Is collecting excessive amounts of TV shows on DVD a hobby OR an obsessive-compulsive disorder? (1 Viewer)

[JediFonger]

yes only TNG offers the restored w/added vfx (yes i understand most of the models are real and not CG replaced) but TNG doens't give you a HD non-CG version... it's only straight up 1 version. but overall i'm very pleased with it. it really is the best TV remaster/restoration ever! still!

Thanks for the response, Ben. I can understand being satisfied with the ST:TOS DVD set and not wanting to double-dip. But I did want to point out that the Blu version of the series has both the original special effects and the re-done, updated CGI effects - the best of both worlds, you might say...

 

[BobO'Link]

Thanks for the response, Ben. I can understand being satisfied with the ST:TOS DVD set and not wanting to double-dip. But I did want to point out that the Blu version of the series has both the original special effects and the re-done, updated CGI effects - the best of both worlds, you might say...

I didn't purchase the DVD set for the very reason you give for the Blu. I didn't own a BR player when those came out so I waited until I'd picked one up before getting the BR set. I do not regret it for a second. But I also much prefer the original effects and soundtrack. Generally I like the remastered visuals - all but those of the Enterprise herself. She looks too plastic and fake in CGI, more so than the actual model on the original visuals. I also do not like the re-recorded theme song. It's off ever so slightly and I cringe every time I hear it.

I'm curious about Petrocelli and, with all the good word of mouth on this board, may add that to my VEI want list...

I'd say go for it. I liked it during the original run and found it even more appealing when I watched it again after purchasing the VEI set.

 

[BobO'Link]

yes only TNG offers the restored w/added vfx (yes i understand most of the models are real and not CG replaced) but TNG doens't give you a HD non-CG version... it's only straight up 1 version. but overall i'm very pleased with it. it really is the best TV remaster/restoration ever! still!

They really couldn't offer that. All the effects were produced on video tape post production equipment for SD TV. Those on TOS were all done on film which made the process much easier. With TNG they had to go back and recreate all of the vfx to be able to produce the HD version. I own both a DVD set and BR set of TNG. I was about to start S7 when I purchased the BR set. After seeing the first couple of episodes in remastered format I boxed up the DVDs. They're emergency backup and will likely never be viewed again. But I'm also not as intimate with that series as TOS so have a total disconnect between remastered vs. original vfx.

 

[bmasters9]

I'd say go for it. I liked it during the original run and found it even more appealing when I watched it again after purchasing the VEI set.

I went in blind on it, because I'd seen the opening, and heard the theme song (both of which I've enjoyed very much, in both versions), and also because I figured that if I enjoyed the CBS Perry Mason that was set in the big city of L.A. (or at least L.A. as it was in the 50s and 60s), I would like a similar series with a different name on a different network that was set in a smaller city/town in Arizona in the 70s (and might I say, it paid off incredible dividends entertainment-wise, as with several other select series that I have completed lately).

 

[bfsebesta62]

This post is exactly how I feel about my favorite classic TV Shows! I almost feel like someone read my mind! In the 70's ,(giving my age away now), I had my portable tv plugged into my home stereo and would record My favorite shows like I Love Lucy & Carol Burnett and play them back over and over. Then I discovered Video Tape and I swear I heard a choir of angels sing the Halleluia Chorus! Fast forward to now, during the pandemic I found myself ordering complete DVD/Bluray sets of series that I have always wanted and missing seasons of sets I already have! I can easily stream shows but just like with audio collections, I like to be able to have something to hold or booklets or covers to read through. You can't get that with streaming. Any time I feel stressed or get tired of the real world I pop in Lucy, Mary Tyler Moore, Battlestar Gallactica, or whatever I want because now I own it and can watch it any time I want!

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I generally avoid collecting TV series for the most part. I collect (more than) enough w/out them me thinks... and find I enjoy just fine most TV shows via relatively random, sporadic encounters thru free TV syndications and whatever subscription services. I do own/collect a handful or so (usually) critically acclaimed series (mostly ones that wouldn't work if watched randomly and are in high quality on BD), but they're not usually the voluminous made-for-network-TV kind, so there aren't a ton of episodes nor discs for the most part -- there are a few exceptions, of course, like ST:TNG, Lost (which can't be watched randomly), the original Twilight Zone (which was more for my wife than me), 3rd Rock from the Sun and That 70's Show (both mostly for my son)...

Maybe I'll expand a bit w/ digital though since streaming seems a better medium than disc for watching TV series and doesn't require the storage space...

_Man_

 

[The 1960's]

This post is exactly how I feel about my favorite classic TV Shows! I almost feel like someone read my mind! In the 70's ,(giving my age away now), I had my portable tv plugged into my home stereo and would record My favorite shows like I Love Lucy & Carol Burnett and play them back over and over. Then I discovered Video Tape and I swear I heard a choir of angels sing the Halleluia Chorus! Fast forward to now, during the pandemic I found myself ordering complete DVD/Bluray sets of series that I have always wanted and missing seasons of sets I already have! I can easily stream shows but just like with audio collections, I like to be able to have something to hold or booklets or covers to read through. You can't get that with streaming. Any time I feel stressed or get tired of the real world I pop in Lucy, Mary Tyler Moore, Battlestar Gallactica, or whatever I want because now I own it and can watch it any time I want!

Welcome to the hometheaterforum of the obsessive and compulsive Brian!

 

[timk1041]

After 30 years, I have so many TV shows on videotape and DVD, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm a compulsive hoarder. LOL
I have dozens of VHS video recordings on tape that I haven't watched in years, and some DVD sets I've never finished watching--yet I continue to collect and record old TV shows on DVD.
I think it probably all stems back to my pre-VCR childhood. A time where you could only watch a TV show on television once, and not see it again unless it was re-run. If I loved a show bad enough, there was always this yearning to watch it again and not being able to. That all changed when VCR's became affordable.
Recently, I started recording the old soap opera, The Doctors. I enjoy watching the show daily now, but will I want to watch it all over again in a few years? Probably not, but I can't help thinking that maybe I will.
I think I record stuff now, so I will always have it in my possession if I ever get a craving..
Nowadays, one can find almost anything on youtube. It may get removed, but it always seems to get uploaded again.
Nevertheless, I continue to record and save, record and save.
I should mention that I ONLY collect things that interest me. I don't have the desire (like some people) to collect EVERY TV show produced. Still, I have a huge collection.
Can anyone else identify with this concern I have?

I certainly can. I am the same way. Like you, I generally only collect films and shows I am interested in. The problem is I am interested in many types of movies and TV shows. I have bought some older shows that I never really watched when they were originally aired years ago. Same with some movies. Sometimes it is a particular actor or actress I like. I like to think of it as a hobby, but maybe to some it might be part obsession too. Would others on here care to chime in?

 

[timk1041]

I finally realized if I didn't start traveling while I could still get around, I was going to regret it at the end, right along with working too much and not spending enough time with friends and family. My point: I have 7000+ discs. Enough. So I made a deal with myself. I wrote the five sets I dream about owning on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope and gave it to my wife. If one of those sets is released, I'm all in. Otherwise, I stopped buying set after set and started watching all the great sets I had piling up in shrink wrap, like Hawaii Five-0. I'm having a ball. And I save thousands of dollars to put toward travel now. It's a win-win. Best thing I've done in the last ten years. Truly.

Good for you. It is a win-win. 7000 discs? That is quite a lot!

 

[timk1041]

I like the idea of having everything just because maybe I might want to watch it at some point and its there if the mood strikes me. Or if someone asks to see something, it would be pretty likely I have it or can get it easily from a fellow collector. Is it logical? No. Does it hurt anybody? No. On the scale of compulsions, like alcohol, drugs, gambling, smoking, sex, etc., I would say its a lot more harmless.

Absolutely agree.

 

[TJPC]

I have to be very careful with what I collect. If anything has multiple seasons and I have purchased season one, I MUST collect further seasons and spin offs. Someday I'll tell about my basement full of Star Trek discs or more recently "The Walking Dead" and I won't even mention what happens if a disc is labeled "Volume 1"!

 

[bmasters9]

Any time I feel stressed or get tired of the real world I pop in Lucy, Mary Tyler Moore, Battlestar Gallactica, or whatever I want because now I own it and can watch it any time I want!

Or for me, Riptide, The Streets of San Francisco, Have Gun Will Travel or The Bob Newhart Show, among others.

 

[Ron Lee Green]

I was surprised and a little flattered to see this old thread I started back in 2018 revived again! Well, I'm happy to report my recording and collecting has slowed down considerably in the years since. I think reading other people's comments helped me deal with my huge collection. I think someone said it best: When it stops being fun, don't do it anymore.
I don't go to Big Lots anymore to buy some DVD set for the wrong reason just because it's cheap, and not if I will watch it or not. It also helps that the studios aren't cranking out new DVD product every month like they used to.
Another thing is that I think we have more streaming sites available now than when I started this thread. It's not just youtube anymore. We have Tubi, Roku, Crackle, Pluto, etc. I've been watching Dark Shadows on Tubi even though I own the complete series on DVD. It's just more convenient to watch them on my computer instead of fumbling around looking for the disc.
I even stopped recording "The Doctors" soap opera off TV everyday. Even that show has its own streaming channel. I have hundred of old TV shows saved on my DVD recorder's hard-drive, and I don't feel compelled to finalize them to disc.
I haven't stopped completely, though. I did buy the Charlie's Angels Blu-Ray, and Josie and the Pussycats on Blu-Ray because I really am a fan of those shows and can watch them over and over, and I pre-ordered the Jeannie Blu-Ray due next month for the same reason. Bottom line: Just collect what you like, and will watch! Anything else, you can live without!

 

[Wiseguy]

I purchase a lot of DVDs on sale, too. I'm sure we've all gotten great deals. It doesn't matter if you pay a $1 or $100. You could be a millionaire and pay full MSRP and still have this problem. The point is: Do you watch them? If you do, than you're good. If you don't, than maybe something else is going on.
I purchased a lot of TV DVD sets dirt cheap during the Big Lots' Warner Bros. dump fiasco a few years ago. I bought seven seasons of Dallas ($6 each), Six seasons of Superman ($3 each), five seasons of The Flintstones ($3 each). I didn't buy them just because they were cheap. I actually like these shows. I passed on other sets like the Dukes of Hazzard, and whatever else they had. I keep saying I'll watch them someday, but its been at least 5 years since I purchased them and they're all still sealed. There's just not enough time to watch everything I want. Nevertheless, I feel I'll regret it someday if I get rid of them.

I've gotten three Warner Bros. DVD sets at Big Lots some time ago. The West Wing second season, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home first season and The Flintstones third season.
So far, both The West Wing (double sided) and Wait Till Your Father Gets Home (single sided) have suffered DVD rot and are mostly (West Wing) or completely unplayable. So far The Flintstones seems to be OK (mixture of single and double-sided). Good thing it doesn't affect CBS/Paramount discs (at least so far with me) or I'd really have a problem.

 

[Harry-N]

Based on my somewhat obsessive pursuit of watching TV as a youngster, I would have expected me to be of the "OCD" type in collecting TV series. But it didn't turn out that way. When it comes to shows I really, really like, I'll go to the ends of the Earth to obtain what I want, but it turned out that shows that I "used to" really, really like no longer hold that magic fascination that they once did.

I watched every episode of BEWITCHED faithfully as a young teen into young adult. When Season One came out on DVD, I searched high and low for a black & white version. Then when watching them, it occurred to me that the magic seemed to be gone. It was just a sitcom now, charming at first and then a bit repetitive later. The Gladys Kravitz shtick wore thin after awhile, as did "mother" turning Darren into a "________". I never bothered with Season Two.

This same phenomenon occurred with shows like I DREAM OF JEANNIE, MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, GILLIGAN'S ISLAND, MR. ED, etc., as it seemed to me that my tastes had "grown up" for lake of a better term. I can stumble onto a GREEN ACRES or a BEVERLY HILLBILLIES and get a few chuckles out of them, but there's no pressing need in my mind to OWN them.

Now, there are some sitcoms that I find I'm quite obsessive about - still. THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW, M*A*S*H, MARY TYLER MOORE, THE BOB NEWHART SHOW for examples are some that I've acquired and enjoy all of, so I guess I've outgrown the more juvenile shows and have fond memories of the more intellectual humor.

Of course, the sci-fi shows that I watched as a kid are still with me. I've stayed with STAR TREK all these years, but also enjoy and still watch VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, TIME TUNNEL, LAND OF THE GIANTS, and to some extent, LOST IN SPACE. The more juvenile episodes of those Irwin Allen shows aren't as fondly remembered or watched these days, but it was important of me to have collected them. OUTER LIMITS and TWILIGHT ZONE are two naturals for me as well.

Then there's the more serious hour-long stuff like MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and THE FUGITIVE and THE INVADERS and MANNIX and THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO. I enjoy putting on an episode or two of those every now and then, and it was important for me to collect them all.

Modern shows that I enjoyed at the time don't generally hold much fascination in terms of collecting. Shows like the CSI's that we watched regularly, or CRIMINAL MINDS, are shows we watched all the time. But there's no pressing need in my mind to revisit them, and if I do, most are streaming somewhere. The last of these modern shows that I felt it necessary to buy DVDs immediately as they came out was LOST. And you know what? I've never looked at most of those DVDs past Season 1.

So I understand the mentality of those who collect obsessively, but if I never see another episode of CAR 54, WHERE ARE YOU, or THE ADDAMS FAMILY, I'm good.

 

[TJPC]

The shows I want to collect are the early B&W before I was born type like "Burns and Allen" or "Your Show of Shows". Nothing I watched as a child, except for ancient shows I watched in re-runs then holds any magic for me now. Even my cartoon choices to collect now are things like Popeye and Loonie Tunes.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I watched every episode of BEWITCHED faithfully as a young teen into young adult. When Season One came out on DVD, I searched high and low for a black & white version. Then when watching them, it occurred to me that the magic seemed to be gone. It was just a sitcom now, charming at first and then a bit repetitive later. The Gladys Kravitz shtick wore thin after awhile, as did "mother" turning Darren into a "________". I never bothered with Season Two.

My wife and I are having the same issue with Bewitched, although I think we stalled out closer to season 4. When we first met, one of the things we first bonded over was our enjoyment of classic sitcoms and watching an episode of one before bed was something we always loved doing. We went through all of I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners and Dick Van Dyke, which all together took a few years. When we finished those, Bewitched seemed like a great choice - we had fond memories of watching reruns as kids and figured it would fit in well with our routine. We also got the complete series for $20, so it was certainly easy to take a chance on at that price. To our surprise, it was a really uphill battle to watch it because of how repetitive it was. It’s not that ILL or DVD or Honeymooners wasn’t ever repetitive, but Bewitched brought it to a whole new level of repeating the same scenarios all the time.

We don’t understand Darrin at all. Both of us agreed we’d be very pleased if one discovered the other had a secret power that could get all of the housework done in half a second. The idea that Darrin forbids Samantha from doing things that would make Darrin’s life better is just strange. And with Mrs. Kravits, we felt no sympathy for the character after a couple go around. She’s nosy to the point of being intrusive and rude, and we’d find ourselves getting angry at her meddling instead of being lightheartedly amused. Endora is just cruel for the sake of being cruel; not very funny for very long. And the rules for magic are wildly inconsistent which may not have stood out watching one a week but sticks out like a sore thumb watching it daily.

They had a great premise for a show but it feels like it never developed beyond that initial idea.

 

[bmasters9]

To our surprise, it was a really uphill battle to watch it because of how repetitive it was.

And to that point, I've felt that way about an altogether different show than Bewitched-- The A-Team. That weekly demolition derby, as some called it, was good for once a week on NBC, but seeing it in a binge on DVD shows how repetitive the concept was (not just that demolition derby, but the chase concept of four wrongfully convicted GIs on the run from the government for the proverbial "crime they didn't commit"). I'm about a third into that fourth go (1985-86), and it's quite the ordeal with each new episode.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

You expect there to be a certain amount of repetition in sitcoms and procedurals. There’s a reason that shows in those formats that catch on really catch on - it’s comforting to have familiar characters behaving in reliable ways. It makes you feel like you know them, it makes you interested in their sitcom hijinks or makes you root for them to always solve the crime/mystery/emergency surgery case. You don’t watch I Love Lucy hoping to see Lucy accept whatever reasonable suggestion Ricky is making. You don’t watch Law & Order hoping this is the week they don’t get the bad guy. And yet... the best of these shows and the ones that I think hold up best under close scrutiny are the ones where the strike that perfect balance between the familiar and the just-different-enough.

The one thing about Dick Van Dyke I don’t love, and it’s really about as close to perfect as it comes, is that pretty much every Sally-centered episode is exactly the same. Rose Marie is a phenomenal talent and Sally was a great character who could hold her own with the boys in an era when that just didn’t happen, and she got saddled with this “pathetically pining for a boyfriend” story that was so out of character with who Sally was the other 97% of the time. It would always be Sally trying and failing to get a date that was obviously beneath her because she didn’t want to be alone, and worse, they played it for melodrama more than comedy. The showrunners should have done better by Sally. Those episodes are spread out enough that it doesn’t interfere with a binge watch but they’re always kind of a bummer to me.

 

[Harry-N]

Yes, I understand that shows have/had their standard format, and for a weekly entertainment it was fine. I often read here that THE FUGITIVE is too repetitive. Kimble comes to a new location, gets involved in the lives of some of the locals, is stuck just moments away from the law, helps out the locals, and moves on before being caught. Rinse and repeat next week.

I never saw the show quite that way. Obviously to maintain the series longevity, he had to escape each week. What I found interesting was the interactions with the locals, the consummate acting of the guest stars as well as Janssen himself. With a show like BEWITCHED, other than looking at Elizabeth Montgomery which was always a joy, those around her were mostly the same. Endora was always snooty and witchy (If witches are a race, then she's a racist.) Darrin, through whatever spell he was under, was always hopping around with donkey ears or a big nose demanding the spell be broken. There was always a "client", always played by the likes of a Roy Roberts-type, stuffy and unforgiving, Larry Tate, with his eyes on the big bucks, always flustered by Darrin's seeming ridiculous actions, and neighbor Gladys Kravitz, who could never manage to get Abner to see what she was snooping on.

There were alternate magic types - the Aunt Clara/Hagatha/father/Dr. Bombays, but they were just fill-ins for Endora's meddling, and after a few visits, they got rather samey too.

Anyway, I once loved the series, and have fond memories of enjoying it. It's just something that I can't revisit with DVDs.

I tend to agree about Sally Rogers on THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW. Her character was fairly one-dimensional, and that's a black mark on the writers. But aside from that, the series was always fresh and is still enjoyable by me to this day.

In I LOVE LUCY, Lucy herself was funny enough with the situations she got herself in. It was totally unbelievable, yet she managed to pull it off, week after week. In her later series, though, not so much. I don't get much enjoyment out of the later shows, but can always guarantee enjoying any old I LOVE LUCY episode. It's funny, but I never managed to pull the trigger on buying that series, other than the hour-episodes. I think it's because my wife doesn't like I LOVE LUCY.

Bottom line is we all have our individual likes, dislikes, and passions. As long as a show on home media is complete as far as program material goes and has the correct music, I'm OK. If a newer, older, wrong logo is attached, or a bumper is missing, I don't really care. But I know there are those that do, and that's fine.