DVD's? I Don't Rent. I Own. -- NY Times article (1 Viewer)

[WillKTaylor]

Mark - I couldn't agree with you more.

My tastes are very particular, but I can enjoy most films for what they are worth, or at least in some cases, certain aspects of them to be interested in a keeper. A prime example of this would be Star Wars: Phantom Menace. I would have not purchased this title if simply, it had not been for the home theater experience of the pod racing sequence. That said, if it comes down to a certain effects sequence, actor/tress appearance, director, writer, whatever component that plays a hand in the artistic creation of a scene or an entire full length film, I have no hesitation putting up a blind buy for that bit of enjoyment. Unless you're a true audiophile, ever pay $12 for a music album for only one song or two before the age of MP3 downloads ? It's analogous.

I'm a fairly easy going purchaser, but this does not necessarily translate into a casual one. As long as the film's that I buy have some redeeming quality, I can usually find a use for it to justify buying instead of renting. I have three other friends that I regularly share DVDs with, so enough said. All the films that I buy have either been seen before, reviewed or I have seen enough of the components going into the film in others. I have rarely been let down.

The funny thing is, I've found that most of the films that I have sold back are those that I've seen many years ago that I thought would be great additions to my growing collection. My levels of appreciation and enjoyment have changed. Oh well.

Compared to other entertainment mediums, $20 to 30 a week for a DVD or two is nothing.

 

[DaveF]

I don't believe that. DVDs drop in price pretty quickly at retail stores. They're certainly not an investment, and I'd be surprised if they hold value better than a car over ten years. But that's not the point. I derive more pleasure from having a nice new car to drive to work every day than I would from having 1000 DVDs. But that's just me. Other people feel the opposite.

I do understand why some people consider buying cheaper than going to the theater. Paying for two people to see a movie costs about $15; DVDs can be bought new for $15 with some small effort. Throw in snacks, and it's much cheaper to buy the DVD and buy snacks at the store than to go to theater and buy concessions. And some people also have very poor theaters (rude customers, poor presentation, long distance away)

And all the talk of cheap used DVDs does make me want to go buy more. But must resist. Trying to save money for house

 

[MarkHastings]

I know, how many $15-$20 DVD's (that I bought over the past few years) are now in the $5 bin at Wal-Mart...that's almost a 75% drop in price :frowning:

 

[Jon Martin]

I guess I'm the opposite, driving the same car I've had for 7 years. I have no plans on getting a new one. If I had the money, I'd rather invest in a widescreen TV and more DVDs than a new car.

 

[MarkHastings]

But what about those of us who drive nice cars AND collect DVD's.

 

[DaveF]

You've got better business acumen than I. I would not want to buy DVDs as an investment. Trying to make money on a mass-produced item is pretty risky. I believe something similar happened with comics in the 80s. Lots of "limited editions" were produced which people bought at inflated prices. The publishers, smelling money, then flooded the markets with reprints killing the market for used comics. Similarly, Criterion titles are only artificially rare. They could easily renew sales of OOP titles, killing the secondary market.

But this is a red herring. People don't really decide to buy 100s of DVDs because it's smart finance.

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may die.

I'm merrier with a modest set of DVDs and money in the bank. Others are merrier with lots of DVDs on the shelves and less in the bank. And some have the good fortune to buy to their heart's content and still have a large bankroll.

What I need to do is find a friend with a large collection and watch movies with him or her.

 

[Max Knight]

I think the owning/renting/theater going equation changes quite rapidly depending on where you live and what sort of movies you like.

Living in NYC with my wife, going out to see ANY movie is pretty much going to cost over $27 (2 x $10 tickets, 2 x $1 service fee to buy tickets in advance because shows get sold out all the time, 2 x $3 round trip subway fares, and this is assuming no snacks!). So for most Hollywood fare that I would want to see in the theater, buying the DVD is very cheap.

As for older movies, or things I think I might like a bit but not want to see in the theater, I'll generally rent those on netflix. More often than not I end up buying the dics (I generally rent things I've read about and think I would enjoy). Given the $13 a month I pay for my tiny netflix account, this only adds perhaps $3 to any later dvd purchase of a rented movie.

Then there are the movies I can't rent. I love non-region 1 films, and these are tough to rent. Even Nicheflix charges about $25 a month for rental, and their catalogue isn't all that huge. And renting from a Manhattan niche video store would cost at least $4 a rental plus the 45 minutes and $3 subway fare it would take to get there and back! These I generally read up on first, and then just buy if they interest me.

I don't think I'll ever make money on my collection (and why would I want to sell them!?), but I do find that as an entertainment (especially in liu of going out the cramped NYC cinemas) collecting DVDs is a pretty cheap.


If I lived a block away from an awesome mom & pop video store where I could find a great selection of foreign films and never have to worry about subwaying/driving/spending a bunch of time renting and returning films I would probably buy less and rent more. But then again, maybe I would see so many more films that there would be a bunch I wanted to watch again and would have to go buy!

As for the DVD collection vs. car argument (depreciation, cost, etc.), I think it's pretty funny how everyone compares any sort of hobby to car ownership! And considering how much a nice car costs these days, versus how much time a person spends in that car before they sell it, I'm willing to be it costs less per hour to enjoy a dvd than it does to enjoy horsepower.

 

[MarkHastings]

Nope, just single.

 

[Tony_Faville]

It's funny....most people will fork out $20 to go see a movie (two tickets, drink and popcorn) in the theaters and yet think people that buy DVD's blindly are "crazy".

I spend less buying a DVD blindly than I would if I went to see it in the theater. Sorry but, going to see a movie in the theater is more "blindly" than buy a DVD blindly is.

Guess I should have read to the end of the thread before I posted.

 

[Brian Thibodeau]

This begs a new line of discussion. How does everybody's significant others view these massive collections?

When I was single, amassing a large collection like this was easily justified. Plus, I was able to build the collection AND drive a succession of new cars, in addition to investing a little scratch in RRSPs (Canadian retirment savings plans; not sure if they're the same in the US) and tucking away a little nest egg for a possible house downpayment someday. All on a very mid-five-figures income (before taxes) In fact, I really didn't HAVE to justify it at all. Nonetheless, I was prepared to defend it if I ever started dating, as it's an integral part of my nature, materialistic as it might seem.

When I met my girlfriend, but before I had formally asked her out, I made sure to slowly introduce the fact that I was a movie addict with a rather large, ethnically diverse, action-heavy collection of DVDs, the end result of years of study and collecting as a hobby. Having rarely even rented videos, I don't think she could form a picture in her head of what 1500 DVDs might look like, and was somewhat awed by the sheer size of it (the collection, that is).

She's a very pragmatic girl, so a collection like this was a rather alien concept. I've had some luck convincing her of the value of such a pursuit, and she's enjoyed some of the weirder stuff I have (although the weirdest might have her reaching for the mental floss!). As I had promised myself when I first took up the hobby, my purchases have grown smaller over the years as i close in on having all the titles I ever wanted to own. The only blind buys are severely restricted these days to Asian cinema, my area of "specialty" and home to many a cheap import disc. These imports, some as low as $4 a piece, of course bring the average per-disc cost down significantly, although the whole collection does represent a significant amount of dough. Occasionally, she worries that my priorities are a little off-kilter, or that they could become further off-kilter (in my defense, I've been working for about 12 years; she for about 2), but short of actually showing her my financial records, which it's still too early to do, I can only hope she trusts that other areas are being looked after as well (although I know she sometimes wishes my spiritual side was a little more in keeping with hers, which could take a while, but we'll see...). I think a lot of these things will be better understood with time (for both of us).

Has anyone ever run into less tolerant people? More tolerant? Equally addicted? Anyone ever feel like they've got too much 'splainin' to do? Anyone dating psychos who would resort to DVD smashage to settle a fight? Interesting stories welcome!

 

[george kaplan]

I'm fortunate. My wife had her own laser disc collection when I met her. I'm much more into movies and collecting dvds than her, but she watches most of them with me, and fully supports me. She's more into the home theater part (she's the one that bought the popcorn machine, poster marquee, etc.)

 

[Kevin Phillips]

My collection is about 500 movies. My wife has no problem with the collection, but that's because I'm always asking her what movies she'd like to see added to the collection.

 

[Bill Coolidge]

I used to collect lots of DVD's although not as much as a lot of the people in this forum I suspect, but I wanted my favorite movies on DVD so I could see them in OAR and view all the extras. After I stopped being a student and got a full time job I invested in a modest home theater setup.
And then I met my fiance who loves movies but is not too sure about my home theater and DVD collection. She thought she was well set up with Digital cable, an old 19" television and a few of her favorite movies on VHS tape. And then I moved in with her and bought my "big" (27") TV in her apartment along with all those wires and speakers and my preference for watching movies OAR. She loves movies and knows way more about them than I do but she doesn't care as much about the technical end of things as much as the script and the acting.
We also have a lot of reperatory movie houses here in the SF bay area and she doesn't understand why I would want to buy a DVD when the movie will show up in a movie theater sooner or later.
Slowly she's coming to understand my love of collecting movies on disk, especially when I ask her which ones she likes.
Oh yeah. I'm also trying to save for a downpayment for a house. Not easy when you're a librarian in California. But as my fiance likes to point out, a house means more room for a DVD collection.