Early Adopter Lament. (1 Viewer)

[Grant B]

To justify a movie purchase, I have to convince myself that I will watch it more than 3 times. 3 times @ Blockbuster rate is $12. I rarely pay over $20 for a disc.

good rule of thumb...or maybe twice from what I hear about BB late fees, it can add up quick.

I heard something about their late fees is a really high percentage of their total revenue...what a racket!

 

[Alex Spindler]

I'm really glad that I took the approach I had early on. Basically I would only purchase SE versions of films I really really liked. No blind purchases and no bare-bones releases. This carried me through to late last year, when I had basically completed my SE type collection. The good news was that many of the films that I skipped had then had SE releases (Groundhog Day, Princess Bride, future Blade Runner and hopefully The Game). Only recently had I begun picking up the bare-bones releases, which are now priced very attractively.

Short of a few impusle purchases and the odd blind buys, my To Trade list is fairly low and I'm generally happy with my overall collection of 236 titles.

Good thread, BTW.

 

[Yohan Pamudji]

Ahhh, the salad days of online coupons. Man, those were the days...

My experience is similar to many here. Back in the day (starting Summer 1998) when giant coupons roamed the earth I would look for titles to buy just to take advantage of those coupons. With the extinction of the mega-discounts I've become much more selective in buying titles. Plus back in the day there weren't any options for DVD rentals, so if I wanted to watch a movie on DVD I had to buy it. That situation has certainly changed.

New criteria for DVD purchases:

- movie/show quality

- rewatchability

- price

In the long run with all the TV show boxsets coming out, I haven't really cut back all that much on actual dollar value of purchases, but the number of titles purchased has definitely gone down.

 

[Jack Briggs]

My situation is similar to Jeff Ulmer's. In 1998 and 1999 I was buying everything right and left--just to have new discs arriving in the mail all the time.

As time went on, reality set it, and I realized that a lot of titles in my collection have minimal aesthetic value to me.

So, I've begun weeding out my collection and selling off earlier editions of films that have been reissued in 16:9-enhanced format.

I'm much more selective now about what I plunk down cash on.

 

[Jon Robertson]

Yeah, but that's one week's worth. Besides, part of the fun of DVD collecting is picking up discs you didn't get first time around.
I recently tracked down copies of Assault on Precinct 13 and Two-Lane Blacktop, titles that were always on my "To-Get" list, and there are plenty more besides.
The vast majority of my DVD shopping list is stuff that already came out ages ago rather than discs still to hit the shelves.