What % of your collection remains unwatched? (1 Viewer)

On internet forums like these where the hardcore collectors of this
format reside, I would estimate that many of us buy more Blu-rays
than we can actually watch.

Just wondering how many of you exceed in purchasing over actually
what can be viewed.

I have a large Blu-ray collection -- probably 500 titles at least -- but
estimate that 60% of my Blu-ray titles remain shrink-wrapped. Either
I don't have time to watch them or they simply have been purchased
to be part of a collection with the hopes of eventual viewing.

To each his own....I have 400+ BD's and have watched them all. I don't buy anything that I don't have a strong affection for or interest in seeing based on reviews, etc. I guess I'm not a collector....or at least I'm a very discriminating one For me BD represents a last opportunity to possess the films I love in the best physical home format available. I have another 100 or so on DVD, patiently (or not so patiently) waiting to upgrade them to BD

Probably about 10 percent of a 800 BD collection.

200 Blu-rays. About 20% unwatched (40 total)

BD's only (1600):

Roughly 15-20% unviewed so far; of those, about a quarter are titles I have never seen in theaters or any video format yet.

There are about 25 Blu-rays waiting for me to open them and watch, just a matter of time. I have far more DVDs that never got out of the shrink wrap. I probably have 150 of those.

I am too embarrassed to even venture a guess.

Robert Crawford said:

I am too embarrassed to even venture a guess.

Click to expand...

I am, too. But, okay, not TRULY embarrassed. I accumulate way beyond the ability to watch because I know I'm doing well at building a library that will satisfy for years to come. For my various tastes, it's extremely well chosen, and I've fine-tuned the ability to blind buy the right things.

I wish I had unwatched blu-rays. Around 300 BDs, all watched. On rare occasions I set aside particular movies for later viewing as a special treat. Otherwise I find it hard to imagine buying a BD and leaving it shrink-wrapped. I almost never blind-buy nor do I buy a movie unless I really like it.

I have a collection of about 2000 DVDs and Blu-rays, of which around 20% are still unwatched (about 80 DVDs and 320 Blu-rays). Typically I watch 7 Blu-rays and 1 DVD a week, plus several episodes of any TV shows or shorts I'm going through. So I have about a years worth of backlog...

Ronald Epstein said:

I have a large Blu-ray collection -- probably 500 titles at least -- but
estimate that 60% of my Blu-ray titles remain shrink-wrapped. Either
I don't have time to watch them or they simply have been purchased
to be part of a collection with the hopes of eventual viewing.

Click to expand...

Depends on how "unwatched" is defined.

I always open up every new bluray/dvd purchase, and immediately check all the discs on the computer by extracting the isos. This is largely to check if there's any technical problems/defects with the discs, such as bad sectors.

Even when the disc(s) do not have any manufacturing defects, I will at least play them all once on the computer to see if the disc content is correct (ie. the correct episodes, the correct movie, etc ....). For movies, I'll watch the first few minutes to see whether it is indeed the correct movie on the disk. (Sometimes the dvd/bluray menus don't even tell you what the name of the movie is).

With all this being said, I'll define "unwatched" as the dvds/blurays discs where I haven't watched through the movie or episodes from start to finish. (I usually skip the end credits and special features).


In my dvd/bluray collection, I still have numerous tv season sets that are still unwatched. Tv shows are a huge time sink, compared to movies. The only tv shows on dvd/bluray that I have finished watching through are: The Borgias, the original Battlestar Galactica, Stargate franchise, Dollhouse, Heroes, the revived V, Sarah Connor Chronicles, Blue Thunder, Blade the series, etc ...

For dvds, most of my movie dvds are still unwatched. I don't have an approximate % figure, but I would estimate as much as 75% to 80% of my dvds are still unwatched, mostly in the form of tv season sets and a lot of "c movie" schlock.


For bluray, presently there is around one-third to one-half of my blurays which are still unwatched. I largely attribute this to the time before I purchased a computer bd-r drive. Before I purchased a bd-r drive, I always forced myself to watch through every new bluray disc I purchased immediately that day, largely to check if there's any technical problems/defects with the discs. Back then I didn't make any bluray impulse "blind buys" (except for one title: Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, which I purchased for $3 on the same day when I first I bought a bluray player during the last week of 2011). Even for sub-$10 blurays, at the time I always did some prior "research" to determine whether a $5 bluray movie was something that I might be willing to watch through from start to finish as soon as I got home. (I wasn't willing to force myself to waste 2+ hours on a bluray disc that turned out to be crap).

In hindsight, the fact that I forced myself to immediately watch through (from start to finish) every bluray movie disc I purchased as soon as I got home, severely constrained the size of my bluray collection at the time. As a consequence, I skipped over many possible impulse "blind buys" and long running tv shows on bluray. For example back then, I passed on buying bluray titles like: the original Star Trek, the original Twilight Zone, Stargate Atlantis, the revived Battlestar Galactica, Planet of the Apes: 5-film collection, Lost, Chuck, etc ... largely for the reason that I didn't want to watch through every single disc from beginning to end (as soon as I got home).


After buying a computer bd-r drive, it only takes 30 to 45+ minutes to check whether there's any bad sectors due to manufacturing defects on any bluray disc I buy. So I didn't have to sit through 2+ hours anymore to watch through a bluray disc. This was when I stopped forcing myself to watch from start to finish through every new bluray disc I bought, as soon as I got home. (ie. A lot more impulse "blind buys" and less prior research).

Probably 15%. More than in the past since I'm convinced that Blu-ray is the last gasp of actual film ownership and I don't hesitate purchasing as much these days in anticipation of the Dark Streaming-Only Days to come. I feel better knowing that, as long as I have a functioning player, I'll be able to watch these films without needing to depend on an Internet connection and the licensing whims of a studio.

I have really slowed down on the purchase of titles over the past few years, so I only have one title that is unwatched (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), and that is only because I just watched the copy I converted to my iPad a few weeks before finding the title for $5. I have not felt like watching it again yet.

I have about 500 movies on disc - all watched at least onceI have about 30 TV series - only about 4 not yet watched completely (it may be a couple of years to finish Dark Shadows).Zero still 'wrapped in plastic'

Too much. I really should drop some of the marginal television shows that I still view regularly and focus a little bit more on films.

- Walter.

Robert Crawford said:

I am too embarrassed to even venture a guess.

Click to expand...

Same here - so many movies so little time.

When I only had crappy TV I probably watched more movies than at any other point in my life. Now I have a home theater, big screen, projector etc. and not enough time to enjoy it - life's not fair

OliverK said:

When I only had crappy TV I probably watched more movies than at any other point in my life. Now I have a home theater, big screen, projector etc. and not enough time to enjoy it - life's not fair

Click to expand...

Similar sentiments here too. I can relate.

Before I purchased a largescreen tv, I was watching on a crappy 20 year old tv set. At the time, I watching a lot of tv show daily reruns and movies.

For example, at the time I was watching Spike a lot when they were playing the Star Wars movies all the time, and daily CSI reruns. I was also watching a lot of CSI: Miami and NY reruns too, and (less often) the Law & Order franchise, Cold Case, Without a Trace, etc ... (At the time, I was still recording these numerous daily reruns on VHS at ep speed, when I wasn't home).

By the time I purchased my own largescreen tv in early-2011, I was hardly "binge watching" anymore. (Coincidentally, 2011 was also the year I started buying a lot of dvds. Prior to 2011, I had no interest in dvds and blurays).

Less than 1%. I watch nearly all of them, and usually right after getting them.

I usually get to unwatched movies during long weekends when I don't have Netflix disques to watch. It's the television series that back up. My fault for watching one episode a week with three series going. (Except when I go off a series, then I'll throw in some extra episodes to wrap it up.)

60-70%