zyzzle

Sure, I see where you're coming from, but I fit 100-200 very high quality movies on a hard drive (remuxed). So, i might have 5 to 10 times as many hard drives as you do, but fortunately hard drives don't take up too much space! Especially when you've got a dedicated server room, a NAS, and every drive in its place and properly provisioned and configured to run on the network.

So, in the end, with a few more cubic feet of space taken up, you can get absolutely exceptional, stellar quality, and your argument above "saving space" doesn't hold water.

cultshock

Hey easy now, I was just messing with you man, and I honestly didn't think you had $1000 headphones, but if you did more power to you. For the record, I paid $150 for my headphones and listen to a lot of vinyl (and I have a cheap smartphone and don't go to Starbucks) so I'm on your side with this.

Alan Smithee

You asked before if I would sell one of my extra CED players- big difference. I'm almost tempted to at this point just to see what you would do with it, I know you're really just messing with me. If I sold you a laserdisc player do you have an AC-3 RF demodulator? I only have two of those and they're both being used, those are too rare to let go.

Alan Smithee

They're doing great- for the past 2 weeks I've been able to go to work and have them behave at home. I've closed my bedroom door while I'm gone though as there's too many places where they might get stuck. I'm largely getting the new storage unit for their benefit, their foster mom also wants to come visit and I think she wouldn't be too happy with how my place has been. I filled out a big application form before I could adopt them, it didn't ask anything about housekeeping though. My previous 2 cats were born in a garage filled with junk, in fact it had turned out the person who lived there had already sold me a Cartrivision videotape on Ebay previously and I picked up another machine from her after getting the kitties! (I gave up on those, I sent them all to a guy in Indiana who spent a year trying to fix them and then gave up himself, giving them to someone else.)

Incidentally the only media my kitties have seen so far has been laserdiscs and two digital movies (courtesy of the Movies Anywhere screenpass share last week.) I'm trying to make them think it's 1983.

I continue to be amazed at how much can fit on my small hard drive- I've already got countless hours of old TV recordings on it, and the tapes from those went into storage. I'd almost sell those tapes if I were sure the hard drive would last forever, I do plan on putting them all on DVDs when I have time.

Will be moving stuff out of the old storage unit and into the new one tomorrow morning, then moving stuff out of my apartment.

Draven

I have a hard drive hooked up to my computer and stream it to my AppleTV. You are advocating for a lot more equipment and expense that I simply do not need. The movies look perfectly fine. And far better than VHS or CED which ALSO need a lot of extra equipment and space.

rbrown498

You'll get no argument from me on it being pedantic, but with the schedule that I have, I'm never able to drop everything to read a book for hours at a time. John Galt remarked that it's time-consuming to read a book, and it is. This is my way of being able to fit reading into my schedule without taking up huge chunks of time, and I posted it to show that one doesn't necessarily have to drop everything else to get some reading done. If I had the time, I'd probably much prefer to do as you do and read a book in one or two sittings, but since I don't have that luxury, this is a solution that works for me and ensures that I read more than I would if I just left reading to whenever the mood struck me.

Kurt D

And they say that in the modern world we have more free time than ever before ...

IBJoel

So Alan, I know you're a stickler for a high (or at least, specific) standard of cinema presentation. Why then do you like obsolete, low-quality formats so much?

Alan Smithee

Several reasons, most of which some people will never understand. It's mainly to remember when home video was a brand new thing. If you didn't live during that time then you don't know what it was like- I still remember when the only viewing choices were whatever the local TV stations were showing- and if there was something you wanted to see and you missed it, you were out of luck. Having a movie uncut and commercial-free at home was a game changer. It's like people who still drive Model Ts now- they aren't the absolute best by today's standards, but they were the first.

The low quality was usually a product of the time it came from, but that's part of the fun now. I'll laugh out loud when watching any scope movie panned and scanned to 4x3, looking back I wonder how did we put up with that? I still show all of these old things in the highest possible quality though, which makes them look and sound better than what was possible when they were new. I like seeing how things hold up or not on new equipment- the picture quality is usually laughable but some of the early stereo releases are still impressive. Some people still have old TVs for this stuff, but I don't have the room for that and likely wouldn't use an old TV much if I did have one.

I also have a great affinity for things like the home video company intros, most of which were made to look hi-tech but look amusingly dated now. I love old analog video effects in general. I'm actually putting together a compilation of every known intro segment which will be on YouTube eventually, it may take years to get together though. Finally, there still are some things that were issued on these old formats that have never been available elsewhere.

Kurt D

There's something interesting about enjoying something for its low quality in the highest quality possible.

Dimension X

My family got cable in the mid-seventies. I was watching movies uncut and commercial free at home on the Star Channel (The Movie Channel) before any of the formats you collect were introduced. The real "game changer" was being able to watch what you wanted when you wanted.

Alan Smithee

The history of cable is interesting also, especially since it turned out so awful by the 90s. I also like to see the movie intros, previews and graphics that early movie channels would show between movies. I have a few Beta recordings of the Z Channel ranging from 1977-82.

T-bone22

Nothing takes me back like seeing that HBO city intro from the 80's.

GoldenJCJ

Before we had cable when I was a kid, my grandma would record a ton of movies off of HBO and Cinemax and give them to us on VHS as gifts. That HBO intro is the all-time greatest intro ever.

Not nearly as iconic, there was a Cinemax painter’s palette intro that just screams 80s. It’s like the intro to Saved By the Bell cracked to 11. That logo has almost as much nostalgia for me as the HBO one, although not nearly as memorable.

T-bone22

Oh yes, I remember that one very well! Also, the following one with the candy hopping down the film reel stairs next to the giant tub of popcorn and android usher with a flashlight. Those intros just got you so pumped to watch a movie.

cultshock

Oh yeah, that was a great intro.

zyzzle

You know me. I'm definitely not about expense. I've pieced this home-network NAS together from stuff I've had sitting around. The router is my existing one; it's just a standard gigabit router, nothing fancy. I ran the cheap CAT6 cable myself, nothing fancy and no "expert" wire crimping and / or installation, just go into attic and drill some holes, and done in an hour or so! The software and server is Linux-based and an old core2duo E8400 CPU -- cheap as beans. The hard drives are the only real expense, and that hasn't been bad, since I got them when they were on excellent sale prices. What I *did* invest in was taking some time to *learn* how to do this inexpensively, and so it was time well spent and a lot of money saved. That's what I mean about people just being lazy, wasting money, and / or not figuring out the most efficient way / more ecomonical way to accomplish a task, especially in the Audio / Video world, where it's easy to go "cheap" but "great quality" nowadays.

zyzzle

Are they ragdoll cats? They look like it. Those are super-mellow, usually.

Draven

I’ve spent a lot of time doing other things like building computers or woodworking or any number of hobbies. My storage solution for movies took a trip to the store and 5 minutes of setup. I have no interest in running cat-5 cable through my walls for very little payoff.

The point you are missing is that you prioritize that more than I do. And that’s fine. It’s important to you and unimportant to me. Space in my home and ease of installation and use tops fidelity of the movies to me. But I couldn’t do what Alan does because watching a CED or VHS is the opposite of space-saving and ease of use.

That doesn’t make me wrong to not want a 100% quality presentation for movies. An 85% quality presentation is enough for me because the aforementioned trade offs are worth that 15%.

I just get super-annoyed at people who say there is something wrong with not prioritizing aspects of hobbies exactly like they do. As if they set the standards and the rest of us aren’t living up to them. Your standards are just different than mine.

Nick Danger

But somebody on the internet is doing it all wrong!

Dimension X

The point you are missing is that you prioritize space (and a clean floor) more than Alan does. And that’s fine. It’s important to you and unimportant to him. That doesn’t make him wrong to care more about old technology than movies and a clutter free living space.

Alan Smithee

Except when the landlords bitch at me about it and other people who come in here. Up now to start moving the stuff out of the old storage unit and into the new one, will try to post pictures later.

Dimension X

Unfortunately you are renting, so you can't just do whatever you want. I think most would agree, if you owned your own place and wanted it to look like a pigsty, it would be "okay."

morriscroy

Even if alan owns his house outright, the question is whether any insurance company is willing to insure it for fire, etc ...

cultshock

Yeah, this. If you don't own the place, you really can't complain when the owners (or their representatives) bitch to you about your living conditions.

I dunno, our insurance company has never set foot inside our home. It's neat and clean, but if our house looked like Alan's place they would never know. On the other hand, if we had a fire, and the inspectors deemed that our place had been a fire hazard, it would likely affect our claim.