Back 2 Physical Media: Pt 3 - DVD/Blu-ray
Yes, I've combined the DVD's and blu-rays in this post because they are so similar. Obviously not in resolution but in the concept of putting a disc in a device and playing it to watch a show.
I grew up with VHS. I'll have a post on those later but we used them up until the late 90's. In high school DVD became the new fun thing. Anything on a CD shaped disc was cool and futuristic. We still had square tube TV's with potato resolution, but the quality increase was still notable.
If you go to Walmart and dig in the 5 dollar DVD bins for something, toss it into your modern xbox and play it on your 4k UHD TV from Fahrenheit 451 it's going to look pixelated. And if it's an older TV show it will have the black letterboxing panels on the left and right sides of it.
Which is why I'm adding blu-ray into this because if your goal is to "own" copies of your media and play it you also might want to enjoy watching it. The blu-ray will obviously be higher res and look better on modern screens, yet still give you a physical copy of the show.
Game consoles with optical drives will be able to play DVD's and blu-rays easily. But if you don't have one anymore you'll need to get a player of some kind. They are not exactly cheap either. Used DVD's are easy enough to find at thrift stores and ebay. Some things haven't been printed in a while so the price may be higher than you expect.
I see a lot of people talk about buying discs again simply because streaming services take turns hosting a show or movie for a few months and it's frustrating to try to follow who the hell has the Lord of The Rings movies at the moment. That or a TV show will be available to stream with a service but only the first or last season - the rest need to be rented or an add on service added.
I had that problem with the IT Crowd. It used to be on Netflix. Then only the first few seasons. Then it moved to Amazon. Now it's only the last season. The rest are on britbox or you can add on britbox to your Amazon to watch it. At this point and the cost of streaming I could have just bought the disc. Oh and I can't even stream the damn original episodes of Bake Off, it's only the Prue+ episodes now. If Mel, Sue, and Mary aren't in it it isn't Bake Off.
Having the show ready to go whenever is also great when the internet is out or you are traveling. I know laptops don't come with optical drives anymore these days but you can get a USB one if you wanted and they are far cheaper than a stand alone player for a TV.
And yes you can also just rip the DVD to your computer and put it on your home server and set up a plex server or something and be your own Netflix. That would have been a festive option but I think hard drives are getting hit with price hikes at the moment.
What else... Oh, you need to be aware of disc rot. Not a problem if you just bought your complete blu-ray collection of The Office, but it will be a problem if you have a dozen single DVD's from when the show released. Discs degrade over time. It's been takes breath 21 years since the first season of the Office aired. DVD's that old may no longer work, even if stored correctly.