Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Media Storage?

For those of you that have their HT in their living room, what do you use for storage?
I'm looking for something that would hold 200/300 BluRays/DVDs with doors so they can be hidden, preferably a wooden cabinet (black or dark wood) to go with the rest of the living room and not crazy expensive. Any idea?

IKEA. Lots to choose from. Not expensive.

Went there but didn't really see nothing with doors.

Bruno not a direct answer to your question but why not get a dvd/blue ray changer? i have a 300 or something sony dvd changer, i really like using it.. I did wind up making a database of the movies and their location in the changer... but that isn't a huge deal.

Depending on what you use for a player now.. I mainly use my BDP-83 but the changer is the best way to make a large collection easily accessible.. Short of putting it on a HTPC.

The guy is Scandinavian. All of his "answers" involve IKEA!

My wife grew up in Sweden. Most of our interior is IKEA.

I bought BESTÅ cabinets in black, with doors. You can design yours here:
http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/rooms_ideas/planner_besta/index.html
Then check if your local store has them or can get them.

What if you have more than 300 dvd/blu-rays like I do. I guess you would use 2 of them?

I think Onkyo use to have a 300 disk changer that could be connected to other changers to expand the capacity... I don't remember how many could be connected...

I keep all my disk in basement stores and watch digital copies off them....no need nice looking storage :p

But, wouldn't that only work for those that have digital copy available? Or, is there a way to rip even old dvd's and blu-rays?

Cat, the simple answer to your questions is Yes... Getting everything to play back ect, is a little more tricky but not too terribly hard.


You can rip the DVD's to the computer, then you just have to get a program that will play the files on the disk, just like the DVD.. It has been many years since i have done this, so i can not advise you as to what programs to get today.... Sorry..


Oh, also you will need LOTS of hard drive space... Each DVD is about 4.7 gigs... Blue ray is 20gig's i think... But with storage being pretty cheap i think it is more affordable now than it was 5 years ago.

Ok. For now, I'll just stick with shelving my media and using it. Right now, though, I'm faced with trying to find and purchase some shelves that will look ok temporarily in the living room that will hold at least 350 of them plus a hundred CD's. I'll probably have to order some shelves when I have the money to put towards that.

Or, have a book sale, and free up a bookcase in the same room they are in now. At least, I'd make a few bucks and have leftover bookcase I could use. Hmmm.

i prefer to put blue-ray and DVD's and CDs in a binder. I keep the jewel cases but they are in a box. The disks fit nicely with plastic sleeves you can get at wal-mart of staples, etc. You can even put liner notes with them. I can fit about 50 in one standard 1.5 inch binder.

I resisted it for a long time, but finally came to the conclusion that a library of individual physical media is pretty 20th Century. If you can't rip it or stream it (BD?) then, okay. But I still don't love the aesthetic of a bunch of book/cd/dvd spines.

Ikea is solid advice. Or, just relent and call it a "furniture question" instead of a "home theater question".

If you don't like spines and have the space, just have the front covers facing out. Ha ha.

I still prefer having the physical copies. Easy to misplace if you don't have a good system, but also easier to loan out. It may be 20th century, but until digital libraries of movies aren't such a hassle, it's what I'm sticking with. Honestly, I'd like it both ways. I like having the physical copies for looking at and loaning out, but I'd like them to come with the ability to back up identical copies to your computer for streaming throughout your home. Then you could easily make playlists of scenes for demoing your system or to have as background for parties, etc. That convenience is what I keep crossing my fingers for, but so far we're stuck between the 20th and 21st centuries.

Why not go to home depot/lowes and DIY some shelving, you could make something for 50 bucks easy...




This is what i have my DVD collection in now. i bought a 400 disk media case..

I need to figure out the playback side of the DVDs, then I'll do the ripping thing. All of my CDs are in the shed.

Isn't a shed a 19th century concept?

it's much older than that, in fact, much older than Ken.C:
there were sheds in the middle ages... ;-)

I'm pretty sure Jesus keep his hammer and saw in a shed out back, too.

Ok, ok. Adam probably kept his garden trimmers in a shed in Eden too. You know, the ones he ordered from Earl May, before they slowly went away.

I have used a wooden cabinet from this company for about 5 years. I got a mission style cabinet that holds about 640 CDs or 250 dvds.

Jesus' shed was probably square, but I'll bet he was a good sport about it.

I'm the same way. If I would have my movies ripped on a hard drive, I'm not sure I would actually purchase many of them Plus at 50G a movie, that can become costly on top of the price of the BD.

Thanks David. Yeah, I've seen cabinet in this style but I'm not really confident in these doors holding movies. I would think that with all the weight the hinges would start to rip the cabinet or the doors would start to start to warp. How is it working for you?

I would suggest Ikea as well and not only the Besta (which I also have) has the capability of doors being added. You have to look quite thoroughly to notice the other series that can accept doors, drawers and such.

I had a closer look at the Ikea site. I didn't realize befor that the cabinets could be customized like adding shelves, doors, etc.., interesting. When I select a frame, it comes already with shelves. Do you know if the shelves can be set to different heights, meaning, would I be able to puts shelves space just high enough to fit DVDs or Blu rays and then buy more to fill up the rest of the cabinet?

Yes, mine have rows of little holes where you put little metal tabs that hold up shelves. The holes are about 3.5cm apart. But some of holes can get used up by the door hinges, so it is not 100% flexible.

You can always drill a hole where you absolutely must have one if there isn't already one at that position.

This piece of furniture is solid! The doors are filled with CDs and have been for five years. I would think that they would weigh more than movies since you can put fewer movies in the same amount of space. Anyway, the hinges are holding up great. I chose the model with the louvered front look, not the mission style that I mentioned previously. I would recommend it. I will probably be getting another one soon as mine is filled to capacity now.

Another thing that I forgot to mention is that the cabinet ships fully assembled.

Which exact model did you get? The only one that seems to be solid wood and assembled is the mission.

It was this model .

The ones that I saw from other companies that had the bad reviews seem to be the same that this company sells that are engineered wood and need assembly. The solid wood ones already assembled seem like a good option.
Thanks.

I sent them an email asking a few questions and the customer rep replied that this particular model (the mission) doesn't ship to Canada I guess they don't ship the ones that are solid wood and fully assembled due to weight and size. The strange thing is that everything seems to be fine when ordering online, I entered Canada, my postal code and it calculated free shipping. I just wanted to ask them what kind of shipping service they use in case I needed to count some COD. Too bad.

That is too bad. Good luck in the search.