Abandoning The Personal Movie Collection
Doing some end-of-the-year file cleaning and am about to abandon a decade-long habit of amassing, maintaining, pruning, and tweaking a local video collection.
Over the past decade(s) I’ve moved from VHS tapes to DVDs to digital files. But I’ve recently realized these files are rarely used, and (re)-purchasing movies on Blu-Ray is a non-starter. I’m basically trading the movie-collecting for remaining a Netflix subscriber for the rest of my life. Note: technologists out there may see this as a win for the “cloud.”
Reasons against:
- Netflix means any movie is easily rented with a day turnaround time, while Watch Instantly is on-demand. The city-dweller with the grocery store next door has less reason to keep a fully-stocked fridge.
- 99% of the files haven’t been rewatched — movies / TV shows don’t seem to have as much replay value as music. Even my favorite films only get replay every few years or so.
- Would be nice to strip down the iTunes library to movies I have yet to watch, instead of those I intend to rewatch someday — but never get around to.
- Netflix is doing a really good job of functionality spread over multiple devices. A movie on Watch Instantly can be viewed on a computer, Apple TV, iPhone, and iPad, whereas a locally stored file might need to be reformatted, and synced locally. The one exception is being somewhere without Internet access, but in that case I could just rent the DVD.
Reasons for:
- Storage is cheap; either blank DVDs or hard drive space. I suppose copying these movies to terabyte drive, unplugging it, and sticking it in storage would be an option.
- Sentimental reasons — was kind of nice to have Woody Allen’s entire output in one folder.
Anyhow, the reasons against are winning right now.
Do you still maintain a video library and why?
I was an avid DVD collector and even do own a few Blu-Ray discs, but I’ve largely given up adding to my library because of the space of storing the media even without the jewel case) and perhaps more importantly, because I rarely have time to re-watch movies. Oh sure, there are a few that I haul out once in awhile and my son watches certain movies repeatedly, but the vast majority of our DVDs haven’t seen the light of day in years.
Now yeah, I could rip ‘em to digital format, but then they’d just be eating up space on a hard drive that I’d feel compelled to find a way to backup. And still, most of those would never get re-watched.
Some movies are by their nature, not shows that’re geared to repeated watchings — once you know that surprise twist ending, watching the movie a 2nd or 3rd time can be a fun opportunity to look for clues that you missed before, but still, the biggest thrill of the movie is already gone. “The Sixth Sense,” for example, was a fantastic movie, but not nearly as much of a hair-raising thrill upon subsequent viewings.
With some movies, sure, you know how they’re going to end, but it’s the getting there that’s so enjoyable. “A River Runs Through It” is an excellent example of that. It’s such an engaging story with such a rich atmosphere — it’s worth rewatching just for Tom Skerritt’s subtle performance. And some movies are so much fun to rewatch just because they’re, well, funny as heck! I’ll never tire of seeing “Friday,” “Ready To Rumble” or “Back To School” just for the ever-quotable, side-splitting lines.
Ah, good to know I’m not alone in abandoning the movie collection. Good point about repeat viewing. I did rewatch 6th Sense recently (it was a really different experience knowing the “twist,” could concentrate on the direction when M. Knight was good) — but that was with a few years’ between.
I think my all time funny flicks would include A Fish Called Wanda, Best In Show and well… gotta think on that.