At War with DVD's

This has irritated me for a bit. So I have decided to 'blog' about it.....

No more!
I refuse to continue to be a pawn to the whims of Film Companies and Technology! In the mid 70's it was great fun when Beta format tapes came out. They were affordable (compared to Laser Disk or film); you could buy movies, tape movies, and watch them over and over! Then not much later the VHS format came out. Well in the early 80's Beta's were still going strong. We started buying and taping so many old films that we had over 200 beta tapes!

During the 80's there were a lot more TV channels that would play the old movies, late at night, so it was great being able to tape them and watch them later. Back then it was also popular to have 'fests'; Hours and hours of films with a theme. Like all of the 'Godzilla's'; or all of the old 'Sherlock Holmes' films.

When our Beta VCR finally died, we completely switched over to VHS....However, we never were able to collect all of the films on VHS that we had originally on Beta, but that was okay, we dealt with it. We spent years taping old movies and buying new films that were released to VHS.

Then came DVD's; they were great because they took up a lot less room than the VHS tapes and had great color and film quality......But we also started to run into issues that made us very unhappy. It seems that when the big movie studios/film distribution companies changed over to DVD, they got 'picky' about which films they would re-release from VHS to DVD.....So, unless they thought there was a good market for a film, it seems they didn't get re-released to DVD....Yes, there are a lot of places on the internet that sell 'DVD's' of old films; but they are usually either low quality (transfered from VHS tape to DVD; I can do that myself), or you can find old films on DVD, but they are usually cost prohibitive....So, now many of our favorite, old films are sorely missed.

We have had a bit of a hiatus with DVD's, which has allowed us to start rebuilding our collection of films (But nowhere near what we used to have). So of course........Now what are they doing? Blu-ray.......

Well, I say enough is enough. Over the years we have spent a fortune re-buying the same films because the formats have changed.......Blu-Ray? Forget it. I am spending the money to purchase spare DVD players, new in box to keep as backups for the future. I refuse to keep buying the same films again and again, just because technology changes.

This of course brings me to another of my pet peeves.....How many copies of a film do you have to purchase to get the complete film? Between the original Theatrical release, release for Television, Director's cut, Special Editions, Anniversary Editions, Collector's Edition, Special Extended editions and those with 'deleted' scenes, you still may have difficulty seeing the whole film. This is absolutely ludicrous!

I don't know how many times we have been watching a film that is on television, and suddenly we are saying,"where did that scene come from"? "Where did those scenes come from?"; We don't have that on our copy of the film?!

So what do you do?

Buy the film when it first comes out? Wait until all versions of the film have been released to DVD?
At what point are you able to purchase a film that is 'complete'?

It is all just irritating!

(On a slightly different note........My heart goes out to those parents of Nintendo, X-box, etc. kids.......I know those games cost a fortune and the latest versions of the 'boxes' don't come cheap either......)!

Okay, I'm done.......