Ron_Bangel

Yeah, I know... eats up a good chunk of my free web page allocation, too. And it's a pain to load in FrontPage. Someday I'll try to figure out how to do a mass compression on all of the little pix.

hifi

Try ACDSee's batch format change, change the format to JPEG, lower the quality, and replace. Voila, uber small files.

Breakfast with Girls

www.kanchi.org/dvds

I just copied the design of some other DVD site because I didn't want to put too much effort into it. It's a PHP/MySQL site. The admin part is the cool part, though. I just add a few basic things (Name, Amazon ID, IMDb ID, etc.) and it fetches the image and all the rest of the information from Amazon dynamically using Amazon's SOAP-based Web Services.

gutwrencher

I work 12 hour days and STILL have all the time I need. we all have different situations. I own a moving company. I can sit on my ass, answer phones and book jobs and let my $15 an hour employees do the hard work. I'm through bustin' my back and ass moving grand pianos and hot-tubs, gunsafes and pool-tables. been there, done that. thats what the young punks with strong backs are for. trouble is...most young people have shitty work ethic and some can only handle a few months of this at a time. they make 1 to 200 a day, not to mention tips...it's just laziness. my best workers are in thier 40's. anyway, thats where I get MY time. it was just a choice I made.

why are some of you in such a bloody hurry to watch all yer dvds all the time? I dont understand...help me, please. a dvd will last for years and years and years....yet theres this big rush to HAVE to watch them all...right now! jesus people...slow down. it's a personal library....not a blockbuster where you need to have it watched and returned in a week. are there a few in there I may decide to never watch again? ok... whats the point? and dont give me that crap about HD-DVD taking over and me having to replace all of my titles. once again, thats crazy talk and I'm not the least bit worried. yeah, I'll have 200 HD-dvds, but will STILL have tons of dvds. when I reach 1,800 titles by the end of the year...I suppose I'll get ripped to shreds too.


that is so sad. you make me weep. I have a friend who has 6 or 7 girls scattered across the city, who he rocks and socks on a regular basis. now you could say he has a collection of flesh....but really...he loves them all.

it's all my fault that we got off track in this thread. my apologies, neo2600. retiring from thread.

Breakfast with Girls

It puts the lotion in the basket.

Ron_Bangel

8) Cool! Much appreciated, will give that a shot!

Al Padrino

By the same token, what's the hurry in buying everything the second it comes out or everything right away? If it's a title you absolutely love, I can understand that, but just because it's out doesn't mean you need to buy it that instant. Unless it's going OOP or you love the title, I don't see the point of buying it right away. You've got plenty of time to watch them and plenty of time to buy them.

gutwrencher

who says I get to? If I really had my way, I'd be buying 20 a week. so for every 10 I buy, I could buy 10 more...but dont. I have control, but my volume is just set high. call it my comfort level. really though, I just want my library's foundation to be completed asap. then just add new releases as they come out. I'm finding it productive just focusing on my library for 3 or 4 years and then backing off to pursue my skydiving addiction, which is also an expensive investment...not to mention more risky.

who am I kiddin'. it's because I'm one impaitent sonofabitch!!!!

raytrade

There IS a reason to buy them right away: there are essentially two time periods that a title can be found at the cheapest price. One is the week of release when the big box retailers discount it as a loss leader, and the second time is a couple of months later when it shows up at Blockbuster or Hollywood Video as a "pre-viewed" title. Now I know there are exceptions for price drops, Black Friday sales, etc., but as a general rule, these are the only 2 times to get the title at the lowest price you will ever be able to buy them for. A huge number of my DVDs are bought during BBV's Buy 2 Get 1 Free pre-viewed sales. As long as you hunt, you'll find almost any title priced at one of the BBV's for $9.99 which makes them $6.66 each during the sale. Even with price drops, the title will probably never be found at such a low price. So, if I wait a year or something to buy that title, I am back to paying 15-20% or so off MSRP instead of up to 80% off MSRP during a BBV sale or $35-40% off New during first week of release.

By shopping in this smart way, I have saved a ton of money. According to DVDProfiler's stats, I have a paid a total of $9708.65 for my collection, which has a total MSRP cost of $31,404.86. If I had waited to buy most of these titles, at normal retail discounts, I would likely have paid well over double what I actually paid.

vivarey

Nah... that's what CH is for.

I too don't understand the mad rush to horde DVDs when we all know its a dying format. If you're not planning on watching it anytime soon, or ever, why not just save/invest the money and pick it up in a few years on HD-DVD? HD is our generations format. DVD was just our introduction.

Jah-Wren Ryel

I know a guy who is close to breaking the 4K point - and he counts a lot of his box sets as one title (like the two Pasolini box sets with a total of 6 films are only counted as 2 titles). He too gets a lot of his as PVDs from Blockbuster/Hollywood/Moviegallery or used when the local used DVD stores have sales - the rest he looks for extreme deals, like the DDD 20% and misprices like the $16 Claude Chabrol set. He will probably never be able to watch all the movies he owns, but he says he collects for a couple of reasons:

1) The future is likely to be video-on-demand without anyone "owning" their own copies. That leaves artistic integrity in the hands of studios/governments/freaks/etc and he is certain that cuts and edits will be made, his library is a relatively small preservation of these movies as they exist today.

2) He (as do I - he convinced me) feels that copyright laws in this country are being abused to steal our cultural heritage from us, as well as being generally bad all around. So, by buying used or uber-cheap, he minimizes the money going back to the copyright pigopolists. He then makes his collection available as a free lending library to anyone he knows (mostly people at work) so as to both spread the art and further reduce revenue to pigopolists (the PVDs are great for this since being recent titles they are usually very popular "rentals"). I've found that doing the same with my collection is pretty rewarding too, regardless of politics people *love* free DVD rentals.

raytrade

I'm not sure I agree with that statement. DVD has such a critical mass and such widespread acceptance that a "better" technology may simply not be widely accepted. Look at SACD and DVD-Audio; clearly superior to CDs yet there is no way either will knock CD off its pedestal. I think for a new technology to replace one, it needs to be revolutionary (a totally different media form) rather than evolutionary (like I suspect DVD to HD-DVD will be). For example, MP3, clearly a totally different medium than the CD, is making more of an impact as a music format than minidisc, DAT, SACD, or DVD-Audio ever had or will.

You might argue that once HD TVs become more popular, HD DVD will follow, but that doesn't always happen. Many people have 5.1 home theater systems, yet the interest in upgrading music collections from stereo to a 5.1 format like SACD or DVD-Audio has been minimal.

DVD Polizei

vivarey,

Most of my collection will NEVER be on HD-DVD. Probably shouldn't say never, but I can't justify having my entire collection converted to HD. Only my favorite movies are going to be HD-DVD.

I guess I'm only saying this because I have over 1,000 DVDs, and the financial implications are too enormous.

Movies like the Alien series, Die Hard series (maybe), or movies that have a lot of special effects that will really benefit buying a HD-DVD version, are what I will concentrate on. But movies such as Fried Green Tomatoes are just fine as a Dual-Layer DVD.

neo2600

no problem, thanks for the thought. I still can't believe others are still posting their thoughts on something that has nothing to do with my question...

oh well, thanks to all that answered my question by sharing your links.

gutwrencher

thank you. I really doubt many of my films will be re-released on HD-DVD. many of them will.....but with my taste, I doubt that many of my more rare fav's, will.


Jah-Wren Ryel
no, I'll still own my dvds and films, preserved on dvd and will always be sure to have something to play them on. I have doomsday already in mind. why else would I have a few region-free and domestic players sitting in my closet all boxed up and new? of course they serve as back-up players...should a problem ever arise.

Neo2600
I'll say I'm sorry again...because I lied. I couldnt keep my mouth shut. you still helped add to the thread....thanks for being kind and being cool about it all.

vivarey

There's just no way any of us can predict what will or won't be released in future formats. I keep hearing this argument over and over, and to be honest, I think it's just an excuse to make us feel better about our large and growing (and soon to be outdated) collections. One thing is for sure though, HD-DVD will be around a lot longer than DVD, so to say that studios will forego continued revenue from their movies indefinitely just doesn't make sense. It could be as simple as a good quality upscaling procedure.

But this is really completely unrelated to the OP, so moving on...

gutwrencher

it may be just a guess, but I'll bet that it would be YEARS before seeing something like Meat Market or The Faceless Monster on this format that you say will make dvds obsolete in such a short period of time. if at all. dvd is far from dead...it's just that many people are rushing it all along because it's not good enough. I would think that anyone involved in a dvd talk forum is there because they are excited about dvds, buying dvds and films and having a great time doing it. but if someone buys too many or the wrong titles...they are labeled insane or just plain weird. this is very sad indeed, and that in itself...is very bizarre.

SideShow

I started making one, and it was actually looking pretty spiffy. But then it just got SO tedious I gave up somewhere it the D's. So yay for DVDaf.com!

leemik

The mystery was solved over at dvdfile.. neo2600 was looking for mine:

http://www.mike-lee.org/scripts/dvdd...dreviewmain.pl

and here's my cd collection too...

http://www.mike-lee.org/scripts/cdda...atabasemain.pl

I'm working on a video games one.... but fresh out of ideas? anyone have any suggestions for a cool UI?

--mike

Yakuza Bengoshi

^Very impressive!

gutwrencher

very well done!!

HistoryProf

Holy crap leemik.....that's, uhm, impressive......or something.....eesh.

talemyn

Fantastic pages, mike! As to your video games page . . . let us know a little bit about your collection and maybe it'll help with generating ideas. Example what systems so you have? What's your favorite game genre? What's your favorite game? etc . . .

leemik

Thanks! I have hundreds of games ... Theoretically, the game system shouldn't matter because it should be flexible enough to support any old/current/future system..

I just thought of something cool.. I could make the UI like an arcade cabinet.. The marquee could be my banner... The games would show up as a "high score" listing.. clicking on joystick will get you next page..etc..

Probably a project I will work slow on in the coming months..

--mike

acostigan

Approaching 500, I think my passion for collecting DVDs has just about peaked. There's not too many catalog titles I'm waiting on and lately I'm pretty selective about new releases. Also, there's several I own that I wouldn't miss by selling or trading off. So I figure it'll keep growing, but nowhere nears as fast as the first 3 years.