DVDs -- To Buy, or not to Buy

Cafe Society
1

I have a medium-sized DVD collection of some of my favorite movies, but the truth is that I very seldom actually watch them, and on the odd occassion I do actually watch them, I could probably just as well go to Blockbuster and rent them. Yet somehow I like having them – some kind of weird mix of pride in owning them, and the feeling that I’m supporting filmmakers I like.

I recently got an Amazon.com gift certificate, and as I’m already drowning in books and music, I was thinking about buying a DVD. But is it completely wasteful to buy a movie I’ll realistically only watch once in a blue moon? Does anyone else have this problem, and how do you deal with it?

It’s even worse with books. I have tons of books, but most of them I could just as well have gotten from the library without paying a dime, and without having them cluttering up my room. Yet I continue to buy books. Why??

2

Do what I did: have a baby. Now I have my very own shiny library card, and I haven’t bought a DVD in maybe a year. I didn’t even get the Simpsons new season! >_<

But I had pretty much come to the realization that it was a waste of money anyway. I still buy stuff like Arrested Development (season 2 out soon!) because I’ll watch it enough to make it worth it. Movies? No way.

3

The whole point of having a library of books and dvds is so that you can read what you want and watch what you want whenever you want.

Besides, you can never have too many books…or dvds, for that matter.

4

D’oh! How could I not have thought of the ol’ have-a-baby trick! :smack: Heheh. I’ll bet your DVD collection’s starting to fill up with Barney and the Wiggles.

5

The reasons for owning books and DVD’s can vary.

As DataZak says, there’s the convenience factor of having your own copy. Yes, you could rent a given movie any time you want to watch it, and probably pay less through your lifetime than you would to buy it. But that’s also going to involve a trip out to get the movie, and what if you just want something comfortable to watch when you’re sick and there’s nothing on TV?

There are other reasons, too. I don’t know about you, but I am skeptical of any library’s ability to carry books I want to read. This is a carry-over from my days growing up in the 80’s in a town where the librarian was shocked and horrified when I asked if it were possible for the library to get a subscription to Analog. Their SF ran to (I counted one day) all of four books. One Asimov, one Clarke, and two Heinlein. None of which had been purchased after 1960. So I tend to buy books as a first choice rather than going to the library. I know this is an unfair judgement against my local library, now, but it’s still the way I think.

Movies are even worse for me. My tastes in film are such that most places that offer to rent movies won’t have the movies that I want to watch, even once. F’rinstance, the last time I was in Blockbuster, just after the US release of Nausicaa, they didn’t have a single copy. I made the decision to support anime translation by buying anything I might want to watch once, when USRenditions and AminEigo began in the 1990’s. And it’s worked wonders, too. Prices are down hugely, since. And I can even see some anime in Blockbuster these days. (Pokemon, alas, but some.)

My taste for ‘normal’ films is even harder to supply. My favorite Cary Grant films, for example aren’t things like North by Northwest, or An Affair to Remember, but I Was a Male War Bride, or People Will Talk, neither of which I’ve ever seen in any movie rental place.

With books there are additional reasons - owning reference works, for example, just makes sense. As an aspiring writer there are some topics I want to have the reference available 24/7, whether I’ve needed it in the past month, or not. Considering I tend to write things that involve fantastic of science fictional plots - my idea of a reference work can be pretty odd, too. (Now, what’s the lifecycle of the Komodo Dragon again? Do/did the Crow have neighbor tribes that revere Coyote as much as they despise him?)

And, frankly, there is simply the greed to it, too. Owning a library is something that warms the cockles of my heart. I grew up in a house full of books. My parents, when they bought their house, customized two rooms with each having a wall of bookcases. With more books still being stored in bedrooms and in the basement. Now that private ownership of video is approximately the same price as book ownership, a video library seems simply the logical extension of the same process.

6

I’ve been thinking about this lately too, it does seem a waste of money sometimes, 'cept for the few things I WILL watch over and over (like Firefly). But I just love seeing the books and movies I love lined up on the shelf all pretty and handy for “backup” entertainment.

And it’s always nice to re-watch with a friend who’s never seen something. (You’ve never seen that?! I have it, let’s watch it right now.) I like to loan out copies of certain things to in order to “convert” – um, I mean share interesting/good thing with – people, too :slight_smile:

Now, this isn’t a problem with books, but I’m starting to feel a little reluctant to by DVDs, because of talk of the new high def/blu-ray disks. Current DVDs willl be obsolete eventually. I sure never watch any of my old videos ( though I do only have about 5 of them).

I feel a little less bad about the whole thing by buying lots of used and “bargain bin” movies and books. I feel less guilty paying 5 or 10 bucks for something I’ll only use a couple of times than $15-$25.

7

The first time I read this post, I thought it said “warms the cookies of my heart,” and I thought that was actually a neat way to put it. :wink:

8

I’ve already been hit by media change once on my video library. I have about 100 LD’s. It’s a little annoying to have the first two parts of a three-part collection on one media and then have to buy the whole silly thing over again, to get the last part. (Of course I’ve waited long enough that the price has dropped to less than I paid for either of the first two parts for the whole set. And that was buying them at discount prices after the DVD killed the LD.)

The important thing for now, at least, is that digital media doesn’t really degrade to the same extent that analog, such as video, or LP’s do. And, to be honest, I’m skeptical of whether anything’s going to be replacing the DVD as easily as DVD replaced LD. One of the major reasons people I knew resisted getting LDs was because they felt that a media the same size as an LP was too large, and old-fashioned. A large part of the reason DVD caught on so quickly was that it is the same size as the accepted audio format: CD. When one considers how long LPs remained effectively unchanged (on the playback level, at least) I don’t expect DVD to be replaced by anything that can’t play DVD or CD discs.

And I’m afraid I don’t have cookies of my heart. I ate 'em. I was hungry. Can I have yours? :wink:

9

Good point.

Friends could easily get the same books and DVDs from the library or the rental store, but it’s not the same as a recommendation from a friend.

Plus the librarians and store clerks (at least around here) usually don’t know the product as well as you do.

10

My solution was to join Netflix. I’ve watched dozens of movies I wouldn’t want to watch a second time. A standard Netflix subscription costs about $20 per month. That’s about the cost of a single movie, but you can easily see six movies in a month through Netflix. I still buy movies, but now mostly stuff I’ve seen and like so much I want to own it.