Jason Snell:
Is it worth it? Good question, section heading! I don’t know. As I said at the start, a lot of my DVDs have now been released in HD formats. Do I want to bother ripping a standard-definition copy of a movie or TV show that’s now available in HD? Perhaps I should just wait for the next time I want to watch it, and buy it on iTunes, or buy the Blu-ray, or stream it from Netflix or Amazon. I’m not converting a lot of standard-def video these days.
I thought about this a while ago. Last year, I ripped all my 124 DVDs, a few TV shows (DVD and Blu-ray) and episodes I bought on iTunes. I store all this data (~680 GB, Star Wars occupies 98.3 GB alone) on my Synology NAS and a Mac mini server manages my Plex database. I access Plex through their official iOS apps and through a Raspberry Pi using RasPlex. I really love this setup and that I have all my movies and TV shows accessible at any time without finding the disks.
So yes, for me it was absolutely worth it.