DVDs -- I still enjoy them. [View all]

Nope, not the same quality as Blu-ray, just 480 lines, but I don't have a fancy home theater setup and my eyes never were that discerning.

DVDs work even when the internet is down or after a movie's copyright owner decides not to stream it anymore.

Brand new DVD players sell for about $25. These often include a usb connection that allows you to play movies from a usb drive too. Google "mini dvd player."

Or you can buy a used DVD player in a thrift store. Unfortunately many of these don't have an HDMI output. Many modern televisions only have HDMI inputs.

My desktop computer has a DVD drive and I can use Handbrake to copy DVDs to a file. I can transfer those files to my laptop and watch them when I'm traveling. A typical DVD movie comes out to about 500 megabytes so you can easily fit a dozen movies or more on a cheap 8 gigabyte usb stick.

I'm getting really irritated with the newer "smart" televisions, streaming devices, blu-ray players, etc.. They all try to sell you dozens of "free" streaming services as soon as you turn them on. What they are actually doing is selling YOU to advertisers. My wife and I quit all advertising supported television more than a decade ago.

My ideal streaming device would only display icons for the DVD player and the two or three streaming services we subscribe to at any given time. Maybe I should make my own streaming device.

I'm hopeful DVDs will never go away entirely. Maybe they'll stick around like vinyl LP records have, as a cool "retro" way of watching movies.