Random Thought about DVD Collectors

[thetrilogy]

Originally Posted by sabotai

That is the greatest thing I have ever seen. I now have my life goal.

Thank you all.

It has been a lot of hard work and a few years work of collecting
and having to be crafty to try and save some dang money.
My kids are just getting big enough to think they own it now.

[jbmagic]

Originally Posted by thetrilogy

Thank you all.

It has been a lot of hard work and a few years work of collecting
and having to be crafty to try and save some dang money.
My kids are just getting big enough to think they own it now.

How many speakers you have in your theater?

[thetrilogy]

Originally Posted by jbmagic

How many speakers you have in your theater?

6.1 surround, 1000 watts.
The left, center and right front and subwoofer are behind the screen.
That's is like a real movie theatre.
Then I have left and right surround, and a rear surround.

[Groundhog]

Originally Posted by Raiders Army

I see the DVD porn collectors on FOFC are pretty silent about this topic.

Not silent, they just have their hands full at the moment.

[Dutch]

Wow, that's awesome!

[Mac Howard]

Originally Posted by thetrilogy

6.1 surround, 1000 watts.
The left, center and right front and subwoofer are behind the screen.
That's is like a real movie theatre.
Then I have left and right surround, and a rear surround.

Do the neighbours get to watch as well as listen

[Abe Sargent]

I have around 350 DVDs in my collection counting a season as one. Otherwise I have hundreds and hundreds. They fall into several categories:

International films that aren't shown on my TV. Chinese films, Japanese films, and French films mostly.

TV shows that I want to watch in order. Babylon 5, 24, Lost, 4400, and so forth.

TV Shows I missed the first time and backwatch - Roswell, Smallville, Sliders, Jeremiah, Futurama as examples. I don't have time to keep up with shows on TV but I'm happy to plop down 25 dollars on a season set and watch it all at once.

Music Video DVDs - Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, etc.

British TV shows that I can't see on American TV. Cold Feet, Coupling, Dr. Who, As Time Goes By, The Office, etc.

Old films that are rarely shown on TV or are shown so infrequently as to not rely on them. The Americanization of Emily, Blackboard Jungle, various earlier Hitchcock films, etc.

Obscure films I wanted to shows friends that were not available at the local rental stores in DVD format. Some Hitch films, modern independants like Pi, etc.

Films that I never had a chance to see in theater that I know I will like. Donnie Darko, Saved, and The Opposite of Sex are good examples here.

Direct-to-DVD releases - Ultimate Avengers, Ultimate Avengers 2, The Call of Cthulhu, etc.

Impulse buys of movies that I thought I would like, but don't - Better Off Dead, Time Bandits, Allen Quartermain and the City of Gold, etc.

Movies that I knew I'd want available to watch anytime, day or night at hand. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and so forth.

Older TV shows shown so infrequently as to be unwatchable, at least in order - The Bob Newhart Show, The Prisoner, Degrassi Jr. High, The Twilight Zone, etc.

Good background DVDs to have on when people are here that don't take a lot of effort to watch but that people can view between turns in games and so forth. Mary Poppins, Aladdin, Dodgeball, and Evolution are good examples of these films.


I must admit that I enjoy being able to pop in a movie. Just a month ago I was in a Spanish Prisoner mood and I just popped it in. I've only watched it twice on DVD, loved it each time, but I just got in a mood to do so again. When I feel like a Film Noir, I can browse about ten films. It's a nice feeling to be able to watch anytime I want.

Those are the reasons my collection is as big as it is.


-Anxiety

[Karim]

Approaching 1000 DVDs, and we've watched several more than once, including TV seasons. We won't be replacing on the advent of HD-DVD/Blue Ray. Until all new DVDs are HD and no longer backwards compatible, there's not much to worry about.

[Anthony]

good question subby.

we only have about 60 DVDs, but of the 10 or so throw away romantic comedies that are my wife's, the rest are all movies i have seen and deemed worthy of being in my collection. i think one needs to see a dvd movie 3 times in order to get their money back, or else they could have just waited till it was on rotation on their premium cable channel. i have a rule where i won't watch a movie on cable that i have on DVD, and i often make a nasty comment to my wife (ok, not nasty, but you get the point) when i catch her watching a cable movie that we already own on DVD. i only buy movies that i know i will watch several times. to me it's the ultimate compliment i can give a movie - "i like you so much you have deemed yourself worthy of being in my house and part of my collection".

getting back to your question - why do we buy books when we can rent them for free at the library? why collect anything? i can assure you despite all my books i have not ready any of them twice. but i buy them anyway (as do others).

to me, it all boils down to having tangible things to show for our work. what do we work for if we're not gonna spend our money? yes, yes, we've heard it all before - we can't take it with us when we die. it's true.

things like DVDs and books - they are also windows to our personalities. people look at our bookshelves and see a stack of books and guesstimate "my, this person is obviously on the smarter side of the pond, look at all these books he has". or they look at our DVD collection and will approve of our tastes - "i see you have 'Gladiator'...my kinda guy, great movie", or "no man should not have 'Old School' in his collection, it's a must".

things like this are just ways for us to say "these are the things i like, these are the kinds of movies/books i enjoy". just a way for us to make a statement about ourselves.

[Subby]

That's a good answer HA.

Our collections are extensions of ourselves, or who we would like to be, perhaps?

I think my insistence on practicality here is at loggerheads with the very essence of collecting. It probably isn't done for completely practical purposes anyway.

[Kodos]

I don't think I will replace my DVDs with HD-DVDs or Blu Rays. The picture is good enough. I probably will replace certain action movies like Terminator 2 at some point, but for When Harry Met Sally, DVD is good enough.

We probably have 50 DVDs or so, if you include TV seasons as 1 DVD. I like having movies available to watch on a whim, although usually if I have enough free time to watch a movie, I pop in a videogame. I definitely buy more videogames than I should. I am quite proud that I have not broken down and bought any version of Madden 2007 yet. If I ever do break down, I will buy a used version because EA has pissed me off.

[Subby]

Almost 5 years later, I wonder if any attitudes about this have changed?

/Necromancy

[stevew]

Originally Posted by stevew

For 15 bucks a month, I can rent pretty much anything I want at hollywood video. I only buy kids movies now, as they get consistant use around here.

RIP Hollywood Video. Between the end of the MVP plus the store leaving along with the CiCi's going out of business, a once promising plaza near my house is now shit.

[Easy Mac]

I stand by my "only buying movies I loved in theaters." Since I've seen only a handful of movies in theaters in the last few years, and even fewer I've loved, It's been a while since I've purchased a DVD/blu-ray.

I take that back. I guess I bought Children of Men, but that was mainly because we got a Blu-ray player, so it made sense to have at least 1 to play on it.

Otherwise, everything I get is a gift.

CDs are another issue.

[JediKooter]

Pretty much my policy is: If I like it enough to watch it again after it's been in theaters or if I didn't see it in theaters and enough people I talk to like it or just for nostalgic reasons, I just buy the DVD. But, I also like the collecting aspect of it.

[larrymcg421]

I think people are overstating how much is available for streaming/on demand. Looking in my DVD cabinet, I see many, many movies/shows that are not available in either format, including just about every one of my favorites.

Furthermore, I love the extras that you get on the DVD, which are not available by other means. For example, eventhough the Office is available in streaming, I have every season DVD because they always pack their DVD's with tons of extras.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by larrymcg421

I think people are overstating how much is available for streaming/on demand. Looking in my DVD cabinet, I see many, many movies/shows that are not available in either format, including just about every one of my favorites.

Furthermore, I love the extras that you get on the DVD, which are not available by other means. For example, eventhough the Office is available in streaming, I have every season DVD because they always pack their DVD's with tons of extras.

That is one of the main things missing from the likes of Netflix.

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by Subby

Almost 5 years later, I wonder if any attitudes about this have changed?

/Necromancy

Mine haven't. I missed Farscape on SciFi, so a month ago I picked up the whole series (4 seasons for $50.) and just finished watching it, in order. In the last 3 months, I bought Robocop, THX 1138, Pan's Labyrinth, The Batman Motion Picture Anthology, and Lebanon, PA.

[dawgfan]

Three factors have changed my view on collecting movies:

- I'm married with children, so time to watch movies is less than it was
- With Blu Ray now the standard, I'm not so interested in re-purchasing a bunch of movies I'd already bought
- The proliferation and quality of instant streaming of Hi Def movies, as well as the rapid turnaround of Netflix mailed disks means there's not much reason to collect movies

I still will buy certain classics that I will watch frequently - I recently bought the Blu Ray extended edition LOTR collection and the complete Stanley Kubrick Blu Ray collection - and I'll continue buying Pixar movies (as much for my kids as for me), and I will probably continue buying a few concert movies here and there, but I'm not going to be buying nearly as many movies as I used to.

[MJ4H]

I own about 10 DVDs. I only buy a movie if I think I will watch it more than 50 times or I can buy it for about the same price I could rent it and I want to watch it. That holds me to about 10 or so.

[Subby]

So this is kind of what I envisioned a long time ago. You wouldn't necessarily own the physical media, but you would have rights to view the films whenever you wanted and they would be stored somewhere. I think the big barrier to moving in this direction has been price. However, if you are going to start seeing prices like the ones described below, I think you are going to hook all but the most discriminating larrymcgs.

Apple Is Selling All Eight Harry Potter Movies for $10 – Other Movie Bundle Deals, Too | TIME.com

[digamma]

So, perhaps an offshoot of this is the Garage Sale DVD guy. We have had a couple of garage sales around moves over the last few years and the first people there are inevitably asking for DVDs. Apparently there is still a trade in market and you go hit garage sales and buy them for about a buck a dvd and then head to whatever megastore and sell them for 2-5 bucks. Seems like a grind, but to each his own.

[sterlingice]

Man, I want to see this theater with pictures long gone from earlier in the thread

I've long lamented that there isn't an iTunes-like solution for movies. The parameters are simple:

1) I own the collection and I can add to and delete at will. I'm not waiting for Netflix to get the rights or worry about Hulu dropping a show I like. If I paid a million dollars for the advance DVD copy of Ukelele Wars from a guy who works on the set, then I can add it instantly.

2) It has super high reliability. If I pop a CD into my computer, I know all of those songs are getting ripped to my iTunes. There's no "will it or won't it" copyright protection fear. It works 100% of the time or very close to it.

3) The finished product is of good enough quality. I rip my music at 192 because, frankly, I hear very little difference, if any, between it and 256. But I also don't rip at, say, 64 bit. For video, I need something that doesn't look like a 300x200 image blown up like most standard streaming or that sits there and buffers. 720 would probably work, 1080 would be better.

4) A movie store would be nice. It's not a necessity, but it would be nice to be able to augment my collection at the click of a mouse. This would be particularly helpful for tv shows just like it is for single tracks of music. I don't want to buy the whole season: just the single episode I missed. However, this is not some subscription-based service: I pay ala carte not recurring. And, when I'm done, I have a nice portable file that I can take with me (ala mp3 or avi) not some proprietary format that only works on your system. Here's your format litmus test: If it plays in VLC Player without having to download anything but the media file, then it passes.

5) It needs to have "reasonable" storage limits and be easy to use. Movies are big: DVDs are 25 gigs each but we're, in theory, encoding them. I'm not sure what is reasonable as I haven't used a bitrate calc in a while but I think fitting hundreds, if not thousands, of hours onto a 1TB drive is "reasonable". Ideally, this also passes the "my wife" test. My wife is not a technical professional but is computer savvy. She needs to be able to use it with an easy setup, some light Googling, and, most importantly, without having to ask me for help.

Tell me if I'm completely missing the boat and there's something out there that does that right now.

SI

[larrymcg421]

Two years later and my thoughts haven't changed a bit, and a freak sale for the HP series isn't gonna do it. There are freak Blu Ray sales too. I bought Pulp Fiction for $4.99. I bought the LOTR trilogy on Blu Ray for $50 and the staggering amount of extras (there is a full feature length documentary about the making of each film, plus a ton of other stuff). That isn't going to be included on ITunes/Amazon/Hulu/On Demand, etc.

Of my movie collection, I would say about 10% of it at best is available on Netflix Instant, Amazon Prime, or On Demand. I'm not saying I don't watch movies on those formats, but we've hardly reached the point where the availability and price makes it pointless to buy physical copies.

And then there's the added benefit of having a collection. When I go to someone's house, I like to look at their DVD collection to get a sense of their movie taste. And so I like to have a collection that does the same.

The original post in this thread was a bit off base in the fragility of DVD's. 7 years later and my DVD collection still works. I have begun building my Blu Ray collection and have only replaced a handful of my old DVD's, when there was a good sale or a new edition or if it is a film that really benefits from Blu Ray.

[Draft Dodger]

Originally Posted by Draft Dodger

once I realized I had more than 10 DVDs that I still hadn't opened the shrink wrap on, I stopped buying DVDs. Kids movies are an exception, as were Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.

and I'm pretty sure I haven't bought a DVD since this 2006 post

[Autumn]

Subby, I had a moment a few years ago when we were moving when I started getting rid of vast amounts of my book collection, stopped collecting DVDs.

Something I noticed hwen I examined my reluctance to get rid of a book that I knew I was never going to read again, or to not buy a DVD of a movie I likely wasn't going to watch again, was that a big part of the act of "collecting" was the ability to display it. Not as a sign of wealth, but as a signal to people coming into my home of who I was, what my interests were. The books were there largely to display something about me for people to pick up on. I don't know if that's because I'm an introverted person who is less likely than many to simply verbalize things about myself or not. But I think that's probably a big part of this kind of collecting for some people, and why we curate these depictions of our favorite things.

[SackAttack]

Still in the same place. I don't upgrade stuff I own already, by and large. I'm still on DVD for Star Wars and most of my Bond movies. Bogart, everything I own but "The African Queen" is on DVD.

That said, Blu-ray sales are frequent enough anymore that the pack-rat stuff ends up being on BD instead of DVD these days. But, yeah - a lot of the stuff I either want on-demand access to or just have the occasional urge to watch isn't available on Netflix, and these days I don't have cable/satellite, so.

[Groundhog]

We had the embarassing situation the other day where there was a particular movie we wanted to watch, and it was one of the very few discs I own that I have not yet ripped to .mkv. We also realised we have not a single DVD player in the house, so I figured it was easier and quicker to download a pirate version of a legitimate DVD I own.

[Subby]

Originally Posted by Samdari

You are greatly overestimating the technical acumen of the typical consumer. This hypothetical construct does not have their computer hooked to their tv, and no interest in either ever doing so or watching movies on their computer (since I would venture to say most consumers have a comfy chair by their big tv, and an office chair by their computer). I think this will always be a niche distribution market for movies.

Americans are moving faster than ever away from traditional TV - The Washington Post

"At the same time, more homes turned to online video, with 40 percent of U.S. homes subscribing to a streaming service such as Netflix, Amazon Instant Video or Hulu compared with 36 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013, according to Nielsen. Netflix is by far the most popular streaming service, in 36 percent of all U.S. homes, and Amazon Instant Video is in 13 percent of homes."

EDIT: I am not bringing this thread up to try and show anyone up - I just think its an interesting look at how much technology and content has changed in just 10 years.

[Logan]

By the time this thread was originally posted, I was coming down off my "DVD collecting" but I probably wouldn't have admitted that was what I was doing back then. I had the same rationalizations as many others in here...I can watch when I want, it's great to have a copy to pop in, it's not that expensive. That's not to say others don't really feel that way, but it never really proved out for me.

I'm not sure if I posted this here, so apologies if this sounds familiar, but about a year ago, I was dying to watch Rounders on a random rainy Sunday. I was in the bedroom of my 2 BR apartment. First I checked Netflix from my TV...no dice. Then I checked Amazon...not there either (not for free). Then I fired up my phone and checked HBO Go (no app on my TV)...no luck. Finally, after about 5 minutes of thinking do I really want to watch Rounders or find something else on any of those other services, I finally - FINALLY - got my ass up and walked over to the other bedroom to the DVD rack where my copy of Rounders sat.

We moved into a new apartment a few months back, and as I was packing, I faced my mountain of DVDs. I wasn't even that bad...maybe 100-120? Anyway, I started stacking all these cases and before I knew it, I had filled up two extra large Home Depot boxes. I realized how ridiculous that was, pulled everything out, and started pulling discs out of cases as I decided to throw out all the cases. For some, I threw out discs too when I knew there was no shot in hell I'd ever watch it again. I kept the cases of some TV series (Seinfeld, The Wire, The Shield) but everything else went in the trash. I stacked the rest of the discs in a small box not much bigger than shoebox. I figure eventually I'll put them in a binder or something. But three months later, all those DVDs I kept in their cases and the shoebox itself is still packed away and in a closet.

I wish I could smack my prior self.

[NobodyHere]

I'll stop collecting DVD/Blu-Rays once I'm done collecting Family Guy episodes and Star Wars movies. I mean I can't stop halfway through!

[Easy Mac]

I haven't purchased a DVD/bluray since my last post in this thread (other than kid's movies). I'm also fairly sure we've only watched one bluray in the bluray player. Everything else gets steamed.

[BillJasper]

Originally Posted by NobodyHere

I'll stop collecting DVD/Blu-Rays once I'm done collecting Family Guy episodes and Star Wars movies. I mean I can't stop halfway through!

Star Trek and Star Wars for me and the occasional sci-fi movie.

[molson]

I haven't purchased a DVD since I started my Netflix subscription in 2002. I just thought of the Netflix library as my DVD collection - it just took me a couple of days to access it. I've fortunately never been a "I have to watch this movie right this second!" kind of guy.

[Groundhog]

All my DVDs are on a top shelf somewhere gathering dust. Still got a few I haven't ripped to mkv format. One day. Or most likely never.

[Kodos]

Do they have the theatrical versions of the original Star Wars triology on Blu-ray yet?

I have our DVDs in a sleeve thing that holds 100 discs or so.

[QuikSand]

fun times

[Grover]

Originally Posted by Kodos

Do they have the theatrical versions of the original Star Wars triology on Blu-ray yet?

I have our DVDs in a sleeve thing that holds 100 discs or so.

I don't think so. Which is why I still have the VHS box-set released in 94 or 95.

[CAsterling]

I have 100's of DVDs, a lot of which are TV series, but that said I have slowed down in my DVD purchases in recent years as I slowly get used to the newer options for watching films and shows.

However being English and living in the states a lot of my collection are English shows and films that I wouldn't be able to get any other way over here - as well as some older American shows that are released in DVD in Europe but not over here (LA Law being a good example).

[Subby]

Originally Posted by Logan

I'm not sure if I posted this here, so apologies if this sounds familiar, but about a year ago, I was dying to watch Rounders on a random rainy Sunday. I was in the bedroom of my 2 BR apartment. First I checked Netflix from my TV...no dice. Then I checked Amazon...not there either (not for free). Then I fired up my phone and checked HBO Go (no app on my TV)...no luck. Finally, after about 5 minutes of thinking do I really want to watch Rounders or find something else on any of those other services, I finally - FINALLY - got my ass up and walked over to the other bedroom to the DVD rack where my copy of Rounders sat.

Well geez Rounders is on Netflix now if you would just be a little more patient.