keyed

This isn't an all-purpose solution, but for series you should try quad-packing. You'll be able to save twice as much space vs. thinkpacking and won't have to cut the slipcovers.



What I did with my collection is consolidate dvds by movie and tv series. Terminator, Rambo, Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, Tremors, Clint Eastwood spagettis.. etc. This works great with tv shows that didn't come thin-packed originally. With anime, you quad-pack the first four dvds, and either use a dual-disc case for 6-dvd series, or another quad for 7-8 dvd series..

The quads are regular dvd sized, so you don't have to cut up the slipcover. Two slipcovers will fit inside, one underneath the other. The other two, you'll have to store someplace for safekeeping.

Abe.

Oh, where do we get those?

rehmus

This is a fascinating thread.

I know this isn't a solution for tallguyme...
but ive found that as my collection grows (600+ now) my tastes have matured significantly... i have to believe if everyone nixed the doubledip-originals and outgrown movies from their collections they'd cut space down significantly.

and im not necessarily saying you sell them. heck, i have movies i couldnt give away that i have no interest in watching anytime soon...
thus, why not pick out a hundred or so movies and stick them in a box?
everyone has movies they dont plan on watching in the near future but don't want to get rid of...

anyone who owns more than 1000 movies and cant come up with a few dozen they're not that excited about watching in the foreseeable future is joking.

and now, to negate everything i just said... i do understand how nice it is to have everything you own out in one place with comparable consideration for all dvds.

Bigsierra

Why not do something like this? You can keep the cases safely stored in boxes.

Steve Phillips

I use two different solutions:

1. DVD Storage boxes available from Bags Unlimited hold 108 discs in keep cases in a limited amount of space. These easily fit into the closet and can be stacked three high with no issue.

2. Discsox. For movies that I don't feel the need to keep in the original box, these are great. One sleeve can hold 2 discs, and all the original art and inserts without any trimming or mutiliation. If I decide to sell a disc later, it is a simple matter to put the original art back in a blank keep case and it is good as new.

majorjoe23

Whenever I see my best friend's scratched CDs, DVDs and games, I get a reminder of why I don't do this.

TheNightFlier

Seconded. Those would make a nice amount of room on my shelves.

Michael Corvin

or you could just order some 14mm (standard dvd size) cases that hold 6 discs (see my Stargate image earlier in the thread):

Bigsierra

I realized, I'm in a similar thread under Covers and Cases.

I've been happy with the books.

One nice thing is, when i have nieces and nephews over, they can look at the kids book and not see the more adult titles.

DVDs are worth less and less every day with the new HD standards, so the value on SD disks isn't what it used to be. I don't know if I would put Blue Ray in there or not. Maybe.

As long as they play, when I put them in, I'm happy.

DVD Polizei

I agree but disagree. What I mean is, it will really depend on what edition you buy, and what title it is.

HD is great, but it's gonna be a LONG time before they catch up to all the titles I have, as well as the catalogs and current releases of all the studios. We already have several titles which are missing extras and extended editions, so holding on to the SD DVD counterpart, might just end up being highly sought after if the SD DVD edition is not made anymore.

jjcool

Substitute 600 for 700, and this is my story. I have access to storage room where I can store the original cases, so I dont throw anything away. Everything, but special cases gets a smaller spacesaving case. Special cases being tin, steelbook, anchor bay numbered editions, etc.
something like the original star wars that was in 4 single width cases, now takes up one quarter of the space. It has more than halved the amount of shelf space my collection takes up.

If you are looking for good inexpensive cases, http://www.genesysdtp.com/ is the place to go. thinpaks for as little as 13 cents each. 50 for 8.99. tough to beat those prices. Fast shipping, plus he doesnt gouge you on shipping. I order stuff monday morning, its on my doorstop tuesday at lunchtime.

jjcool

umm, if he's like me he probably likes to keep his discs scratch free.

jjcool

THe more I think about this, the more surprised I am that not more people do this. with the wealth of custom thinpak covers available on sites across the internet, why is this very viable option often looked down on so?
I'm not talking about cutting the original covers, or even folding them, but printing new covers. I did this for about 600 dvd's and it took me maybe 2 hours a day for a couple of days.

GreenVulture

Because printer ink gets expensive after awhile? And if you use glossy paper, that just adds to the cost.

As for me, I ditched my shelf when I was running out of space and replaced it with this:


Cases are safely stored in big boxes while the discs were put into double-sided sleeves. The drawer sits nicely on top of my dresser, and there's easily enough room for a second cabinet for my music CDs. (There's also a slimmer version with one column instead of two that I'll be getting for my TV shows.) I have some handy letter dividers inside, as well as labels on all of the sleeves.

Will the discs get some minor scratches? Maybe, maybe not. Do I care? Not really. In the process of doing this, I tossed about 30+ DVDs into a box to sell off, so everything else is staying put. I've bought several discs, both used AND new, that came with scratches or scuff marks, and they played perfectly, whereas I've gotten a couple dozen discs that look flawless on the bottom and lock up anyways.

DVDs can take quite a bit of wear and tear and play fine. I have no clue why people on this forum get so pissy about the bottom of the disc.

DVD Polizei

^^^Gotta link to where those are sold?

GreenVulture

Sure:

2-column model (the one in the pictures)
http://www.amazon.com/Vaultz-4-Drawe...7186419&sr=8-2

1-column model
http://www.amazon.com/Vaultz-2-Drawe...7186419&sr=8-4

Acid_Bath2

I will just replace DVD's as they come out on Blu-Ray. solves the whole storage problem :P

mr. b_dvd

As I said in my earlier post, #54, these cases should be banned. No matter how careful you are, they will eventually get scratched up. Even though someone here said they don't know why some people get "pissy" about the bottom of the dvd, an unscratched dvd is more likely to play trouble free than a scratched dvd. Sure, they can take abuse and play fine, but I've been buying cd's and dvd's for too long, and I used case logic cases when they first came out, and trust me, they are one of the worst things to use to store a collection. If you don't care about scratches and longevity, then by all means, go for it because they do save an enormous amount of space.

Bigsierra

This is an interesting discussion that gets into storage options.

Disc Storage Thread

It starts out about someone who threw away the cases.

Trevor

I'm going to ramble here for a minute with my various thoughts on DVD storage/collecting/display.

I'm a collector/hoarder, and will probably never have the space to display my DVD collection the way I would like. In a perfect world, I'd have a huge media/theater room with two long walls of shelfing similar to this.

But for now, and possible forever, I'm relegated to a smallish condo that is stuffed full of my various collections/hobbies. So I need to use something like binders or this slimpack transfer idea.

Getting rid of them is not an option (they're my main hobby/addiction). Package mutilation is not a big problem, DVDs are cheap, and I'll never sell them anyway. Sleeves aren't a problem, DVD scratches are an issue that I'll never understand people complaining about. I'd love to keep everything in their original cases, but that is absolutely not an option due to space.

I used to use binders, have 25 or so of these cases that hold 3 binders, 18 DVD sleeves in each binder, and had pretty much my entire non-TV DVD collection in them. Here is a pic of something similar.



But I truly believe that most people who have all their media in binders or drawers never use that media, out of sight out of mind. It was that way for me, as I rarely watched my movies the year or two that I had them mainly in binders.

So last year I built a wall of Ikea shelving. Ten shelves that take up pretty much the entire wall of the largest free wall I could make in my place. I was able to retire my binders and put about 1200 DVDs on it, which comprised most of my non-TV DVD collection. I quickly outgrew it of course, and had DVDs piled in various places.

So for the past several months I've been trying to decide what to do about my DVD storage. I have this Ikea wall of shelving that I'd like to contain most of my collection. And then I have another wall with two large bookcases that contain my TV DVDs. I can stack two bookcases on top of the current two, that that wall will be able to keep up with my TV DVD collection for a few years at least. But I had to do something to merge a few hundred DVDs into my Ikea shelving wall.

I decided to combine a few binders into my wall of shelving. The top row was a bit taller than the others, and my old binder cases fit perfectly on it. So I now have 11 binder cases (54 DVDs each) along that top row. I lose the 115 or so DVDs that used to be there, but now have almost 600 DVDs spread alphabetically through the binders, labeled A1, A2, B, ..... ,I/J, K .... ,W, X/Y/Z.

To pick which titles got put in binders and which stayed on display I used several "rules". Double/triple dips got the lesser releases put in binders, titles that I would rarely watch or lend out got put in binders, titles that I wasn't particularly proud of owning got put in binders. As I bargain shopper I rarely pay more than $5 for a DVD, I own a lot of titles that look pretty "bad" in an otherwise decent (imo) collection. I'm glad I own Big Top Pee Wee, but do I really need it displayed next to The Big Sleep and The Big Lebowski? I'm crazy for Kim Basinger and bought 9 1/2 Weeks, but do my parents need to see it in my collection? So I guess I'm censoring my collection

And rather than print inserts for the 300 or so titles that had no inserts that were now in binders, I "mutilated" my DVDs. I folded my DVD covers so that they would be insert sized and slid them into my sleeves. For a couple of double feature sets, I even cut the covers in half to have an insert for each DVD. But in both those cases, they were Walmart horror double features of horrible movies that no one would ever pay me more than $1 for, so the "mutilation doesn't bother me. I'd never cut up a nice package, I think.

The 500 or so empty cases are going to storage or under the bed, so I'll have access to them in the off chance that I sell them or move to a larger place.

Alas, I have very little wiggle room. I'm still going thru a few boxes, but I believe I can probably squeeze every non-TV DVD (and non-Christmas, I keep those DVDs in a separate bookcase too) into my wall of shelving. But they will be pretty much no room for growth. I could add another row of binders on the floor underneath the bottom shelf, but I don't like the idea of anything on the floor that may flood or get bugs or whatever. I could readjust the shelving spacing to allow for more binders, but as the binders are taller than the standard DVD (and my shelves), I'd end up losing a row. But then, two rows of binders at 600 DVDs per is better than 3 rows of 115 each (maybe 180 if they were mainly 2 disc titles in standard cases).

Overall, I wish I didn't have to do it, but I feel like I have the best of both worlds to some extent. I have my favorite titles on a nice-ish display, but then a bulk collection in space-saving binders. I have horrible lighting in that room, and not a great camera, but I'll try to remember to take a picture when I'm done.

12cm

My personal opinion is that I couldn't bear to slice the covers of my DVDs (not even snappers), but I'm not above resorting to binders for some titles. People need to understand that not all binders are created equal. Case Logic is top-of-the-heap when it comes to retail stuff, but you can get mail-order binders that have a much better lining in the pockets (Univenture). Still, unless you go with polypropylene for the page material, there might be some chemical reaction issues.

It's funny to me that so many people advocate printing custom covers... do they really think they're the same as the real thing? They look the same, right? Well, get back to me in a few years. Inkjet covers aren't gonna last like the real thing, although you could argue that if you keep the source images you could just keep printing out new ones.

The thing about resale is something I never considered a problem, because that's not why I buy DVDs. Of course as has also been mentioned I'm replacing a lot of titles with Blu-ray discs, so all of a sudden I'm starting to sell off titles I never thought I would because I don't need the standard DVD anymore (though there still are the cases where you have to keep the DVD because features aren't ported over... are you listening, Fox and Sony???) Speaking of Blu-ray, I mentioned before that the format had cured me of my slipcover habit and of demanding the original cover art, but after seeing the god-awful cover of the Batman: The Movie (1966) Blu-ray, I'm absolutely appalled. I'll swallow hard and buy it, but Jesus H. Christ, couldn't they have at least used a bat-logo that matched the era????????

hindolio

interesting insights to a truly scary addiction we share it seems that you, trevor, are in somewhat of a (id say, significant) minority here with the massive number of dvds in your collection.

all in all, it doesnt seem like there is really any easy solution after you hit 1200+ unless you are able to dedicate a decent sized room to it...

and especially if you want to display the entire collection...

oh, and within certain financial constraints...

and dont get even me started with trying to make everything look nice, organized, and even...

boy this dvd collecting is fun

starving dvder

Since I don't have any room for my collection, Case Logic organizers are the best choice.
Scratching the discs? I have been using them for almost 7 years and do not have any that are scratched up. Put them in carefully enough and you won't have any problems.

HistoryProf

Found a case of 100 7mm black slim cases at sam's today, so i'm going to start the transition this weekend. it became a necessity as I squeezed the last dvd that would fit into my shelf last weekend. i'm almost to 500, so i figure i could easily do this for 200 or so and give me room for 100 more

joliom

I'm with you. I don't use them for my DVD's, but I've been housing all my CD's in those Case Logic wallets for years and have never had any problems with my discs getting scratched up or becoming unplayable. I don't know what people are talking about when they say that these things scratch the discs - I don't even get tiny hairline scratches on mine. I guess if your discs are dirty to begin with, or you keep the wallets in a place that attracts dirt & dust, then you could "import" the grit into the pouches, but that's never been the case for me. I just don't like using them for my DVD's because I like the box art too much on movies.