Back in my sharing early days, I probably had like 1000+ dvds of anime, movies, hk film, games etc easily.
I had so much media that I didn't have time to watch it all, let alone watch it again in the future (there are some gems that I actually went out and purchased retail copies).
Plus alot of the shit would get released at higher quality making my archive obsolete (not always)
One day I just chucked it all out.... Years of archiving, downloading, burning ripping.
Was a waste of time and money in hindsight
Now, I'm still doing much of the same, but this time downloading movies, TV series, documentaries etc. via Snahp to my archive on an external HDD.
The other day I suddenly had a realisation: Why on earth am I downloading 1080p films to watch sometime in the future when I'm probably going to buy a 4K UHD TV in six months or so from now?
So I need to stop doing so much of this digital hoarding. In the end it's not good for me, and I could instead download whatever I want to watch when I'm actually GOING to watch it.
There's a ton of old 80s/90s DOS games and 8-bit games that we still have now because of digital hoarders. If it weren't for them, they'd be lost because the original companies are long gone and most people just trash stuff.
Now look at how much stuff regularly disappears from video services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.
I legally can't recommend anyone copy/rip discs that they rent.
IMO, the #1 use case for optical drives is probably playing music in the car. For anything old enough that it doesn't have an aux port, it's the best solution.
* Tape adapters add a lot of noise. Maybe different drives work better than what I've got, but I tried and it's totally unworkable
* Short range FM adapters are terrible. Similar noise to tape adapters and the quality is really prone to degradation depending on the EM environment.
The stock of older, working cars is quite large. Eventually it'll get used up (outside of enthusiasts), but that'll probably take a few decades longer.
And as long as people are listening to CDs in their cars, there'll be a demand for the ability to burn them.
Not even that old. A friend of mine bought a BMW MY2020 and it still has a CD-player (it was an extra, but it was at least still available in 2020).
I wouldn't be surprised if you could still order new car, today, with a CD player.
But I have to imagine that people who have a choice between AUX/bluetooth and CDs, and choose CDs are in the minority.
It's kind of a pain to install a CD burning app (which has long since atrophied from most music programs), plug in a removable drive, etc. I only do it because the alternatives are much worse.
I kind of prefer it over the AUX jack since I hate messing with a touchscreen phone while driving. The radio has actual buttons and since it only does one thing it doesn't need to be messed with much to begin with.
I have a 2001 car that has been using a Bluetooth audio and hands-free setup from them for over ten years. (It’s old enough that “you can control your iPod with it if you plug it it” was a selling point.)
The only issue is that they have to be labeled clearly, or you are going to have a hard time to find whereabouts.