There are some real hard truths about not being able to own physical media, but purely in terms of UX, on-demand streaming blows anything else out of the water. I can stream any children's audiobook under the son to my daughter's Bluetooth speaker in a whim, instead of shuffling through a bunch of optical media that break easily, and for my own purposes I don't have to have a physical player, space to store the media, etc.
Maybe the best of both worlds would be to rip everything to a Plex server and have the originals in the basement.
Using the phrase “real hard truth” and “optical media that break easily” in the same post made my eyes cross. Are you referring to glass plate negatives from early 19th C. photography? And storing 400 DVDs in a binder takes about 1 cu ft of storage, and DVD players are $30 and the size of a hardback book.
Your best of both worlds proposal sounds right, though.
Maybe the best of both worlds would be to rip everything to a Plex server and have the originals in the basement.