I'm not only a music collector, I'm also an avid movie collector. I am not going to address streaming here. The 1980s and '90s may have been a golden age when it came to the selection of movies you could rent, but VHS was a shit format due to incorrect aspect ratios and poor quality altogether. If you were a movie purist, you were collecting movies on laser disc. Then DVD came along, and it was fine for the age of Standard Definition, but kind of underwhelming once you got a taste of HD. Now, with 1080p and 4K UHD blu-rays, we're in an era where movie presentation at home is kicking ass, but they're more challenging to acquire at a brick and mortar store. Suncoast is long gone, and Best Buy's movie selection is shrinking, and will probably be gone before too long. I can sometimes find blu-rays from boutique labels like Criterion, Shout/Scream Factory, Arrow Video, or Kino Lorber at stores like FYE and Barnes & Noble, but your best bet is ordering online. I usually try to order the boutique companies' product from their own websites, and try to avoid Amazon, but I still do Amazon every once in a while.
I have a ton of DVDs, and a ton of 1080p blu-rays, and quite a few on UHD, but only if they include the movie on both UHD and 1080p blu-ray, because I have neither a 4K TV nor a UHD player, but I like collecting UHDs so I can future proof. Even though DVD sucks by today's standards, I still feel bad for upgrading since a lot of the DVDs I have, especially "Pulp Fiction" and "Fight Club", have pretty elaborate packaging. My collecting policy is to try to buy movies on blu-ray that I don't own on DVD. I'll wait to upgrade my DVDs until they come out on UHD. It's a good idea to read or watch reviews before upgrading.
Here's my history of buying Star Trek movies, and for this entry I'm only referring to the movies that came out between 1979 and 2002. I bought a complete set of the deluxe editions in 2008. The Motion Picture was the Director's Edition. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was a really interesting one because it was the only Star Trek movie to be filmed in Super 35, so they opened up the matte to 1.78:1. I was pretty underwhelmed with the image quality of these DVDs, but they were all we had at the time. I believe I bought The Motion Picture on blu-ray in 2015, just because it was the theatrical version. I thought it looked fine, but more knowledgeable people complained about the DNR (Digital Noise Reduction) on it and all the other Star Trek blu-rays out at the time. In 2016, a special 25th anniversary edition of Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan was released on blu-ray, based on a new 4K scan. I finally bought that in 2021.
I'm pretty sure Paramount has pissed off a lot of Star Trek fans in the past year or so, especially me. Not long after I bought that edition of Star Trek II, they announced that they were releasing the first four movies on UHD and blu-ray. A lot of us were like, "What about V and VI? What about the Next Generation movies?" Well, a lot of us bought the 4-movie collection. Not long after that, it was announced that they were working on redoing the VFX for the Director's Edition of The Motion Picture for 4K. A lot of us assumed they would be putting out a set including it with V and VI. This past Summer, they announced a number of releases for September, including a six movie set, and the six movies sold separately. When I heard about the separate movies, I thought, "Cool, I can just buy TMP:Director's Edition, V and VI, and be done with it." Unfortunately, while II through VI included both the UHDs and 1080p blu-rays, the UHDs and 1080p blu-rays for The Motion Picture:Director's Edition were being sold separately. I wanted all of them in 1080p and UHD, god damn it! The only way I could get the Director's Edition in both UHD and 1080p together was to get it in the 6-movie collection. So I preordered the 6-movie collection on Amazon through a link from The Digital Bits, because I love The Digital Bits, and want to support them. Somewhere around this time, maybe just a bit later, I also preordered the "Halloween: 1995-2002" Scream Factory UHD/blu-ray set. Unlike the first five Halloween movies, these had to be sold together because Miramax owns the later Halloween movies, and would only license them out to Scream Factory if they were sold in a set. The Star Trek set was set to release on September 6th, and the Halloween set was set to release on October 4th. I thought to myself, "They're coming out a month apart, there's no way they'll charge me for both at the same time, right?"
WRONG! But I'll get to that in a minute. I don't know what happened, but it seems like Amazon didn't get enough copies of the Star Trek set to actually send out in September, and they were telling me it was expected to arrive on November 1st! I went to Best Buy to see if they had the set, and that was a big no. All they had were a couple of copies of a couple of the individual movies. I checked Barnes & Noble, and they had one set! But it was about $30+ more than I would be paying for it on Amazon, and it sounded like a disc might have been loose. I have paid a premium elsewhere to spite Amazon, but I didn't quite have the money to justify doing it this time, so I decided to stick with my Amazon order. So anyway, October 4th comes, and as far as I knew, the Star Trek set was still expected to arrive by November 1st, and the Halloween set was expected to arrive in mid-to-late November. At some point, I checked my e-mail, and saw a message telling me to update my method of payment for one order. I had about $200 or less in the bank, enough for one set. It turns out they successfully charged me for the Halloween set, but payment for the Star Trek set was declined due to lack of funds. The Star Trek set was a higher priority for me, and the Halloween set hadn't shipped yet, so I canceled the Halloween set, and planned to use the money I got back to get the Star Trek set. These companies will take your money in a heartbeat, but are always slow to give it back to you. I finally got the money back...that Friday, after I had already went ahead and "updated" my payment method. I decided to wait to try and order the Halloween set later. The Star Trek set arrived just the next day!
While I was typing this up, I decided to see how much the individual sets for the UHD and 1080p TMP:Director's Edition, V, and VI would cost. It might have actually been cheaper to buy all of those than it would have to buy the 6-movie collection, thus not rendering my 4-movie collection obsolete. Fuck me running. Now, I have the 4-movie collection and the 35th Anniversary Edition of The Wrath Of Khan to sell.
