Look, I’m no hater. I didn’t ever really camp on one side of the HD-DVD or Blue-Ray camp during the war. Like Lou Holtz, I lived for the dash between them and saw the end goal of a 1080p collection. For those of you wondering if it’s worth the upgrade. The short answer is yes. Whether you’re a videophile or an audiophile (or both like I am), the difference between 1080p playback of a film versus a 480p progressive scan DVD is like the difference between 420 interlaced and 1080i HD television programming. If that tech-talk is too much for you, let’s just so that watching standard DVDs after watching High Definition DVDs is like someone taking your glasses away from you in the middle of the movie.

The first thing I had to do once I decided to upgrade my DVD collection to High Definition was to examine my purpose in collecting films and television shows in the first place. The answer goes back to my childhood–back to VHS. I visited my Dad every summer and he was a notoriously cataloger and collector of films. He was the first person I ever knew who dubbed films by renting a VCR and feeding its output into his personal VCR. He had his entire collection in a computer database. Each video tape was numbered and lettered and each contained three or four movies. He would watch a different movie each night, running down the list. He had his films cataloged by genre, actor, director and length. He could cross-reference any of these attributes to come up with the perfect movie each night. As a child, I was amazed at how well the system worked. And I knew that one day I would grow up and do the same.

Before I began this project, I had well over 600 DVDs in my personal collection but I’m sure I’ve purchased over a thousand since I bought my first player in 1999 (a Toshiba that I only recently threw away after it quit working–eight years ain’t bad after five moves). I had to let go of the idea that I would be able to continue collecting any movie or show which struck my fancy.

And the good news is that I don’t have to.

There are so many ways to get hold of a movie or show you want to see. The two I use are the public library (Columbus has arguably the best public library system in the country and I can always find good documentaries and recent release films when I walk in not to mention being able to request them online). If I can’t stomach the wait for films I want to see, I have a two-disc at a time Blockbuster by mail pass that lets me rent new releases in Blue-Ray or HD-DVD format whenever they come out. If movies aren’t available in 1080p format, I can still slum it with progressive scan when I have to.

And there are still the DVDs I want to own. Movies like all the Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter films, etc.

So, here are the steps you need to take to upgrade your collection:

1. Resolve yourself that you’re going to have to spend money to upgrade. There are ways to mitigate some of the cost but in the end it will cost.
2. Make a list of your current DVDs and go through them with a dark red pen. Be bold. Cross off movies you haven’t watched in six months to a year. You can get these from your library or Netflix. Every disc you cross off will be sold through Amazon or Ebay.
3. Now that you have your list of DVDs you want to sell back, make another column (I do this in Excel) and note which discs you’d like to replace in Blue-Ray format. Do this also for the discs you didn’t cross off but would like to keep in the meantime.
4. Go and sell your current discs. I use Amazon.com’s marketplace. I put up 139 discs for sale and low-balled each one. I sold 62 in the first 16 hours and grossed almost $375 (shipping will still come out of this total though). Now, do I expect to sell them all? No but I pretty much made enough to buy a PS3 (also a Blue-Ray player and about the same price as the stand-alone players).
5. While your DVDs are selling, go through your “replace with Blue-Ray” list and use Amazon to find out which ones are currently available on Blue-Ray and which ones aren’t out yet. Sign up to be notified for the ones that haven’t released yet so you’ll know in advance and can expect the purchase. Add columns for the new price and current used price for the ones that are available. This will let you project the cost of upgrading your library.
6. Now, prioritize the list of Blue-Ray movies currently available by High, Medium and Low. Highs are the movies you’ll watch often and you’ll feel the hole in your collection when they’re gone. Medium are the ones it’d be nice to have. Lows are the ones you know you want but there’s no pressing need to have right away.
7. Create another column and filter to the Highs. Prioritize the highs by number, with 1 being the highest priority within the High category. Now, you have a purchase list for your Blue-Ray replacements with pricing so you can project the cost of upgrading your collection.
8. I chose to fund the Blue-Ray player first before the films but if you want to wait for them to come down in price which they should over the next 18 months, go ahead and start buying the films. Unfortunately, Blue-Ray discs are not hybrids with DVDs on one side and the 1080p version on the other like HD-DVDs were (a feature I enjoyed quite a bit) so be aware that if you buy the movies without a player, you will not be able to watch them. If you go the player route first, know that you can watch standard DVDs on most Blue-Ray players so you should be good to go there.
9. Keep the dream alive. Keep buying Blue-Rays from your list piecemeal and when you see a good deal. Every now and then some sites will offer buy 2 get one free deals. Take advantage of them.

I hope this advice helps someone out there put their glasses back on while watching their films going forward. For what it’s worth, I didn’t have the heart to sell back the first DVD I ever bought, which I’m almost ashamed to admit was Shakespeare in Love.

photo credit: William Hook

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