When did you start collecting TV shows? (1 Viewer)

[Mark To]

It's funny how many mistakes in judgment many of us made over time. There are many people I've met who had various recorders going back to the early 70s and I'm just amazed at some of the bad choices all of us made. Movies for one thing. So many people wasted valuable tapes on movies, which are now all readily available and always will be in some form or another. Meanwhile 99% of the televised sports is gone for good as stations didn't bother to save them. Then there's TV. Many of us were guilty of recording shows that are now commonly available while skipping over the short-run stuff that will never be seen or heard from again. Luckily I know several people who recorded many of the obscure network shows starting in 1978. Not all, but at least most of the little remembered shows are saved. Pre-1978 is another story. There is still a gap there, especially with the videotaped shows that will never show up on 16mm.

 

[Tony_Faville]

The first TV on DVD I bought was X-Files season 1 in 2000. I now have 100+ different season DVD titles. Everything from Angel to X-Files. My wife and I both like the option of watching a show like 24 over a long weekend instead of having to wait week to week to see what happens next.

 

[Matt Stone]

I thought this was going to be about TV on DVD collecting...but if we're going back further, the first show I "collected" was The Wonder Years in 1988. I was only 7 at the time, but I loved the show and taped all of the episodes for at least the first 3 seasons.

During the early/mid 90s, I taped a lot of shows like Homicide and Law & Order, but wouldn't say I collected whole seasons. I got in to DVDs in late '98 when I was junior in HS, but I didn't collect any TV mainly due to lack of money. It was hard enough spending 15 bucks on one movie, let alone ~80-100 on a season of television. The first show I bought on DVD was Stargate SG-1: Season 1 in 2001. I started working between my sophomore and junior year in college for extra money, and have kept that (crummy) job ever since. It doesn't pay much, but it allows me to devote a little more spending money toward collecting ventures (Star Wars, Sideshow, DVDs, LDs, Comics), so my TV on DVD collection has really bloomed since then. As of now, I own 52 full seasons (or multi-season box sets) of television. When my friends see my collection, they always make fun of me and tell me that "I'll never be able to watch all of that." But it's not about watching all of it, it's about being able to watch what I want to watch, whenever I want to watch it.