It's your collection. Ultimately you have to decide. What I do, is any 3 disc collection gets a 3 disc case, with three seperate hubs. I havent found any of these slimmer than a standard single width dvd case, though unfortunately.

ZT_Styles: Yeah, it's your collection so ultimately you have to decide what you want to do. There are some items which just cannot be converted to Thinpaks because all of the inserts just won't fit into a 7 mm case. Some of the old style 4 disc cases can, however, be converted to standard size (14 mm) cases. Personally I was quite happy to get those old style cases converted to standard size cases. The vast majority of my collection has now been converted - as follows:
converted to 7 mm cases = 342
converted to standard size cases (14 mm) = 28
not yet converted = 139 (TV sets, items for which no cover-art is available, stuff which I just plain don't want to convert, etc.)

danwiz

Not a fan of thinpaks at all, so I'd never do it. I can see why some folks would be inclined to based on storage space though.

I'm about half way into my conversion, and I'm loving it. I just ordered another 500 thinpaks, and that should be more than enough to finish. Now, what to do with all that space?

Quick question... Is there a huge difference using 5mm cases?

Easiest thing to do with the extra space is get more dvds!!
As for the 5mm cases, I dont know as I only use the standard (7mm i think) thinpak cases.

What did you do with you old cases?

Do you find it hard finding covers for everything you have though? I assume you keep your booklets as well too?

I'm thinking about using thinpaks.

The Thinpak CoverArt on R1db.com is designed for the 7 mm ThinPak cases. In addition, I believe that the 7 mm cases are just enough larger than the 5 mm size so that the titles are still easy to read. In addition, most inserts will still fit inside of the 7 mm cases, this is not the case with the 5 mm cases.

I've converted a good chunk of my movies and TV shows to thinpak cases, and I have since moved on to the real monster shelf eater of my DVD collection... my wrestling DVDs. I've started by converting my Ring of Honor DVD Collection. I've converted pretty much every show from Jan. '06 - Current. I basically made up a template in photoshop where I gave each cover a matching spine but retaining the original art on the front and back. My goal is to convert my complete wrestling collection one promotion at a time.

I've been slowly doing this myself. For covers, I simply simply scan the back of the existing insert, use a single font and color for the title spine, then Google the original poster art for the front cover. I've been printing them on regular paper, which looks just fine for my purposes. Further, I picked up some decorative boxes at Target to store them in, fits roughly 36 slim cases with room on the side for insert booklets. The twofold purpose of the boxes is that it keeps the DVDs out of my two-year old's sight so she can't grab hold of them. It's time-consuming, but most of our original DVD boxes were getting banged up whenever we moved, so this way the DVDs are essentially packed and ready to go at a moment's notice if such need arises.

This sounds awesome!! I would love to see a picture of this on the shelf.

I did this for a couple of my dvds when I started my conversion. I ended up Not doing it for more than 5 or 6. there are enough websites with some very talented artists out there, that I havent not been able to find a cover I was looking for more than about 10% of the time. In those instances I was able to find a regular case that I converted to a thinpack.

I used to use regular paper, until someone on here suggested I try matte photo paper, and wont go back to regular paper. The matte photo paper makes it look like the real deal, and when you put the printed one behind the clear plastic of the case, you really cant tell that it is a print out.

What did people do with their old cases and/or artwork? Are there options to expanding my carbon footprint in the landfill?

Recycle the plastic cases - or put them up for sale - there are probably people here who would buy them. Put the old artwork out with the other recycle paper.

Yes, r1db.com costs money - do your research on their site for costs - it's pretty dang cheap! I got all of my covers for probably less than $25 or so. And, once you sign up then they periodically send you an e-mail with a discount price for 500 credits or something like that.

I tried the thinpak route but was not happy with having to either trim, fold or print new artwork. The Discsox sleeves are also very expensive. I've started converting my DVD's to Jazzloft DVD sleeves. The artwork folds along the fold already present on the spine so that the spine can either be displayed with the front cover or back cover. No need to create a new fold, and if I want to move everything back into a 14mm case, it will go back in looking like it never left. They're still pretty expensive: $0.60 for single disc sleeves and $1 for 2 disc sleeves. I'm only doing the DVD's at this point, no blu rays and no Criterion, MOC or other boutique label stuff. They save a lot of space. It took me a long time to make the plunge and they would not send me a sample. I'm happy with the result though. They won't hold snapper art though.
http://www.jazzloft.com/p-48874-spac...d-sleeves.aspx
http://www.jazzloft.com/p-49677-doub...d-sleeves.aspx

I converted 1000 or so to slims but regret doing it. With my collection ever growing it just doesn't save enough space. I'm putting some into binders now.

I converted about 300 and also regret it. The spines are almost all unreadable. Thankfully, I only folded the art and did not cut it so I am slowly unconverting as standard boxes are becoming available. Best Buy actually took some of my converted slim cases without fuss in the recent blu-ray trade in.

What I do like is the 9mm double disk cases; they work fine, the spines are readable on the shelf and are 2/3 the size of standard. If I could find them in single disk I would probably use them.

I am not at all unhappy that I converted pretty much my entire collection. I don't have to stand back 3 meters to read my spines, I am not afraid to get up to within a couple of feet and I can read them just fine. I printed all new artwork and also made some of my own.

I would never even consider going back to full size cases. hilts you say that you like the 9 mm cases - all of my thinpaks are 7 mm, so if you like 9 mm the difference between 7 and 9 mm is pretty darn small. In fact 2 mm = 0.0787402 inches, that's just a tiny bit larger than 1/16th inch!

Hey, I'm glad the thinpacks worked for you. Probably would have worked better for me had I been willing to print new art, which I'm not.
The 9mm cases have one other big difference - a square spine, versus the rounded spine of the 7mm, which greatly increases the readable space.

For the record, I am not afraid of my DVD's. I can kick their ass in, one at a time or in bunches.

WOW! A square spine! Why the heck didn't they think of that years ago, I would like it so much better if all of my 7 mm thinpaks had square spines! Oh well! Such is life. But, thank you for the information.

LOL about your comment about not being afraid of your DVDs - so I guess that means that you are NOT afraid to get up to within a couple feet of them, eh!!

OK, square sounds stupid. Flat. Oblong. Not round. Book-like. Oh, the heck with it.

You really did put the conversion bug in me. I did the 9mm thing to my 2 disks, chucked all the fat double-amrays and converted to standard. Took my Mill Creek 4-disk envelope sets and bought some 4-disk standard-size cases to replace, you get the idea. It's just the 7mm thing that didn't work out for me and my feeble eyes.

No, I still do not like to get close to my DVDs. I'm not afraid, but they like to throw poop at me.