Quoting Pantheon:

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I can't believe I've come to this. I honestly thought I was going to be able to resist double-dipping. What a fool I was.

Am I alone? Is there anybody else out there who has suffered as I have?

I have upgraded a number of DVDs to Blu-ray, but I generally limit it to those Blu-rays that provide significant improvements over my DVD, and that I can get for around $10.  I've replaced about 75 DVD movies in the past four years with Blu-rays, and I've averaged about $12.85 per upgrade.  My average cost is a bit high because of the Criterion and Disney Blu-rays included.

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Quoting Pantheon:

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What about everyone else? Have you gone blu?

Like cvermeylen I sat out the war and bought my first BD-player spring 2009.

I was pretty restrained on updating DVD to BD. But I still buy DVDs (TV-Series that will never make it to BD) and my Sony-TV has a quite good upscaler I think.

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Out of the 1190 blu-rays my partner and I own 608 we previously owned on DVD. That's over half!

  I have four triple dips and 47 double dips out of my 927 titles. List

But I'm totally uninterested in 3D, I simply don't want to spent the money on a new TV, BD-Player and the much more expensive 3D-titles.
Not to mention that I simply don't like the current systems with filters or shutters. Maybe in 10 more years we have a new system and I will look into it again.

cya, Mithi

I didn't upgrade until March or April of 2010.  My 36 inch TV and DVD player finally gave out at least the DVD player did and I found my old Sony TV didn't have the right cable inputs for anything that was on the market.  Ultimate Electronics has had just opened in Tucson and in trying to establish themselves were almost giving the merchandise away then again that is likely why they are out of business now.  But I digress.  I upgraded to a 55 inch 3D Samsung which already has a dead pixel and a 5000 series 3D Samsung Bluray player which had to repaired twice in the first year and then replaced less than a month after warrantee and two Blurays and one 3D starter kit for just over $2100.00.  Like many of you I have nearly 1800 DVD's and with this economy can no way replace them nor do I want to.  I have replaced some DVD's with Blu, mostly when they are under $5.00.  The new household rule is if it released on Blu and we don't own it that is the way it is bought but we are not really replacing older films.  3D is a perk and due to my migraines I cannot really enjoy it so I don't go out of my way to get it.  If it happens to come with something I purchase I have it but don't get to enjoy it.  When this TV and Bluray player die I will replace them with something comparable and will continue to buy new discs, but unless DVD is completely phased out I will never upgrade them all.

When I was growing up, I used to devour the weekly TV guide, circling all of the movies I wanted to watch. At that time though, I had to get up or stay up to watch them all in real time.

Then when VHS came along, I was a voracious recorder.

The first VHS that I purchased was Manhattan. I loved that it was in letterbox format. Sadly there weren't many letterbox VHS movies, but when I could find them, I scooped those up.

I resisted laserdiscs until The Prince of Tides was released on Criterion. That led me to get a laserdisc player. With laserdiscs, a film was $50 with special editions running $125-$300. I think my Star Wars collection on laserdisc was pretty pricey.

For my birthday in 1999, I took the leap to DVD. Loved it of course.

For Christmas 2006, I started HD DVDs. I have about 25 of those that I've either not double (triple? quadruple?) dipped to blu-ray plus a few that aren't on blu-ray yet.

For the following Christmas, I made the switch to blu-ray. I have upgraded many titles. Because many of my favorites are older films, about half of my blu-ray collection is pre-1980. I continue to upgrade as I am able.

Whenever I buy a new title, I always buy the blu-ray if available.

In 2007, I went multi-region for DVDs. I eventually got to where I can watch any format and any region wherever I watch movies.

I've purchased a few downloaded movies, but not much. I stream occasionally, mainly documentaries. But mostly I like to collect a physical format.

I'll probably keep upgrading as much as I'm able to.

Nope. I don't have a Blu-ray. I don't even have an HD television (though I have an HD computer monitor only because my previous of 9 years suddenly burned out.)  I don't have any plans of getting a Blu-ray or buying Blu-ray discs any time soon.

To me, the idea of "advancing with the times" or "keeping up with technology" is often little more than for self satisfaction and/or to do what others are doing. I usually advance with technologies if they make things "easier" not "better" per se or when I have no other options.

I own a few DVD players and two VHS/DVD combo players. I still own and watch several VHS tapes including those containing my home movies. I even still have copies of the 8mm films made when I was a baby. I have converted them to DVD as well, but I am keeping the 8mm and VHS tapes because, frankly, it's somewhat safer pending rot. One big scratch on a DVD to make it unplayable and you've practically lost everything. Get a VHS tape chewed up in a machine? Cut out the spot, tape it back together, and you've lost 30 seconds. I don't own or plan to own/rest a DVR; I record things I plan to watch only once onto VHS tapes then then erase them rather than re-writable DVDs that can often fail after only the first few uses. As an example of "failure," I scanned a bunch of photo negatives (yes, I still keep them as well) to digital, moved them to a CD, and gave the CD to my brother. Within 10 years, the CD (due to poor-quality product, I guess... something I couldn't have known at the time) became unreadable despite almost no use and being stored properly. Had I not kept the negatives, the shots would have been lost forever.

Newer isn't always better.

I also still own a record player and all of my and my mother's records (though hey are stored away.) I even still have a few 8-tracks somewhere.


I got into DVD buying not because I thought VHS tapes would go away or because it was "new technology" at higher quality. I started buying them because they were smaller and easier to transport. That's all. This growing answer of "the quality of older videos hurts my eyes" actually surprises me a lot. I watch most YouTube videos at their lowest quality available in order to save bandwidth and make the download faster. A poorly-shot YouTube vid at 240p is lower quality than even a VHS tape and they have never bothered me. Maybe I just have good eyes?

But, with all of that said... to each his own.

I just went Blu after this past Christmas. At first, I waited to see if the format would last, then if it would win over HD. When it finally one, the price was too much for my pocket book. This last year, I wasn't working due to medical reasons but finally am getting some money in the bank. I had a gift card to Target, so bought a basic player.

I have an OK setup. I doubt it's as great as some here, but it's all HD and with a nice size TV with acceptable sound. I can see some of the improvements from DVD but am still OK watching DVD over Blu. Over the years, I tended to buy combo packs so I'd have the upgraded disc when I switched over; but only if the price was right. I haven't watched a Blu yet that has made me gasp yet with it's great picture or sound. I watched Stargate (the movie) and enjoyed the wormhole effect on the screen, but the rest of it was still pretty comparable for me to DVD.

I've only double dipped on a few movies-all ones that I truly love and had already double dipped on. I doubt too many more will be upgraded unless something happens to my DVD copy or there is a really good deal ($5 or under). That being said, that unless it's a LOT cheaper, I'll be buying Blu-ray a lot more now with the movies that have just come out.

I started collecting VHS and have the majority of them in DVD (or Blu) now, but that was such a huge jump in quality/size that it was worth it for me. When I was replacing them, every time I got rid of a VHS tape, I could fit at least 2 DVDs in the same spot so I'd have to say that was my driving force for replacing them. I have always been about the best deal, though!

With new technology, I tend to sit and wait for it to have matured to a degree I feel comfortable with (if it has any appeal to me in the first place, that is). When I finally do jump aboard, I'm eager to "do it right" and get the equipment that will allow me to really enjoy the upgrade.

I used to record a lot of broadcast movies on VHS, and I still cherish parts of that collection, as it contains stuff that was never released on DVD, let alone blu-ray. I'm very slowly transferring those recordings to various digital formats (in response to Blair: yes, with digital stuff the motto is "backup, backup and backup again"). I didn't buy too many commercial VHS tapes.

I only started collecting DVDs by the end of 2003, when my trusted Denon DVD-2900 entered my home. I thoroughly enjoyed the upgrade in quality: watching DVDs on my high-end Sony CRT was a joy, so I built up a sizable collection (multi-region, of course) very, very quickly.

I waited for the HD format war to end and then for blu-ray to become a bit more mature as a format, and finally took the plunge to blu-ray late 2009. Having upgraded my screen (Panny plasma), DVD player (another Denon, with great upscaling) and AVR not too long before, I initially settled for a cheap Sony BD player. It didn't last long though before I upgraded the Sony to the Oppo BDP-83, as I could not resist getting a high-quality player.

Like Pantheon, I started out with the intention to only double-dip poor-quality DVD transfers, where new blu-ray transfers made a huge difference (Monty Python's Life of Brian comes to mind). However, as time passed I became less critical and by now I find myself double-dipping whenever there is a good offer for a movie I like on blu-ray. Not so much because DVD "hurts my eyes" or anything - having a great upscaling player (right now either the Oppo or the Denon, both do a great job) and a reasonably good sound system helps (I don't know what you are using to upscale DVD images, Pantheon, but excellent upscaling really DOES help to keep your DVDs watchable, and there are large differences in the quality of upscaling processes).

Right now I'm very tempted to treat myself to the new Oppo BDP-105EU. While I do not currently own a 3D screen, at present I can't be bothered to upgrade - to me, 3D is still too much of a gadget rather than a mature technology. Nothing wrong with my Panny plasma, and their more recent 3D models are plagued by burn-in problems. LED/LCD is looking too artificial/unnatural for my eyes (continues to give me the feeling I'm watching a computer screen), so perhaps I'll just wait for OLED to become affordable (or for Panasonic to finally get their plasma burn-in sorted).

Quoting Pantheon:

Quote:
For me, going back to VHS (or in some cases DVD) would be akin to reverting to an outside toilet: it's functional but nowhere near as satisfying an experience. Older isn't better just because it's been around longer! 

I agree! I was the one who said I haven't found the wow factor yet. But, Between VHS and DVD or BR it's very obvious. Last winter, we got into the "House" series from PBS and were able to get most of them from our local library. At least one of the series was in VHS and for the first time in years, we watched. It was bad. So dark, jumpy, lines going through it, ugh. But, we were glad we had the VCR still so we could watch it without plunking major cash down for the series!