Im just wondering what was the last dvd or cd you burned and what was it for? So you all still use dvds or cds? or have you found a alternative media?
I burn exactly one DVD every year.
The school where I teach wants us to deposit all tests done in digital format (I teach programming) at the end of the year on a DVD-RW.
I keep an old USB DVD drive around specifically for this, but I also have some old PCs that I could use. I use k3b to make these discs.
I maintain a collection of PCs stretching back to the late 90’s, so I still regularly burn CDs and DVDs of install media for the ones that can’t boot from USB. I should try to get PXE working on my network, but using physical media is fast and convenient for me. I also occasionally burn extra backups to BD-R media.
I burned an audio CD just last week. My old Chevy truck has some mid 2000’S radio swapped into it and it doesnt have bluetooth or aux (well, has aux but it’s buried in the back of the dash). So I burn a CD once in a while to pop in and enjoy.
I keep asking this, but do yall also lack radio? Bluetooth to radio transmitters were what I used in these situations years ago
I do have radio but I’m lazy and haven’t gone to get a retransmitter. I find the act of burning CD’s kinda fun anyway, and they sound better.
I do miss the act of burning cds, made computers seem cooler.
This past summer my GF took a trip to Canada and took her laptop. To preempt any fuckery at the border when she came back into the US I full-disk encrypted it with Veracrypt and I burned an emergency recovery DVD at the time of encryption. She didn’t have any trouble crossing back in, but better safe than sorry.
I can’t even remember the last thing I burned, had to have been over 10 years ago and it was likely install media for some Linux distro. I haven’t had a functional audio CD player in a very long time.
I did, however, rip a couple audio discs a few months ago. I was surprised that my USB disc drive still functioned.
edit: just read the other comments and I find it hilarious how almost everyone burned some distro install media
I dont burn, I rip with MakeMKV, reencode with ffmpeg using a denoise filter and svtav1 with strong compression.
That reduces filesize to about ¼ or less and makes it shareable with anyone, many times.
I love digital media
No idea, but probably Ubuntu ~15 years ago
Pretty sure the last one was a bootleg copy of the original Taken movie - a friend had a digital copy and easiest way to play it on the TV was with a DVD
Woulda been while it was still in theaters, circa 2008.
Haha I talked to my kids about burning CDs in the way of talking about old tech they’ve never encountered. They wanted a CD burner after that to try it out, so I found an external USB burner and a cheapo little boom box. They ended up downloading songs from our media server and some stuff from NewGrounds and burning a bunch of mix CDs. It was fun!
That sounds like a fun activity to do, neat idea.
CT Scan imagery. Apparently medical clinics have finally graduated from faxes to optical media. This was in 2025.
I recently purchased an older vehicle that came with a standard CD player and no AUX input. Setting down to plan and burn a dozen CD-Rs was quite nostalgic. I was surprised the local mega-mart actually had them in stock.
I had a car stereo like this and I soldered a 3.5mm jack to where the audio comes into the main board from the CD player. The pins were even labelled.
A CD had to be playing for the amplifier section to be activated, so I burned a CD of silence that I made in Audacity. 👍
This is a memory trip haha! I never had to do this because I had cars with cassette decks, but folks with newer cars (maybe 07 or so?) were doing this. Auto forum days.
My car has a CD player also, and burning CDs is certainly more convenient than using the cassette player. (I did purchase the car new, but I guess I’ve had it a while)
Do the cars also lack radio? Bluetooth to radio transmitters have been around and are decent
Where I live there are few unused radio frequencies.
And if you drive for 20 minutes to another region you’ll find that whatever frequency you were on is being used…
I doubt that’s a problem in the USA though.I forgot ppl live in denser areas, definitely not an issue here, Id have to change the station every 2-3 hours of driving
I…I have never heard of these. Unfortunately, the car’s antenna was damaged years ago, so I’d have to work the corroded, broken remains out of the socket before attaching a new one. Might do this, thanks.
Gotta be easier to use a 10$ bluetooth to radio transmitter?
I’m no audiophile; but I’d rather jam toothpicks in my ears.
So you never tried it?
I used to work at a car audio store. I’ve installed literal hundreds of them. I guess it’s better than nothing; but I would almost rather sing to myself. The only decent ones are the ones that physically plug inline with your antenna. The broadcast style are so limited in power that they don’t work very well with the crowded local FM band (I swear some of these stations are broadcasting way above their limit)
I guess I am probably pickier than most when it comes to sound quality.
I burned a custom johnny cash cd for my mom using some of her favorites. She played it for about 9 years before accidentally leaving it in the cd player when she sold her old car
Cool stuff. I did that with a USB stick which is objectively better but has less swag (as it is smaller lol)
I had a college sports team reunion and several teammates asked for a copy of a championship game. I still had the digital file, so posted it in a Dropbox thinking that would be easy enough for people whose hobbies don’t involve computers.
Nope, I was spending too much time on tech support so offered flash drives with video files.
Nope, still too much for two teammates so after a phone call to understand what tech they had at home and were comfortable with, I burned them each DVDs.
It didn’t get that far, but I was prepared to use my library’s digital-to-VHS-to-digital workstation to copy them an old-timey VHS tape if the DVDs didn’t work. The library even has a stash of never-unwrapped VHS tapes they’ll sell you.
I still used CDs, I recently got out all my music CDs again since I setup a new hifi system. But I haven’t burned a cd or dvd in about 15 years. In fact as I came across copies of burned cds in my collection I have gone and bought cheap used copies to replace them.
No idea, it was a long time ago. If I have to guess it would probably was a linux distro, I remember some problems making a bootable usb or booting a laptop from usb so I might ended up burning a cd.
