It's weird the things that people do when discovering personal computing. No sense in transcoding one's DVDs (and even buying more machines to do it faster?!) when they can be torrented quicker and with higher quality even! But we've all got to start somewhere, I suppose.
The simple approach is to make a list of your physical media collection, stow it away for backup purposes, and download the collection over time. Then eventually you can even move towards torrenting the rest of your media and drop that netflix subscription that's supporting the destruction of net neutrality!
"we've all got to start somewhere" is pretty condescending.
If the author is in the united states, torrenting the videos would violate copyright (when you torrent (if you don't have uploading disabled somehow), you redistribute without authorization). Transcoding DVDs you've already bought is not distribution.
In the United States, ripping the DVD's to a drive violates the DMCA. You are illegal either way, just by transcoding you are violating a grossly unjust law instead of a disproportionate but justifiable one. And no one will catch you for ripping discs, except possibly if you brag about it on the internet.
Okay, putting aside the legality (although in Australia there's some provisions for "format shifting"), are you really happy with the "backup" quality provided by most scene groups?
I find I can do a better job (at least to my eyes) than most 4.7/8GB movie rips, and the standards for x265 aren't set yet.
Ripping your own media gives you a lot more flexibility.
If you're part of the large segment of the world population that needs subtitles to watch most movies, it can be very difficult to impossible to find well-made subtitles that match your video.
The simple approach is to make a list of your physical media collection, stow it away for backup purposes, and download the collection over time. Then eventually you can even move towards torrenting the rest of your media and drop that netflix subscription that's supporting the destruction of net neutrality!