Mabuse

I'm sick of these threads. I think you remorse people don't love movies. I have thousands of DVD's and blu rays and there are probably only 10 to 20 titles I regret buying. I buy great movies that I love. If you loved the movies you bought then I see no reason to have remorse.

P.S. The picture quality of streaming is shit compared to blu. Most DVD's have better picture than so called HD content on DirecTv. I have an 84 inch screen. I need blu.

PhantomStranger

I never have any regrets purchasing movies or content I enjoy, even if I may not watch them again for several years. The only remorse might be over the cheap bargain bin fodder as it crowds out the better stuff.

Paul_SD

Most of the stuff I regret buying is the cheap $5 stuff from the upgrade & Save promotions. I'm starved for time to watch the stuff I bought that I actually care about and want to see. The marginal stuff that I picked up just because it was cheap is actually a distraction and a bit of a waste of space.

Worse, they aren't worth the effort to try to sell as they just aren't worth anything. Not even the $5 I paid.

hanshotfirst1138

Thank you. This makes me feel a little bit better. .

brainee

This is quite true. If you want to watch a movie in the highest quality, you need Blu Ray. Despite their claims of 1080p, the bandwidth limitations of cable, satellite, and streaming are pretty evident to me. That's why I have to hope that physical media doesn't go away. Because it would mean settling for less to see movies at home.

JeffTheAlpaca

A redundant question but where can you sell your blu-ray sand dvds (not ebay or craiglist) at get at least close to the price you bought for them or get some value for them?

mike7162

About halfway through my dvd buying phase (some would say obsession), I realized quality over quantity is what mattered. My goal was always to build a personal film library, but the fact that the studios have all but abandoned the collector has given me no choice but to be ultra- selective.

asianxcore

I have to agree with this. I do have to add a lot of the remorse one might feel, might be because of the obsession of the buying aspect of physical media. That alone can wear you out if you are buying for the sake of buying (sometimes not knowing it).

Usually when this question comes up, the normal answer is to sell in a lot. Unless your items are rare/sought after, or something like Criterion (or any other company like that), a lot would get you a decent amount.

joe_b

I adore watching and collecting movies, but it's easy to acquire plenty of duds if you're willing to buy used and frequent yard sales/pawn shops. Sometimes, it's hard to resist if the price is right (Fifty cents here, two dollars there... hey, it's cheaper than renting!). It's amazing how many titles can accumulate over the years. Of course, no one intends to own something they wouldn't enjoy. Like several other people on these boards, space was a factor when I admitted I needed to significantly thin out my collection. I ended up selling/donating nearly a third of what I owned. If I had one large room to devote entirely to media, I would have been tempted to keep every single title... even stuff I knew I wouldn't revisit. I guess that's just the collector (or hoarder? ) mindset at work... but in reality, that no longer seemed practical to me.

Plus, tastes can change over time. Re: DVD, I knew I was never going to revisit stuff like "My Best Friend's Wedding" or "The Forgotten", even though I may have enjoyed them when they were first released. I also had to be realistic about how much time I had left on this earth when evaluating a collection that numbered in the thousands. If I lived another forty years and watched one disc a day, I wouldn't have been able to view the whole collection more than twice straight through. Of course, there is peace of mind in knowing you have immediate access to all the films you enjoy... even if you don't get around to watching 90% of them more than once a decade if you're lucky. I do understand that mentality.

Xiroteus

Movies seems like one of the oddest items to go in with that thinking. Most people that end up with thousands of movies are at least going in with the thought of liking and wanting to watch them. Just being a collector of film which is meant to be watched yet with no real intention to is rather odd.

Art is something that one collections as it does it's job by being art, it can be enjoy by being on a wall. Not saying people don't enjoy their movie collections, they just plan to watch them.

One can love movies yet get to the point they no longer feel the need to own them. That happened for me a couple years ago, I sold off almost everything and really have no regrets. I'm just not re-watching films I have seen many times over and over, I notice I need much more time to pass before I revisit films I have seen several times.

I also wonder if watching everything on a 11"6 laptop factors into that. Awhile back when I had a larger television and tossed a bunch of movies on it because that screen was nice compared to a small laptop. Set up likely plays a roll in the movie watching experience.

dvdshonna

I didn't start buying DVDs until they were $2 to $3 used. Now I'm picking them up for 50 cents to $1.29 (craigslist and local pawn shops).

No remorse here except DVDs/Blu-rays are getting hard to sell at any price. I've had 40 DVDs @$40 listed on craigslist for over a month. Not a single email from anyone.

Strange to me because I remember renting VHS movies for $3.00/night and paying $2.00 to $3.00 for blank tape.

JimRochester

It's not the end of the world that I own Easy A or I Love You Man. They were decent enough for a single viewing but probably nothing I would revisit. But I needed 5 to get the deal. I've been a fan of used for years and years. It takes some of the stink out of stinkers.

hanshotfirst1138

Nowhere. The market for them is nonexistent. I got $0.25 for most of my DVDs when I sold them online. They aren't worth anything anymore.

morriscroy

For the most part. Not even worth the time and effort anymore to sell them.

For stuff I don't watch anymore, I sometimes give them away to local friends.

For the really horrible stuff my friends/family don't even want, I'll just drop them off at a nearby thrift shop like goodwill or the salvation army.

joe_b

There's always an intention to watch (unless you're just buying because you think a certain title will be worth something in the shrinkwrap), but when my unwatched pile grew to be a couple thousands titles long and DVDs/BDs were sitting unwatched after five years, I knew I needed a serious intervention.

Truthfully, 90% off what I ended up selling off/donating (hundreds and hundreds of titles) had never even been watched. That certainly wasn't the intention when I bought them, but with all those closing sales/yard sales it was easy for me to go overboard in the last five years.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel some regret. I still occasionally wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in cold sweat... sickened by the realization that I no longer have a copy of Spice World collecting dust on my shelf. (Is it sad that I'm kind of serious?)

dvdshonna

Sad but true. In most cases people can do as well selling them at a pawn shop. Local shops here are buying at 50¢ per DVD. They were paying $2 for Blu-rays but I don't know if that's still the case.

Years ago, I warned one of the shops that Blu-ray would not take over the market. He brushed me off, like I was clueless. Now he's back to buying/selling DVDs while his Blu-Rays collect dust. Most of his customers don't even own a Blu-ray player.

Xiroteus

I believe most collectors buy with the intention of watching. I imagine things can get out of control before you know it.

I had that happen with a few DVD's I bought for a bit over a dollar, it was cheaper then renting yet I never got to every title as I had other things to watch that was more important. I did bu with the intention to view them.

Sometimes I think about picking up a few films again once I can find used blu-rays fora dollar dollars each, however a lot of the animated films I want will likely never be that cheap and then I start the whole, why own that yet not this etc... almost easier to do an all or nothing type of thing.

mcnabb

I never give into the streaming/iTunes technology as I still enjoy buying BluRay's and CD's. If that makes me a dinosaur, then so be it. I still think CD's sound better then downloading a song off of iTunes, so I just sync them to my Ipod. I didn't buy a million Bluray's like I did DVD's, so space isn't a problem for my collection. I have about 50-60 BluRay's with a few more to buy when they are eventually released (The Abyss, Midnight Run, Witness, etc).

Dan

Yeah, pretty much this.

Also the fact that, even if I just count the "good stuff," I still don't think I'll ever be able to re-watch the majority of them again. My only hope is that my daughter really gets into movies and can appreciate the great titles in what will eventually become her collection.

hdnmickey

No remorse. I figure that given how much they want for 2 (or 3 for a family movie) theater tickets, buying a BD is a much better option. And given how much they want to stream movies, and the dip in quality, I feel even better about the decision to buy. Only issue is the physical space issues, but I have found ways to dela with that.

davidh777

No remorse. I've cut down on my buying a lot, restricting it to titles that are worth multiple watches and favoring the various three- and four-packs.

I also stream, and quality tends to be pretty good. However, I was watching Pride and Prejudice 1995 on BD the other day, then wanted to rewatch the end of one episode while I had another disc in the PS3, so I flipped to Amazon Prime and watched it there. It looked like complete crap. So there's variance title to title, and I don't like to rely solely on streaming due to the volatile availability.

hanshotfirst1138

If streaming is the future, they're going to have work out the kinks, find ways to handle the bandwidth load, and most importantly get the ISPs to stop throttling.

dvdshonna

With all the lame crap I see at Redbox every week, I have plenty of time to watch my DVD collection.

After watching movies like Braveheart and Gladiator 50 to 100 times, I believe I've hit the saturation point with some titles. Not that I would sell them off for $1 per DVD. I'm sure I'll feel like watching them again in 2 to 3 years.

No need to change the name to "dvdremorse.com" or "blurayremorse.com". Five years from now you may appreciate owning all these movies, so you don't have to rent or buy overpriced digital downloads.

DJariya

Lame crap? Red Box has to stock up on low budget DTV movies and Indie films because of the delay studios like FOX and Universal has placed on them. They really have no choice. Some of them are actually good so I wouldn't call all of it lame crap.

dvdshonna

Neither would I. I've rented about 3 or 4 movies from Redbox in the last year that I actually enjoyed (Carrie, The Conjuring, 12 Years A Slave). And a couple that were not a total waste of money (Under The Skin, Pompeii)

5 Movies in one year is not exactly a lot of viewing time. The point I was making is there are so few new releases I actually enjoy, a movie collection is almost critical.

"Delays" have nothing to do it. I wouldn't pay more than $1 or $2 to watch 99% of the CRAP the studios are releasing.