Movies: Why Buy More?

I did a count of the movies we have in our library: 254. Then I counted all the TV series seasons we have: 21. Then the concert DVD we have: 4. To sum up, we own a lot of movies.

I just realized I didn't count the VHS tapes we have.

To add to the previous summary, we own a LOT of movies. But oddly enough, we have been holding back on purchases of late. We recently picked up a couple movies the other day as our early anniversary gifts to each other, and it was the first DVDs we had bought in months. We used to buy DVDs every couple of weeks, but we are getting better at saving money.

The primary reasons why we don't buy movies a lot now?
1) We now have a car. Those things can be quite the money pit.
2) We have a toddler. See reason #1
3) Lack of time. See reasons #1 and #2

You would think that with a car it would make for more time to spend at home, but quite the contrary. Now that we have a reliable source of transportation, we can get around quite well, and quite often, thereby cutting out the amount of time we spend watching movies.

Don't get me wrong, we have still bought movies since our daughter was born, but she's happy with watching about a dozen movies ad nauseum. 101 Dalmations is still one of her favourite movies. She's not much for Sleeping Beauty or any other typical Disney Princess stuff. She loves Pixar movies (that's my girl!) and The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything.

Some movies I like to own, but there are many I would prefer to watch but not pay exorbant amounts to have that priviledge. I have found that Anime titles are particularly bad about this. Oftimes, you can pay $40 for a disk with very poor English dubbing (Ολ'αυτα ειναι κινέζικα για'μενα) and then you have the subtitles. Blargh. If I can, I get anime from the library. Steamboy was a marvelous film, and I would watch it again. Purchase? No. Another Anime I really like is Ghost in the Shell. An amazing cyberpunk tale, but I would have to keep in locked up so my daughter doesn't pull it out instead of Kung Fu Panda. Best to spend money on diapers instead. For now.

And then of course we have the taboo subject of rips and torrents. I rip my own discs so they will play on my PDA. I also have a few torrents of shows that I can't find on DVD such as ReBoot. I have bought as many of the discs that I could find, but I'm a little leary of buying any discs online. Got burned by Future Shop, and I know that's a poor example. I've done some good eBay transactions , but sometimes you never know what might happen.

And we come again to the lack of time. We don't have any movies still sealed in plastic - anymore - but there are some discs that I have not had the time to sit down and watch. Goodness knows there is sufficient laundry folding to keep me going through the entire first season of Get Smart, which I bought sometime in February. And even though my daughter hasn't shown a huge interest in Fraggle Rock, I still think buying the first three seasons was a wise investment. Now I just need to convince myself that I got a good deal for the box set of the Extended Edition Peter Jackson LOTR trilogy, and my consumerism will be sated.

At least until Sep 29.