First Four Years netted surprising double-digit returns, but don't kid yourself—audio CDs are not a product seeing growth, so you may have to swallow your pride and admit your Smashing Pumpkins collection isn't all that valuable these days. If you're offered mere pennies for a disc, you can, of course, always keep it, but there are alternatives.
Reader Richard wrote in to tell us about SwapACD, a service he’s found fairly reliable for trading out old, hardly-touched discs for unexplored music territory. Swaptree is another fair bet for all kinds of media.
If mailing out your old wares disc by disc isn't all that appealing, we propose a fun alternative—host an Old CD Party. Email a bunch of nearby friends whose tastes in music aren't completely appalling, buy some snacks and drinks, and invite everyone to spread their CD collections in personal piles on your floor, just like the baseball card trades of yore. Swap albums, negotiate two-for-one deals, and laugh about what a sullen, sappy, or seriously goofy person you used to be. It's a lot more fun than getting 50 cents for your Throwing Copper disc(s).
DVDs
Backing up: Adam really dislikes having DVD scratches and skips interrupt his “stories,” while I loathe looking at my DVD purchases and realizing that, on a per-view basis, they’ve cost me about $5 per hour. How many films does one really intend to watch over and over? Wouldn’t your copy of The Italian Job (the newer, Marky-Mark remake, of course) be put to better use as spare cash or a new DVD than as an entertainment center bench warmer? It may not be entirely, officially legal, but making a personal copy of a DVD for your viewing on any device is the mildest of infractions these days.
Adam so dislikes dealing with scratched optical media that he made two tools for converting them to digital goodness. His one-click DVD Rip tool for Windows uses the ever-popular DVD Shrink to make it stupid-simple to turn any DVD disc into standard DVD folders—VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS. Rather than make you dig through folders and thumbnail shots to find those ripped DVDs, he also patched together DVD Play to make browsing, playing, and editing the details of those ripped DVD folders much easier, using VLC for the actual playing work.
For any computer, we also recommend the powerful, popular, and reliable Handbrake, which offers a bevy of helpful presets for all your devices and screens. The VLC Player itself can also help you rip DVDs, while Mac users can still grab the last free copy of Mac the Ripper for a pretty easy solution. DVD spines photo by ToastyKen.
Selling and trading: As with CDs, DVDs see a drastic reduction in value once they leave their plastic wrap, but videos are even more generally low-priced than their audio brethren. As with CDs, though, there are specialized trading sites, SwapTree and SwapADVD among them, that might net you a bit more cash for your cinema.
If you’re not up for individual listing on Amazon, checking for no-seller-fee periods on eBay, or becoming an enlightened Craigslist seller, I've found the best bet is selling in a garage sale, open flea market, or other face-to-face opportunity. Price your discs accordingly—hit up Amazon, find the price for used discs, and go down from there. Friends of mine have had the same kind of "Wait, really?" success trading in DVDs at FYE and similar big-box chains that take them, but the best deals I've seen involve bulk offers for boxes of DVDs. It's a guaranteed sale, the discount usually isn't that much, and, hey, you've already got the essential movie moments backed up to digital files.
Video games
Backing up: If you own a PS3 or Xbox 360, there's no easy way to back up your games for later second-chance playing—at least no easy method that we (or our brethren blogs) have come across. For the Nintendo Wii, however, Jason recently posted a guide to copying and playing Wii games with an external hard disk that’s not all that difficult to pull off. Photo by NMGilen.
If you’re a PC gamer, some of your older games can likely be copied whole cloth onto blank discs, and any of our Hive Five CD and DVD burning tools can get the job done. Some can’t, or won’t work on installation, because of proprietary copy protection systems. In general, though, most games rely on a serial number to authenticate a game, so keep those backed up somewhere you can’t lose them, like a code-named email to yourself, or on paper you won’t likely lose.
Selling and trading: For older games of yesteryear, along with today’s hot items, Nintari is a good place to test the pricing waters, though you’ll have to negotiate your trade or cash deal on your own. Alternately, Goozex uses a point-based system to facilitate the buying, selling, or swapping of games. Game rental service GameFly will buy certain used games and return monthly rental credit.
In bigger cities, a Craigslist post may be worth the effort (mainly connected to spam replies) for rare, well-reviewed, or or relatively new games. Lifehacker readers reported hit-and-miss success at chains like GameStop when we asked for the best trade-in deals, but noted that more in-store credit will be offered than cash—and it's a rare gamer who quits cold turkey. Or so we've heard. Other web stops to check out include TradeGamesNow and SwitchPlanet, recommended by commenters jharris0221 and jadn.
What tools and techniques have you used to free yourself of unnecessary plastic platters? Where have you found the best deals, and what was the easiest backup method you found? Tell us your tips in the comments.
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