What would you do if ALL of your movies DISAPPEARED

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So my house was broken into and all of my DVD movies were stolen, roughly 210 of them all told (all purchased, no burns), things I had purchased over the years, things I loved. The Alien collection, LOTR and Star Wars, most anything Jet Li, and so on. So anyhow, I'm over that. But what now? I haven't gotten anything from insurance yet, and if / when I do, I don't exactly see myself going down to Best Buy and attempting to buy everything I once had.

What would you do? Would you just rent from here on out, such as Netflix or Blockbuster? Would you get a Tivo and grab everything possible? Would you get premium cable service with HBO and etc.? Satellite? Some sort of On-Demand type system? Some use of an HTPC? Something else I haven't even thought of? I'd like to be able to watch what I want, when I want, and not have to 1) go buy everything, or 2) have a lot on hand that's worth stealing.

Please give me your dream movie system that doesn't include owning a few hundred physical disks.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I was kind of in the same boat as you, when my RAID 5 array crashed, and I lost all of my pictures. Stuff I had been collecting for years--two digital camera worth of pictures, around 12,000 pics. Pictures of deployments, old friends, everything. It was horrible. But I did the best thing I could--rebuild. Luckily your movies are replaceable (albeit painfully so), so if I were in your shoes, I'd rebuild the collection. Else the pain of loss would always be there, and always annoy the hell out of me.

 

[Ayah]

Really big file server with movies on it to stream to a really big high res screen.

 

[Knavish]

Maybe I'm just weird, but do other people actually watch movies more than 1 or 2 times after buying them?? It seems like ALL people like collecting one thing or another & quite a few like collecting movies. Personally, I've resolved not to start a movie collection because I just watch them once and then put them on a shelf --- most people I know who have 100+ of movies haven't even watched them all. They just pick them up b/c they thought the movie was good in the theater & it was a cheap DVD.

I could see you spending about $3000 on 210 DVDs. That covers 16 years Netflix unlimited per month, 2 at a time rentals.

I've heard of some people creating libraries of ripped DVDs using netflix, but I know that AT users would never do anything so illegal!

 

[w00t]

do you have an HDTV? might want to switch to HD content now with HD-DVD, Blu-ray I'd say don't go buy everything you had but slowly buy good movies with the money.

 

[Seekermeister]

If you had insurance, you simply start replacing them. If not, replace them anyway. I have several hundred myself, and I certainly wouldn't want them stolen or destroyed. Since I am too cheap to buy cable, and most of todays movies do not appeal to me, I'm constantly adding to my collection, and I often like watching the better ones many times. If you do not have insurance, buy some. I'm sure that you have alot more than DVDs that are valuable to you.

 

[corkyg]

I know of no technology that would replace a stolen object except police recovery - and that is not a technology.

Hindsight is always 20/20. Start collecting again, and this time backup your DVDs by burning archival copies. Use them and lock up your originals in a safe place.

Insurance is to be considered - but weigh the cost of the premiums and profit against being self-insured. Most insurance doesn't cover initial cost, but deals with depreciated value.

 

[JE78]

I'd start rebuilding.

 

[Seekermeister]

corkyg,

Most insurance doesn't cover initial cost, but deals with depreciated value.

This is true, if you don't specify that the coverage be with replacement value. If the DVDs were the only things to be considered, then the insurance would not be feasible because of the cost, but as I said, I'm sure that he has more than those to consider. If the DVDs were all that he had stolen, then he is lucky.

 

[CurseTheSky]

I'd just rebuy the movies that I loved, and ditch the ones I didn't care for so much.

As long as insurance covered 100%, I'd see it as an opportunity to trim my movie collection.

 

[Minerva]

I'd beat the crap out of someone that did that.

Where I live it wouldn't take 5 minutes to figure it out all with 99% accuracy.

Stuff on computers? That's what BACKUPS are for! Don't back your stuff up? No pity. It's not like an earthquake or something that strikes without warning.

 

[lxskllr]

I'd re-purchase the special movies, then just rent other ones you'd like to see. I feel the same way as Knavish in that I don't watch movies more than once or twice with a few exceptions.

Movies that I think are worth owning are:
LOTR
Twilight Zone boxed sets
Monty Python
Vintage cartoons
Disney boxed sets of vintage cartoons
Mr. Bean boxed set
Benny Hill boxed set
silent films
Harry Potter

 

[Boyo]

Since it was a collection, I would rebuild the collection with the insurance money. Start with the titles that you love the most and go from there....Luckily, they can be replaced, unlike a crashed HD where everything is wiped out.

 

[BladeVenom]

I agree with those people who say it's not worth rebuilding your collection. The movie has to be really cheap, or you have to watch it an awful lot, otherwise you're better off just renting it. I use to collect DVDs and there are only small handfull of them I've watched more than once or twice. Just buy those must have favorites that you watch often, and keep your collection down to a couple a dozen.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Netflix for 99% of the discs, wait for the high-def versions of the ones you love enough to buy again.

Netflix rents both blu-ray and HD-DVD for no extra charge so use the insurance money on a PS3 and Xbox360 with HD-DVD so you can watch both formats while the format war sorts itself out

 

[Slugbait]

The library is far less expensive than Netflix or anything else. Put your money toward the next format instead.

 

[tracerbullet]

Lots of different answers, all with good points.

I did also lose my laptop, but it and the movies are all that were taken. It looks like they must have been scared away before they got very far, there was a lot more available for them (DVD player, HDTV, HTPC, stereo equipment, etc.) not to mention other stuff around the house. On the laptop, thankfully I was always very careful not to store any passwords on it, and to sign on / off websites when finished. I changed all my passwords on everything I could think of though, later that same night, just in case. Included my email access in that so they couldn't do a "send my password to me via email" at all.

I think I will likely just go the rental route. Netflix or something similar, with a relatively cheap monthly fee. I will purchase some things again that I really loved, and feel that I would watch several more times, but this might come to 2 or 3 dozen movies total. The rest to rent and maybe wait for the HD formats to come down in price.

I do have an HTPC, I could consider a couple external hard drives with rips of... oh nevermind.

Thanks for all the answers!

 

[Muse]

I have around the same number you had (a little over 200) DVD's. Yeah, I'd be bummed if they were stolen. I'm sorry you had that happen to you.

If it happened to me, I'd buy some back but not all. There's some I wouldn't buy again. Some I wouldn't want to even see again. Since I bought most all of mine I discovered how easy it was to check DVD's out from my local library. I can check out up to 8 at a time and keep them a week. I go online and see if they have what I want and I request it. If it's out, I'm in line and when it's ready it's delivered to my local branch and an email comes to me telling me it's ready for pickup and I have a week to pick it up. I live less than a 2 minute bike ride from my local branch. All for free. If I'm late returning a disk I pay $2/day in late fees, but I've only paid maybe $4 so far in fees. They have around 70% of what I want to see.

If it weren't for my collection and the library I'd belong to Netflix or Blockbuster Online. If you have a Blockbuster store near you BB is probably the much better deal although their site is said to be rather inferior. BB lets you return a disk to the store for immediate replacement, so there's much less wait time between movies.

I understand what you are saying about being able to watch a movie anytime you please, but for me that's turned out (so far) to be more a theoretical advantage than an actual one. Probably almost 25% of my collection I haven't even watched once. The majority of the others I've watched one time. Only a dozen or so disks are among those I've watched more than twice. So far, my interest has been more in seeing movies that I want to see for whatever reason that I haven't seen yet, and there are many, many of those. I've been finding that when I check out a few disks from the library and I have a week to bring them back, I have the discipline to watch them. I don't know when I'll get around to seeing the movies on my shelves that I haven't seen even once. There's no pressure to see them! Funny how that works. I do watch those, but the headway I've been making against my unseen disks is slow. That's not to say I've lost interest in them -- I know that I'll probably really like most of them when I get around to seeing them. There will be disappointments, though, for sure.

 

[Seekermeister]

One thing to consider, is that if you have anything else worth stealing, that thieves have a tendency to return to where they scored before.

 

[fighterpilot]

I don't have a huge collection of movies, but I've started ripping them to a 320GB HDD. I usually strip the other languages, compressed to 4.7GB (for single layer), and figure I can fit about 75-80 movies on an HDD that big. Considering you can get a reliable 320GB for about $90 now, it is a sane investment. For my favorite movies, I will do a 1:1 rip, just to preserve it. $90 to protect a $1200+ investment (assuming $15 each DVD avg) is good peace of mind.

 

[MadMan2k]

An Xbox with XBMC installed works great as a low-budget and basically rock solid HTPC - rip the movies, FTP them over, open it on the Xbox and watch it. I did a project for my boss where we ripped his collection of 400 DVD's onto 2 Xbox's with a 250gb drive in one and a 400gb in the other. Mostly ripped to 700mb files, but he doesn't have an HDTV and the xbox only supports 480i anyway...

 

[Zepper]

Thread belongs in the OT section!

You mean besides drinking bocoup :beer:s and crying inconsolably.?.

.bh.

 

[APE992]

I'd invest in a security system of some sort. A handful of real/fake cameras mixed together should deter most people, at least enough to look at your neighbors house instead of yours.

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: Seekermeister
One thing to consider, is that if you have anything else worth stealing, that thieves have a tendency to return to where they scored before.

That's wot I woz finking.

It's not uncommon for burglers to return to get the replacement items but in this case if there was indeed other schtuff of interest they didn't have time for well that just increases the possibility. Use the insurance money to secure the house and be glad that's all that was lost and perhaps for not being owned by a collection anymore.

 

[Pepsi90919]

i only have like 3 movies so i wouldn't care