I would say option #1. Hard drives are so cheap now (per gigabyte, they’re very nearly on par with blank DVD’s) and once you’ve ripped the movie, you have it there indefinitely and can put the original back in the box where it is safest.

I have actually decided to shift towards a HD cradle system, since it takes up less space and gives me close to on-demand access. Just as soon as I find a sufficiently good deal on a hard drive and a decent hard drive docking station with an eSATA port.

So, what has been the result of your experiment? And how much time does it take you to rip a blu-ray, anyway?

– me –