DVD Storage Cabinets (1 Viewer)

Like many HTF members I’ve been wracked with indecision for years about how to store an ever-increasing DVD collection currently at 1300+ DVDs plus hundreds of CDs & VHS tapes. With Blue-Ray Disks or HD-DVDs on the horizon I knew the problem was only going to get worse. I didn’t want to resort to the method of my younger years, which would have been to install a wall of open shelves, because it would spoil the looks of our home.

Thanks to others on this forum I learned about Can-Am steel media cabinets. When I logged onto their web site yesterday I discovered they have a 10% off sale that they recently extended to January 5th. So I finally ordered a wall of their cabinets.

I ordered eight 3-drawer, four 2-drawer & four sliding door cabinets so they should hold 3,840 DVDs plus whatever will fit into the four 16” tall sliding door cabinets. I ordered satin black.

Their total weight is 1200 lbs. empty so this is probably not something for an upstairs installation. They should arrive in late January or early February.

Problem solved! (I hope?!?)

Do you have any DVD storage suggestions to share?

I imagine that system would get a bit more complicated for non keepcase packaging, TV series and other movie boxsets...


Here's what I use for my main cabinet shelving:










Most TV shows, sports and non-theatricaly produced documentaries are stored in my office closet on built-in shelf units.

Those shelves are beautiful Marco. I bet they look great with all of the doors closed.


True. I was concerned about that myself. I learned that the really oddball sets may either be placed on their side in the drawers or placed upright in the 16” tall shelves that will be on the top row of all four racks.

I’ll also use the 16” shelves to hold the DVD Profiler printouts. I printed a full page on each DVD and placed them in document protectors in thick binders. Guests may look through the binders to decide which movie they want to watch.

I also did a one-line per movie list using Microsoft Word for those familiar with the movies.

But probably the most used method of finding out what movies are in the cabinets will be the laptop computer placed in the home theater that has DVD Profiler installed. It is connected to a wireless DSL router so you may search the Internet Movie Data Base (imdb.com) whenever you have a question about a movie or character.

The Can-Am drawers all lock with the same key so you can keep kids from playing Frisbee with your collection.

So Jay, how much did you spend on your total set-up? And are you gonna take a picture of it for us when its all installed?

I think you may have gone a little overboard, Jay, but I wish you the best of luck. I've also went the Cam-am route and am awaiting a cabinet from them. I hope we get what we payed for.

Me too. By paying with a credit card we should have some protection if the company pulls a fast one. But they've been around for quite awhile so I don't think they're going Tango Uniform anytime soon.

I ordered four stacks like this from Can-Am in satin black. Each stack holds about 960 DVDs plus whatever box sets or DVDs are placed in the 16" shelves on top:



These two cabinets are available from SpinKeeper and elsewhere. The first holds 298 DVDs and the second holds 296 DVDs. One potential problem with these two cabinets is that you can't place multiple cabinets beside each other or their doors will hit the adjoining cabinet:





These two cabinets are also available from SpinKeeper and hold 448 DVDs. Their door-hitting problem is less severe than the previous two cabinets:

The Can-Am units are very slick, but I just can't justify the expense - especially because my DVDs are kept in a spare room and are never seen by anyone.

My DVD storage units are a pair of MA-1520s, which I purchased online from The Jungles: http://www.thejungles.com/thejungles/mulwal15.html

The Jungles says each unit will hold about 700 DVDs, but that figure is actually low. Real-world use shows that I get an average of 28 DVDs per individual shelf (sometimes 27, sometimes 29 depending on the number of fat cases on that shelf). If the storage unit is configured for maximum DVD space, there are a total of 26 shelves (not including the top of the unit). That's enough space for well over 700 DVDs per unit.

Each comes with a total of 34 removable shelves. The dowel holes start 6" (152.4 mm) from the bottom of the entire unit and extended all the way up to 6" from the very top of the unit. The holes are spaced 1.5" (38mm) apart. The shelves are all individually adjustable at 1.5" increments. It's a fairly low-cost solution, but I'm happy with it.

Good god, man! For that much, you probably could've added a storage ROOM to your house and built your own storage solution for it.

Each to his own I guess, but I could never ever justify spending anywhere close to that much for storage, especially considering the cabinets are not that attractive to me.

Thanks for the compliments Jay.

They do look great, but WOW!!! 7K for those cabinets?!?!?!

They certainly sound convenient for storage... but how in the world does that company justify such a price tag for metalic filing cabinets? The concept isn't that unique, it's just stackable metal droors!

You know that you could have had the most beautiful and uniquely designed hardwood cabinets with specific shelf storage built for that cost that would house just as much if not more!

I can't believe how expensive that is!

But you certainly seemed to have put a lot of effort into organizing it all!

Geez, you guys have museum displays. Amazing! I never even thought DVD's could be like decorative displays. Wow!

I just dedicated a spare room and keep it locked. Nobody (and I mean nobody) goes into that room except me, and most people don't know the room exists...I like it that way.

Even "cheap" good quality DVD shelving is expensive. I have several $k into mine, and it doesn't look near as nice as what you guys have. I never even thought about it maybe looking nice too...

The main thing I got from your pics is reaffirmation that I am a crude slob.

Marco: your cabinets look very nice. As to your query for "filing cabinets": ever priced a quality cabinet or steel desk, as opposed to the stuff at most "office equipment" stores? The steel desk (made in Canada) that I'm sitting at right now weighs about 500 pounds and costs a few $k. Same for the filing cabinets, built like tanks. What I'm getting at, there's cheap steel stuff and solidly built steel stuff (i.e. sides and drawers don't flex, good roller bearings for heavy weight, etc.). The difference is obvious when you get your hands on it. The desk makes a good bomb shelter too. Moving is a bitch, as nothing fits through a standard doorway and must be disassembled.

Well, Since this thread has turned into us all showing off our DVD storage I may as well throw mine into the ring. I have a much more modest collection (and bank account) but my racks suit my needs and much more. I got these at best buy for $50 each.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1051384056640

Yes I do Marco. One of our daughters is an interior designer that insisted that I have custom shelving built into the wall.

After considering this for about five years we finally decided on the Can-Am shelves. Although we think that this home is our dream home, so was the last one. When we decide to move to our next dream home the Can-Am shelves will go with us. A wall of custom built shelves with slide out drawers designed to house 4,000 DVDs may not be a very good selling point. It would also leave us without any storage for the DVDs if we move.

The Can-Am shelves will probably outlive every TV & projector we will ever buy & will be passed on to our heirs along with the generation ??? DVDs they will contain. Unless a tornado, fire or thief gets them... :frowning:

Jay, you should take pictures of your setup after you get all the Can-am cabinets together. People must see this insanity.

At our old house we had a closet under the stairs and that's where we stored all our (my) CDs and DVDs, etc. Our new house doesnt have such a place so we need an attractive piece of furiniture to store the DVDs.

We've been considering this for a while
http://us.st11.yimg.com/store1.yimg....r_1875_1587115
but I can't bring myself to buy it. I need to see things in person first. thing is we have about four feet of wall space in which to store these and not a lot of depth due to a window next to that wall. also we have two small children and the doors will prevent their access, and also help protect the cases from sun damage.

I quite like this type of unit:
http://www.spinkeeper.com/toplocawidr.html
so I appreciate this thread. Wouldn't have found it otherwise. If only these things came in a color to match the rest of the room!

-paul

Another system of DVD storage cabinets is The Cube by Lorentz Design in Denver, Colorado. They are made of oak and are available in 4 different stains.

The Cube may be stacked two high and is available in a three-drawer cube or a four-drawer unit. Unfortunately each cube only holds 132 DVDs and the four-drawer unit only holds 176 DVDs.

That comes closest to what I am looking for, but still not close enough. I have a collection of about 500 DVDs and would like to sort of display them but still keep them until lock and key. I don't believe the above cabinet has a lock. I am also worried about the DVD covers fading due to direct sunlight and so I need to be able to replace the glass with UV-resistant plexiglass (not sure if that is easy on this cabinet). I am currently using cheap storage cabinets made by Sauder and am not too happy with them.

-D

Well they certainly do seem durable and long-lasting, as long as your happy with the purchase!


Though I still can't get over the price tag!






Wow!

Here's my computer setup Craig:





It cost about 6k.

I understand the idea of convenience and durability, but personally if I was working with a multi figured budget, I would never consider looking in an office supply store. I would have never expected prices to run so high!

There are dozens of interesting and innovative designers in every city and all sorts of creative outlets for great looking original furniture and storage, etc. that I personally would opt to check out over the generic mass distributed office desks, bureaus, etc. That's half the fun for me. When I moved into my new condo this past spring, I took so much excitement out of driving around and looking for interesting stores and stopping off at every little decor and antique shop, etc. It's the equivalent of digging through record bins for that rare choice piece of vinyl...
or that long out of print Criterion DVD.

I just always assumed that they were priced on much lower budgets but I'm baffeled that they are actually selling so high. Anyways, still a really nice setup! Don't mean to be a downer. I think you'll have a lot of fun arranging and setting it all up! It sure sounds like you've put a lot of thought into it all!

Ummm, Marco: I think you have taste and style. I have only heard of these things and don't know them firsthand, so can't really say for sure...

I have extremely utilitarian tastes. The only decorations I have are those people have given me. Most of my furniture is made out of solid oak and mahogany, so I do like wood. [I also have the original VU album cover (no peelable banana!) framed on the wall like your poster, in my HT room...interesting.]

I do know that custom-built solid wood furniture can be cheaper than "good" steel stuff. I assume it's because the cabinetmakers are usually self-employed. Can earn a good living, and prices are much cheaper (not for walnut or mahogany) without the distributor and retail markup which would practically double the price, and that makes the good steel stuff pricey. The "finish" (and I don't just mean the surface paint) on good steel stuff is very different than the cheap stuff.

I take quite a different attitude to what the furniture looks like, depending on where it is. I personally wouldn't put a steel storage cabinet in my HT room, but fine for a room that nobody sees. OTOH, if I had kids I might want a lockable media cabinet in the HT room, and I might go for steel if I thought it would see hard use.

I suppose it's obvious, but people with these fancy cabinets probably have valuable/large collections: take good close-up pics of your discs in your cabinets, good enough to read the titles, for insurance. It's unlikely the cabinets would be stolen/totally destroyed, and they help tie the discs to you and your house. I've heard some insurance companies are getting picky about DVD replacements in some cases, popular theft items as easy to sell.

My PC desk is a wooden monster. We built it ALL from lumber cut down at my friend's property. It was our first desk, and it looks a little rough especially finish-wise, but it's stable and strong as hell and you could park a car on top of it and it wouldn't so much as buckle.

I wanted to build a coffee table and some speaker stands (already had them designed) in the same fashion, but it just never came about. I just love the idea of durability and something that could be passed down as true family heirlooms if desired.

By the way, if I had the money (and the house!), I'd build me a storage room, complete with special lighting and the capacity to hold many, many DVDs, CDs, etc. But the media would be displayed, not hidden in cabinets or such.