That's a shame with some of the older discs or files, especially those with videos embedded in some proprietary format which eventually becomes unsupported/the player no longer developed, accessible, or able to run on "modern" systems. Often, though, if you can play it you can rip it or get the source video file from the folder structure and convert it to something more widely playable for backup. It's one reason that over time I lean more and more towards established standard formats or open source formats -- even if they aren't "great" (though most are) it's far more likely a player or converter will be available for them far longer than XYZ Corporation's sexy new schlitz.
Same applies to images as video; went through some of that process when I started archiving photos from residency, gathering a few from other sources, and later scanning old prints or slides. The catch with images is lossy vs lossless compression, but that's getting into another topic.
