If you're anything like me, you have a stockpile of VHS tapes, standard DVDs, and Blu-Ray discs, and shelf upon shelf of paperback and hard cover books. You shouldn't have to repurchase stuff you already own to get access to it on the go.

Apple streamlined the process for syncing or uploading music significantly with iTunes Match. iTunes Match provides a simple means of "moving" your existing by simply scanning what you have and automatically populating the content in the cloud. As great as iTunes Match and iCloud are, though, they're also Apple-centric.

You can also accomplish similar feats in a more platform-agnostic way using tools like , or Amazon Cloud Player, or . But, you have to go through the tedious process of uploading all of your content manually--and for my music collection over my broadband connection it took weeks. Imagine how long it would take to upload a fifty or a hundred HD movie files at 4GB or 5GB each.

Apple is heading in the right direction. It has updated the iCloud service to include movies you buy from iTunes. Movies you purchase from iTunes will be available through iCloud on all of your iOS devices. That is great for new movies you purchase, but doesn't do anything for the movies you already own, and doesn't help with your books.

There are ways to rip your own movies into digital formats. However, they're often somewhat convoluted, and may skirt copyright law a bit. There are new services emerging, though, that may help fill the void.