JimRochester

Back when I was heavy into collecting I would also watch 4 - 6 movies a weekend. Now it's usually 2 (mostly rentals) and then cleaning off the DVR and/or catching up on some TV episodes. I look at my collection and realize I rarely re-watch stuff. I could throw 90% of it out and not miss a beat. Every time I get ready to clean house I just can't bring myself to get rid of stuff I spent good money on which is now basically worthless.

DVD Polizei

What could happen, is a company that is involved with one political party exclusively, will not make available certain titles because it is against their political values. We've seen this before with physical media, but with digital, it would be a much easier process, and titles could be available on certain days...certain holidays...preventing consumers from watching content on their schedule and leisure.

mndtrp

These days I'm lucky to watch one movie every two weeks. There's only about an hour a day that I have available to watch something, so it's generally just a single tv episode.

AaronSch

That's the conundrum. Collecting isn't entirely about re-watching. It's no different than stamp collecting, coin collecting, antique collecting etc.. They say you spend the first half of your life collecting crap and the second half getting rid of all of it! But it is hard to part with items with which we developed a strong connection. I spent the last year or so rebuilding a collection I thought I sorely missed after selling off the whole kit and caboodle a few years ago. I've been snatching up select titles that are going OOP like crazy. But you know what? A friend of mine has me thinking I am stir crazy for doing it all over again. I was showing him how to access my VUDU library and he rightly asked me.."What the hell do you have the discs for when you can just watch 'em from VUDU? It made no sense to him. And he said if you ever get the itch to watch an older moviee, it's a whole lot cheaper to pay for it at that time rather than shelling out hundreds of dollars only to have that hard-earned dough pile up on shelves. He really got me thinking today that I need to end the madness and concentrate on the precious few films I need to actually own rather than a massive bunch of dust collectors.

Why So Blu?

Indeed. Have you been to Alan Smithee's place or his hoarding thread? Changed my life and viewpoints on collecting crap.

OldBoy

right on, brother!

latweek

There's collecting to collect, and there's collecting under duress. I completely agree with your comments above, and I also agree that it can be in the eye of the beholder where to draw the line.

Through observation, Hollywood has taught me over time, that they don't take interest or care in the products that aren't mass appeal, which is pretty much my area of interest. Time and time again, releases were neglected, OOP, and not even released as new formats were developed. So I had to become a scavenger.

Collecting the best physical media of each version was, in effect, the only way I could guarantee I would be able to watch what I wanted, when I wanted to, and without having to jump through hoops or pay a tithe. Backing up my library on a media server is the way I deal with the inconvenience of all that "stuff" on a daily basis.

As I mentioned previously, I have a library now in HD that I'm satisfied with, and I can get years of enjoyment from. I do see value and improvement in UHD, but I'll wait this out and see where it ends up.

Why So Blu?

It's business. All it ever is is business. $$$

davidlynchfan

You've lost that lovin' feelin'
Whoa, that lovin' feelin',
You've lost that lovin' feelin'
Now it's gone, gone, gone, woah

kd5

I've never had any interest in streaming, still don't. Right now I own 927 DVDs/BDs (counting TV seasons as 1), I have pretty much everything I've ever wanted (except for just a very few select titles plus new releases (X-Men, GotG, Avengers, maybe a couple of others). I'd be pissed if physical media went away before I had the chance to pick up those few remaining titles, but I honestly don't think I need to worry about it. Physical media isn't going anywhere, anytime soon.

PatD

Fuck no. I don't have Netflix and am not in a big hurry to join the throng. I have a video rental store still around and they let me rent movies for free. I also have a decent sized DVD and Blu ray collection.

Also, my signature sums up how I feel about streaming:

Alan Smithee

If you have the same movie on both Vudu and Blu-Ray, just show him part of it on Blu-Ray and then the same part on Vudu- it should make PERFECT sense. I just did that after re-watching a promo Blu-Ray disc I have with the first "Game of Thrones" episode on it that I got for free. Vudu also gave away that episode for free a while ago, so after watching the disc I fired up the Vudu app in the player and watched parts of the same thing- the Blu-Ray itself wasn't completely perfect, but it looked worse on Vudu. Certainly watchable mind you but why settle for less than the best?

See, that's a HUGE reason why I don't get rid of crap- a time will likely come when I'll regret it and want it back (and it did happen to me rather early in life, which I've described before.) I remember comments on here from a long time ago where people would say "I had that a while ago, but I sold it- I'll have to go looking for it again." I realize my case is a bit extreme compared to most, but getting rid of something and then re-buying it later also seems completely insane to me.

slop101

Some people care, most people don't. Heck, most people won't even be able to tell the difference. And even when they do, convenience will trump quality for most of them.

PerryD

I've gone digital only with the current generation of video games. I just don't want the clutter, and I appreciate easy access to my gaming library. The digital games are 100% identical to the physical games.

With movies, I have a 10' screen and a high end audio 7.1 audio system. Vudu is not there yet both video and audio. It's convenient for me in that my kids can watch movies from my collection at college or when travelling, but at home, it just doesn't make since to watch streaming over a blu-ray that I own. I just rented "In the Heart of the Sea" and there is no way that the streaming would have matched the experience I had at home, the 7.1 mix was active throughout the movie.

For most television shows, I'm happy enough with streaming. I bought the blu-rays Mr. Robot and Silicon Valley and watched the streaming copy on my tablet while biking at the gym. I don't think I'll miss anything not watching the blu-rays on my home theater setup. TV is easy to watch on streaming since it keeps track of where you left off vs trying to remember which disc to put in.

slop101

I can almost always buy physical games cheaper than digital, especially for games that have been out for a few months, not to mention being able to recoup some money by selling them, which you cannot do with digital games.

Same thing doesn't quite hold true for movies, as they're usually cheaper digitally, and you way less money selling movie discs than game discs.

I still buy CDs, as they tend to be WAY cheaper than buying digitally, especially older music.

davidh777

Not sure if you missed the question or only respond to things that are supporting VUDU, but VUDU is just a digital store. It'd be like calling iTunes a consortium.

OldBoy

i just liked the word and wanted to (mis)use it...

Shagrath

This is true for console games, but definitely not for PC.

For whatever reason, I can't go digital on movies. Hell, I just got 34 more blu-rays from the Gohastings sale last week, pushing my collection over 2700.

I've dropped out of the console world of gaming a few years back and am pretty much exclusively Steam now. The graphics and performance is better. I guess if the same could be about digital movies, I'd maybe make the jump.

davidh777

Gotcha! That's kind of what I figured.

slop101

I'm the reverse; exclusively console gaming. My PC's too old, and I find gaming on the PC to be a bit of a pain, comparatively. I'm not a big "graphics/performance" guy - I just wanna stick in a game and play.

Alan Smithee

Because it's always convenient when your internet service or the server goes down. I have the fastest available internet service right now, but I've STILL had times when things will stop to buffer. Before I upgraded there were times when it would do that constantly and I had to put off watching something til another day- that's never happened with media aside from the rare instances my equipment has needed fixing.

Hazel Motes

Pondering things that are out of my control, I guess I'd be more okay with not having access to physical media than I would be with Donald Trump having access to Nuclear codes.

Shagrath

Not to get too off-topic, but PC gaming is pretty much like that nowadays for the most part. I hardly do any graphics changes after launching a game. I just turn on the 360 controller and have fun. If you haven't PC gamed in a while (say early 2000's), then it might be time to take a look at it again.

big e

That sounds like me and my brother when we were teenagers. Now, it might be 2-3 over a weekend, if that. I’m finding more and more that I just don’t care about revisiting stuff unless it’s something I really love/is very personal to me or is something that really clicked with me. Suffice to say, these types of movies are usually few and far between and even if I watch something and end up really liking it, that’s not a guarantee I want to buy it. I wonder if this is just an aspect of getting old. Lol. I’ve found as I advanced into my late 20s (I just turned 30), I began caring less and less about revisiting movies and TV.

Like you, I could probably dump a good portion of my collection and not bat an eye. I don’t think I could do 90%; maybe around 50%.

WeeBey

I'm down to my last 4 or 5 Blu-rays. I was a huge collector at one point but, as I approached age 30, it started bothering me more and more that I had all these movies (1000+) that I rarely re-watched and that were just taking up space.

Things are easier now. I subscribe to Netflix and Shomi (a Canadian service like Netflix) and I rent/buy stuff on iTunes. If a movie or tv show is not up for streaming on the services I pay for, I will rent it on iTunes. If I should ever have the urge to re-watch it, I buy it on iTunes trusting I'll want to continue re-watching it in the future. No fuss no muss.

The last Blu-ray I looked in to was The Martian. I wanted to see if it would have any cool documentaries about Mars and stuff unique to the disc. Every single extra feature was on the iTunes release. This really cemented things for me, I'm digital all the way.