here is a final update before the it all hits the fan!

the article will also be found on the NYT website. in the paper...you should find it on the front cover of the "Circuits" section.

as most of you know....I converted a small walk-in closet into my "Film Vault". as cool as that sounds....it would not have been proper for the picture(s) they took on Sunday. the vault is very, very cramped and much of the collection would not have made it into the shot. I needed to be in front of the collection...which made me think about things. I decided, much to my sadness, that it would be better to relocate the library for the shoot. in doing this...a few things need to be noted.

I ended up using 3 extra bookshelves which I brought into the living room. I even had to "cut" some new shelves as to hold all the dvds. sadly, not everything is "re-placed" as it should be. some titles are a little out of place and some are stacked a little weird....but it should turn out decent.

the other thing is this: I use re-sealable bags/sleeves for my cases. I removed some of them for the shoot, thinking that the spines would be easier to read. I've noticed that standing at a certian angle and depending on the light, the titles can sometimes be obscured. so I thought it best to remove them. may have been the right decision...maybe not. it's a little too late to worry about it...it was just fyi for those who know how I present my library.

hope it turns out all right. I'm afraid that I'll be working about an 12-14 hour day tomorrow, so although I will see the article in the morning...I wont be able to respond until late, late afternoon, if then. so take it easy on me.:D

EDITED TO ADD: guess all that changin' around the collection was a waste of time...:lol:...they used the worst picture! sure wish they would have used the front view of the library. oh well....at least I got my name in there! you can read the article HERE. you may have to register if you have not already. it's free.

Way to go, gut . . . good article. :up:

thanks, talemyn.

here's the article - i hate this crappy "registration" thingie...

COLLECTIBLES
DVD's? I Don't Rent. I Own.
By WILSON ROTHMAN

Published: February 26, 2004

VERY night at his home in Des Moines, Todd Robertson watches a couple of DVD movies. Every few months he queues up a themed marathon he says might last 24 hours. His favorite genre is Italian horror, but he's got a whole world of cinema to choose from: at last count he owned 1,462 titles, although by now the number is probably higher.

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And he is not alone. According to Adams Media Research, consumers spent $14.4 billion last year on movies for the home, almost $5 billion more than they spent on theater tickets or video rentals. With more than 27,000 DVD movies to choose from, mega-collectors are building libraries of 1,000 titles or more, and some are starting Web sites and Internet databases to help fellow fans manage inventory.

On the heels of the software is new hardware, including 300- and 400-disc DVD changers. If they ever catch on, they may prove to be the key to organizing so many shiny silver discs.

"Nobody saw this coming," said Jan Saxton, Adams vice president and media analyst, who attributes the boom to several factors, from the low prices of DVD players to the higher quality of video and sound on the discs. "No one anticipated how much consumers would feel the pull of the $9.99-to-$14.99 impulse buy at Wal-Mart. They didn't anticipate how ready the American consumer was to collect films."

Alex Rosten of Los Angeles, with a collection of 542 DVD's, said that for him, it is economics. "When I rent a DVD, it costs around $4," he said. "Add to that the inevitable late fees and the hassle of having to return it, and I'm looking at a lot more than I bargained for. Most DVD's cost $10 to $20, so it makes more sense for me to purchase. And I have the option of watching it whenever I want."

The average price of a new release on DVD is $21.85, although if you know where to shop, it will be cheaper. The sale-rack titles, those older movies referred to in the business as "catalog releases," generally cost about $12. "As an option, it often compares favorably to renting," Ms. Saxton said. "Of course, there are movies you really don't want to own - that's why we don't see the rental market fading away."

Mr. Robertson has never rented a DVD. In fact, with his collection, he would be more likely to start his own rental business. He currently owns a moving company.

"For me, the whole point is to build the perfect library of films," he said. "If films came on something else, that's what I'd collect. DVD is just the format that's doing film the most justice."

Although he watches movies on a standard 36-inch Toshiba television, he is currently building a home that will feature a more immersive theater, complete with 65-inch high-definition projection TV. While most collectors have several DVD players - Mr. Robertson has four - few so far have invested in DVD changers that can hold hundreds of discs.

Chris Walker, manager of new business development at Pioneer Electronics, explained that once you have reached the changer's storage capacity, you are back at square one. Mr. Walker, who himself owns 750 movies, keeps two full Pioneer 301-disc changers but uses a third player to accommodate shelves of extra DVD's. "Right now, Pioneer has no plans to create a new changer," Mr. Walker said. On the other hand, Sony Electronics says it will continue to develop and sell "mega-changers," based on the relative success of its 400-disc DVP-CX985V ($400).

The hardware cost is minimal in comparison with the investment in the movies themselves. Mr. Robertson estimates he has spent $20,000 to $23,000 on DVD's since 1999. At DVD Aficionado (www.dvdaficionado .com), where you can see the bulk of his collection (member name: GutWrencherdvds), that hardly makes him unique: more than 200 members boast libraries of 1,000 or more DVD's.

How can one person accumulate such quantities? Kyle Schember knows. A recording engineer by trade, he spent two years collecting DVD's for a wealthy Los Angeles businessman.

"He had just built a theater in his house with projectors and seats for 20 people," Mr. Schember said of his client. "He wasn't the type to get in his car and go shopping, so he said to me: 'I want to build a big collection. Would you be interested?' Twice a week I worked on it - one day was for shopping, the other for arranging."

Mr. Schember started where many serious movie collectors do, with the Criterion Collection (www .criterionco.com). Currently consisting of 232 titles ranging from the 1922 British film "Nanook of the North" to "The Royal Tenenbaums," released in 2001, Criterion is considered the quintessence of film snobbery and the apex of DVD technical expertise. The company licenses movies from studios for transfer to DVD, giving careful attention to video and sound quality and historically appropriate bonus material.

While a few Criterion titles sell for $20, single discs can easily list for up to $40, and $160 box sets are not unheard of. Because they are only temporarily licensed from the studio, Criterion titles also have a tendency to go out of print.

When ordered to buy them all, Mr. Schember found himself stuck on a few of the out-of-print titles, and at one point spent $350 of his client's cash to buy an essential John Woo flick. Recently on eBay, a sealed Criterion Collection John Woo box, including "The Killer" and "Hard Boiled," showed a starting bid of $450 and a "Buy It Now" price of $525.

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Next on Mr. Schember's list was "anything that had ever won an Oscar." As with most collectors, Amazon was his retailer of choice because of pricing and the ability to handle large orders. But Mr. Schember said that even Amazon's systems became flustered by his requests for 200 or more movies. Once available Oscar titles were purchased, the collection expanded in various directions: every box set, be it Bond or Hitchcock; everything by a certain director or starring a certain actor - Bette Davis was a favorite.

By 2002, the collection consisted of about 2,400 movies and had cost the client roughly $60,000, not including Mr. Schember's hourly wages, which, he says, were enough to pay his rent. To catalog the films, Mr. Schember used a bar-code scanner and a program called ReaderwareVW. Designed to track inventory for video stores and lending libraries, Readerware is one of a few programs popular with DVD enthusiasts. It has a 30-day free trial, though the PC or Mac version costs $40 to download (or $50 to buy on CD)..

A decent free alternative is DVD Profiler, which allows users to enter a movie's title, Universal Product Code or International Standard Book Number by hand, or use a bar-code scanner.

Guzzlefish (www.guzzlefish.com) is perhaps the most attractive way to navigate a DVD collection, allowing entries to be sorted by title, director, actor, distributor and more. The site combines the collector's data with the responses of its 14,000 other users, and comes up with some fascinating statistics. For example, it confirms the long-running jokes about Samuel L. Jackson and Steve Buscemi: ranked, respectively, the No. 1 and No. 4 most collected actors, they really do seem to appear in practically everything.

Not everyone is happy with Guzzlefish, which has an occasional genre-labeling problem. "I have a title called 'Blood Freak,' " said Mr. Robertson, the Des Moines collector. "Guzzlefish listed it as Education/General Interest, but it should be under Horror. Believe me, it's far from educational."

The site's founder, Dave Snider, explained that Guzzlefish uses prepackaged content from a supplier called Muze and cannot fix the supplier's errors.

Asked about the problem, Muze's chief executive, Paul Zullo, said, "Our database isn't open, but I'd be very happy to take correction suggestions via e-mail." He added that he would be interested in working with Guzzlefish to determine the breadth of the problem, and that first on the agenda would be fixing the ''Blood Freak'' genre tag.

Mr. Robertson prefers to track his 1,462 titles on DVD Aficionado, which does not pay to license any content, but instead uses the input of its 26,000 participating members.

"Every letter was typed by a member," says Aficionado's founder, who asked to remain anonymous. "When a film is announced, it is a member who enters it into the database - that's why some titles take longer than others to appear."

Besides the ability to correct its own erroneous information, DVD Aficionado beats Guzzlefish in managing international DVD's, listing more titles from other regions. And DVD Aficionado just began offering a free version of its organizer for hand-helds, responding to a frustration of many collectors: when they get to a store, they cannot remember what they already own.

Neither DVD Aficionado nor Guzzlefish operates to make money. Aficionado's founder says that its revenue, from Amazon ads and the occasional user donation, is only sometimes enough to cover costs. Mr. Snider says that because of Guzzlefish, he is "hugely in debt."

One of his site's features estimates the value of a collection, using the suggested retail price of each title and a ballpark guess for out-of-print movies. Perhaps Mr. Snider should follow DVD Aficionado's lead and gently solicit members for donations: Guzzlefish's rankings show that its top five collectors have movie investments estimated at more than $156,000 apiece.

Re: I was interviewed by the NY Times about dvds, tracking sites and collecting!!
 

You're also on TV!

The very popular 24-hour all news cable channel (NY1) does an <i>In The Papers</i> feature that is repeated several times during the day. And yup, <b><i>that</i></b> article is mentioned and for a few seconds your face is beamed into thousands and thousands of New York City homes......


By the way, congrats! Nice .....

:cool:

....ughhmmm......looks like not all the freaks are in NY and LA.....we got one in Iowa.


Just kidding :D.....congrats Gut. Keep us (ME) updated on that nun-passion of yours....and the home theater as well :) :thumbsup:

edit:
Looks like you got the import bug :D

Congratulations, gutwrencher. I read the article this morning. After seeing the photo I was wondering why somebody with a 1400 DVD collection would have them crammed and stacked so haphazardly into a bookcase, with no apparent order -- your explanation a few posts ago clears up that mystery.

I am most troubled by your plan to upgrade from a 36" tube to a 65" RPTV. Have you considered front projection? I guarantee that if you make the leap to FP, like I did, you'll want to rewatch your entire collection over again.

Daddy wants!:drool:

thanks for the concern!! funny....I dont remember saying that this was for sure what I was looking into. I have made no decisions on this yet since my home is so far from being done.:grunt:

btw...I hate rear-projection!!

thanks...thats why it was important for a disclaimer. however, even now, it's still more organized that many...and it was a rush job. I catalog by genre and director....and even in the pic, I think it's obvious. the top of the shelves is another story! :D

now, everything is back in the vault as before. oops! lunch-hour is over!

gutwrencher's face is on my dining room table right now.

something to catch the crumbs? like a placemat? :lol:

Very interesting stuff.

It really goes to show you that DVD is here to stay for any of those naysayers who are always waiting on something better, like blu-ray.

Re: Re: I was interviewed by the NY Times about dvds, tracking sites and collecting!!
 

wow...didnt know about that! cool...collectors getting noticed is always a good thing.:thumbsup:

Cool article. gutwrencher, you look like a totally normal dude, I would have never guessed :lol:

Now you got me interested in Blood Freak

With a description like this who wouldn't be interested.

thanks, man. yeah....BF is a pretty bad film. God, I love that stuff!

btw, just got a shout-back from Tim Lucas of Video Watchdog...where I've been a subscriber for years. it seems that director Joe Dante(The Howling) sent Tim the article so he could check it out. cool!

Re: Re: Re: I was interviewed by the NY Times about dvds, tracking sites and collecting!!
 

I saw that! In The Papers is an important part of my morning. That's when I drink my coffee in between doing all my morning crap and taking my dog to the park.

Thanks for giving us all something fun to read today, it helped me put a smile on today.

lol how cool, try and scan it for us - non usa folk

Good job Gutwrencher :up: Was an interesting read.

Hey, great article, gut. :up:

Nice pic! Were those all Warner snappers you were leaning on? :D

thanks, my friend. yes...I wanted the snappers just to piss off the snapper-haters.:lol:

honestly? I was going to use a stack of brutal horror films but decided to use better taste for the normal crowd.-wink-

also...that was one of the last shots taken and I was getting bored....so I just grabbed the nearest stack of favs.:D

That would've been very cool. Nuns and Bava! :)

One thing the article didn't touch on was how collectors like to help other fledgling collectors out. You've helped me out and I've really appreciated your guidance and recommendations. I'm always heartened to see good things happen to deserving people so it's really cool that you were a large part of the article.

:beer: A toast to gut!

thanks for those very kind words! :D I'm really happy the Rabid Dogs thing worked out for ya.:thumbsup: