One of the major reasons that thinpakking is ok for anime, is that most of the dvds tend to be in series. Since the spines are usually the same pattern and they're grouped together, it's easy to distiguish them and find a specific.

Looking at Chris's non-anime dvds, it's very hard to tell what the titles are.

Holy crap. I have bad eyes already (I wear contacts). If my shelf was like that my eyes would bleed.

I think it'd be harder for DVD distributors to get consumers to accept shorter cases now than it would have been back in '97-'98. The early adopters would have accepted another case size because they were more often coming from a completely differently sized product, LD, to DVD.

Today consumers already have strong expectations of what DVD packaging should look like. Many consumers would find changing height at this point unacceptable because they want to be able to shelve entire collection in one place without the huge variation in case height.

No, you're forgetting that most retailers stock CDs in large theft-protection cases to make them taller and harder to shoplift. The VHS-height size of DVD cases has been an advantage to retailers, not a detriment. The thickness, however, is what needlessly eats up too much shelf space.

Personally, I love the ThinPaks. My DVD collection is growing out of control and I ran out of shelf space some time ago. Now discs are just sitting in stacks on the floor. I'd convert everything to ThinkPak if there were a convenient way to fit the old keepcase artwork in them without trimming it (or the hassle of scanning and reprinting every last one).

Not only that, but I think one of the big reasons for putting DVDs in the taller cases was to easily distinguish them from music CDs in the stores, as your average consumer back then probably would've assumed those were either music CDs or something to play in a computer.

Also, putting them in something jewelbox size would make them all that much easier to shoplift (which, as I remember, was another reason that CDs used to come in either longboxes or those silly, long plastic contraptions that had to be unlocked with a plastic "key" at the cash register, besides their needing to be adapted to LP shelf sizes).

I'm starting to think that I'll use these to replace my snappers only. I've been meaning to make amarays for them, but if I can do the same amount of work and free up a lot of shelf space, that makes even more sense.

I have done this with my collection by trimming all the single disk DVDs that aren't in special packages, Criterions, or snappers. I have most of my DVDs in Sorice cabinets with black glass doors so you can't see them from across the room anyway. I don't have enough space for all my DVDs otherwise (about 1300) It would probably affect resale, but I give away to family members any DVDs I don't want anymore or upgrade.