This may be the wrong place to put this but if so moderators please feel free to move it to correct place. I have collected for many years and have resently decided to put things on external hard drives. I was just wondering if anyone else does this and the format or programs they use to do so. I would like to trade hard drives. some one sends me a blank one I fill it up with what they wanted and they do the same for me. But not all formats work on peoples tvs you have to have a media player to hook to the tv but it is a great thing. Just wondering if anyone has some insight on this thanks!

I went over to hard drive storage a few years ago, not only for the compact storage but also the ease of access. I have an old Windows XP machine I'm using as a file server and a WDTV Live hooked up to my TV so have instant access to any episode from over 300 series. Anyone on my wireless network can also access anything on the server so my wife on her laptop or tablet, or my son on his xbox can also watch anything they like. I have over 8Tb of TV series and another 4TB of movies.

I use XviD or DivX AVI's almost exclusively as older non-remastered or bootleg series wouldn't benefit from anything better. If I need any series on disk for a trade I simply author and burn the disk using Ulead DVD Movie Studio or something similar. Commercial releases or recent series that would benefit from better quality are also stored as AVI (or sometimes MKV) and I just increase the resolution or quality settings.

I'd be very interested in trading by hard drive, and I also trade and share via a few online systems. Drop me a pm if you'd like more info about that.

I always keep programs in their original .ISO format (same as retail dvd) to retain perfect quality and to insure proper playback when copied to discs. I absolutely hate .avi, mkv, etc.... Refuse to accept anything in those terrible quality formats.