My collection of DVD’s and BluRay discs… probably obsolete by 2017 :p

I generally think I watch a lot of movies… more than the average person anyway. I’ve also, since 2002, purchased a large amount. I’ve met a few people who buy more, but the majority of people I know rent, borrow, and probably download most of what they watch. I generally have a backlog, and I always have a list of things upcoming I want to see. They see my shelf and just don’t quite get why I have so many discs, especially when they’ll likely all be obsolete in a number of years.

The above image is my current shelf, barring a few other DVD’s and boxsets on a shelf to the right just slightly out of shot… I listed over 900 items, including that many boxsets have multiple items – it’s probably over 1000 films… and I’ll probably not get to watch most of it again for a few years at least. It’s staying behind in storage in NZ while I take off overseas.

I started, as mentioned above, with my first DVD in 2002… that purchase was the special edition of Die Hard. For the first three or four years I watched everything I purchased in full, generally including all of the extra features… which was my main incentive for the purchases a lot of the time. These days I don’t tend to watch all the extras like I once did, but on films I’m a fan of I tend to watch as much of the bonus features as I can.

It filled a thirst for film knowledge that I’ve always had, or can at least always remember having. I used to, when very young, always look out for those “Behind The Scenes” specials of upcoming movies, filled with fluff press kit material, but interesting regardless and watch programs like Entertainment Tonight when it was actually mostly about film and TV show production rather than gossip to catch how movies were made.

In the late 90’s I managed to see a few Laserdisc films, and it was here I first saw the extra materials some filmmakers were filling their discs with. The best couple of ones I saw were Peter Jackson’s Director’s Cut of The Frighteners, and without a doubt the most packed for a number of years – James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day release. I would later buy both of these on DVD when they were released, yet the amount of special features are still a rare event.

And so my collection expanded. I got access to a program called DVD Profiler and have been logging them all. If you’re interested in seeing a full list from the program, then check out this link for them. However in recent years I’ve cutback heavily on my purchases, both for lack of space, but also to help save money for my travels.

I will still watch a lot of film once I leave no question, but my future will be rentals and digital purchase downloads. By the time I do return to my stored collection, I suspect a lot of new films might not be available in any other way. It might be sad thing, but it may also save me space in my home and money in my wallet.