the past few months i’ve stayed away from dvd stores in an attempt to resist my urge to buy dvds. it’s hard because everytime you browse thru the selection, you see a few more that you’ve always wanted to watch; they aren’t all that expensive either so when you dash towards the cashier, it’s hard to have second thoughts. i had the opportunity to go looking for dvds today, and it was hard not to come home with $200 in dvds. they say that people tend to buy dvds because comparatively they’re a cheap form of entertainment. I don’t really see it that way. say you drop $25 on a dvd; that’s going to last you 2-3 hours, if you watch it a couple more times let’s say you get 20 hours out of it at most. indeed, it’s cheaper for a couple of people to buy the dvd than to watch the same movie in theatres (ignoring the difference in size & sound), i can’t argue with that. i just think that it’s not really as good a value as people make it out to be. let’s compare dvds to cds. for the same price, you could buy 1 to 1.5 cds. even if i only listen to say 4 of the 12 songs, i could easily get 20 hours of listening out of a cd during it’s lifespan. as it is, cds themselves are too expensive but i still get more out of them than dvds; a single song can lift your spirits and change your day around, some movies can do that — if you spend two hours watching it. on the other hand music is not really a social activity (not that movie watching is much of one), you can’t “listen” to music with other people, but you can listen to music while doing other things. that leads to another problem with collecting dvds. in order to enjoy a dvd, you have to pay attention and watch it. i’m a casual buyer but i think i’ve already amassed 20-30 dvds within a year. i would guesstimate that at being 150 hours of viewing time (i have a few seasons), that’s 50 nights at 3 hours per night. sandwich those nights between the ones where i have stuff to do or when i don’t want to stare at a tube and it would take me a long time to make my way thru my collection. it all comes down to time, if you have a large collection (which i’m positive i will in the future), it’ll take you a long time to even watch you entire collection once, let alone watch it till its worth it. you’re better off renting both to save money and not to waste time feeling guilty about not getting your money’s worth. yet that doesn’t faze people, they keep buying and buying as more and more dvds come out. i must admit, i succumb to these guilty pleasures myself. i think that releasing seasons of shows is a great idea, for a hundred bucks anyone can become an instant fan or if you’re already a fan you can watch the episodes any time you want. need a laugh? just watch a couple episodes of futurama. an insomniac? no problem, just watch an episode or two of buffy. but how many times will you actually watch the episodes? it seems to me that people reminisce about a show (say…star trek), spend some money to buy the series on dvd (in this case around $2000 for tng & ds9), watch it once right when they buy it and store it in their dvd shelf. oh they say they’ll watch it in a few years but by then they’ll have other things to watch (like star trek: enterprise on dvd). that’s just the tip of the iceberg, it’s the top of the can, the exposition of the story. there are so many more arguments about how the industry is suckering you into paying to shift your collection to a new format, about how much space it’s going to take up in your house, oh and did i mention how much money and time you’re going to waste. yep, it’s a dystopia, and i’ll try to avoid it. but when i see that dvd of tomb raider 2: the cradle of life sitting on the shelf a couple of months from now, that devil on my shoulder’s gonna be whispering “oh it’s only $25, what’s one more dvd to your collection anyways?” and you know what? i’m gonnabuy it. oh it’s because of the cool case.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: best-of, DVDs