Things I've Noticed: Hovering at the top of my hold queue can be frustrating

All right, let's start by admitting that this really isn't a problem.

That when it comes to getting (effectively) free stuff from the library should not lead to me complaining.

And most importantly, that my problem is entirely a problem of my own making.

Good.

So my local library (which is wonderful, by the way) allows you to put holds on titles you might like to take out (pretty much like every other library), and even allows you to put holds on items they have ordered, but which have not yet entered the actual collection.

My problem is that my account lets me put twenty five items on hold at one time, and as I regularly check on "just ordered" items and also make use of my library's Inter-Library Loan policy (where one library borrows an item from another library), I tend to have a lot of items on hold at any given time.

Like say, twenty five.

Which means that when new stuff shows up - and yes, I know complaining about my library getting new stuff that they are willing to loan me for free makes me sound pretty terrible - I cannot put holds on anything and instead have to add it to my "for later" shelf - which allows me to keep track of things I'd like to check out someday, but not today (also an amazing service, by the way).

Which leaves me with maybe one or two slots available at any given time to put one or two of the fifty or so items I want on hold...

Aw man - looking back at my complaint I'm pretty sure I've just written a decent advertisement for my local library.

So there you go.

Weeding my DVDs

Today was another of my quarterly trips I take to visit the various used-bookstores here in my hometown of Edmonton, and although I had a successful time of it, I have found I'm now apparently in the process of weeding my DVD collection.

We have a pretty large collection (although I do have certain friends who put my collection to shame - Hi Ron!), and as we have begun to collet Blu-Ray discs, we are now repeating the great migration from  old to new (last done in the early 2000s when we migrated our VHS tapes to DVD).

So now we have to decide which movies or TV shows deserve to be purchased a third (or in some beta-related cases a fourth) time, and surprisingly a lot of titles don't make the cut - especially if we can access these films through our local library or friends collections, so we ended up cutting out about a sixth of our collection this week.

On the plus side we now have a bit of breathing room on our DVD shelves, and we can begin to pull titles that we haven't yet seen to move to the growing pile of titles that I need to work my way through before I can try that fancy new Netflix service we've been hearing about in the last few years.

Thing’s I’ve noticed: Planning my TV-on-DVD summer is complicated

Now that the 2011-12 TV season has pretty much run its course (I’m still waiting on Cougar Townand Mad Men to wrap up, and deciding on whether or not to watch season 2 of The Killing) I’m looking forward to attacking my towering stack of TV shows on DVD.

Last summer my wife and I checked out the HBO series The Wire, which rests comfortably in my top five favourite TV shows of all time, so this year I figure we should follow up with a show from FX I’ve always been meaning to finish, The Shield.

Years ago we watched the first four seasons, but after taking a break of a couple years found we were totally confused by the beginning of season five, so over the next few months we are going to do our best to watch the whole series at a rate of a couple episodes a night.  On top of that we’ve got about a dozen other shows we’ve been waiting for the summer to see, so now we decide whether or not to alternate between The Shield and other shows season by season, or to just watch The Shieldstraight through and see how much time we have left afterwards.  One thing I will say for most of the shows from Showtime, FX and HBO – the fact that these seasons run 10 – 13 episodes definitely makes for a great feeling of productive tv watching once you decide to check out any of their shows.

On the horror/SF/Fantasy front, the only shows I’ve got are the final season of Millennium and perhaps a re-watch of The X-Files, oh yeah and a Bruce Campbell series called Jack of All TradesI’ve been meaning to check out.

The next few months are looking pretty good, and if I juggle all my goals of school, family, TV watching, Video Game playing, Movie watching, book reading and whatnot, I might even get outside for a few hours before September!

Things I've noticed: How my PVR saves my time

For the last few years I've had a PVR, or Personal Video Recorder, hooked up to my television - like TiVo for you folks in the States, and the thing is, for a device I purchased due to all its time saving abilities, I am sure devoting a lot of time to watchig stuff on it.

Here is what my PVR offered me when my wife and I decided to get it:

1) No more commericals (unless I wanted to watch them)

2) We could record two things at the same time, while watching a third thing (as long as it was a thing already waiting in our PVR)

3) The machine could hold hours and hours of television for us

4) We could tell the machine which shows we like, and it would tape them at whichever weird hours they aired.

A few years later and my machine is just short of 90% full for the fifth or sixth time and I'm looking at my weekend and thinking, how many of these shows can I watch before new stuff starts airing on Monday?

You know, back in the '70s, before PVRs or even VCRs, the choices for a nights entertainment were pretty simple: Was there anyting you wanted to watch airing on television? If not, go make your own fun.

Then came the '80s and the ability to both tape a show to watch whenever you liked as well as however many times you liked. In theory this meant more freedom, but suddenly people started getting a back log of tapes, which soon included movies and even television shows. DVD and Blu-Ray have given us more options, but suddently the day doesn't seem to have enough hours.

And now, as I look at the freedom offered to me by my PVR, I start to wonder, would I be better off without TV for a while?

Things I've noticed: Blu-Ray Discs are a slippery slope

Like many of my friends, I got into purchasing movies in the ‘90s. VHS tapes were pretty cool, they let me watch and re-watch my favourite films and as the price came down I got to get a pretty sizable collection. The problem came in the late ‘00s as my family switched from VHS tapes to DVDs.

Basically we have spent the last five years re-purchasing the films we had on VHS and adding a few more to our collection. As I purchased a PS3 last year, I have suddenly gotten access to Blu-Ray discs and have already begun purchasing movies in the new format. I currently have six – Black Dynamite, Big Trouble in Little China, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Gremlins, The Goonies and The Back to the Future Trilogy (yes I know that last one is actually three movies, but bear with me). Currently all of these films can be described in one way – awesome. I suppose the best way to describe them is that they are the movies I would always happily watch with friends and list as some of my favourite films. The problem is, where do I stop?

I got Big Trouble in Little China as it was one of the few films I purchased in VHS and never got in DVD format – mostly to see what the big deal was with a Blu-Ray disc (the difference is very noticeable), Then I got Black Dynamite out of a remainder bin at my local grocery store for $6 (the movie is awesome, and I would have eventually bought it on DVD, but the price was so nice), and the other four films were Christmas presents.

My question is now, where do I draw the line? Do I simply switch from DVD to Blu-Ray purchases now? Do I attempt to keep my Blu-Ray collection as one that can only be described as awesome? If I do that, shouldn’t I look at weeding less-than-awesome titles out of my DVD collection? I’m just not sure – I do like that the cases for Blu-Ray discs are smaller, but for a lot of films the fancy high-def quality doesn’t make a lot of difference. So I’m now kind of stuck at a crossroads – which movies will get the Blu-Ray treatment and which will be exiled into DVD-land? My PS3 does still play DVDs, so there’s no current problem with backwards compatibility, but I’m still not sure what to do?

How about the rest of you? Any Blu-Ray solutions out there that might help me?

Things I've Noticed: I'm starting to by less new genre films on DVD

Looking over my DVD collection this morning, I realized that I'm not buying a lot of the new stuff in genre films lately. I mean sure, I've got The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition Trilogy boxed set, but that came out back in 2001, 2002, and 2003. If you only go back 5 years, to 2004, and you take into account that a number of DVD's I get are for my kids (Harry Potter and Narnia), my genre films on DVD are pretty slim.

I do love genre movies, and have seen lots of them in theatres, rented lots more and even waited for the public library to get some because they don't deserve my rental dollars (Transformers). But looking over my stuff, I've be surprised if I have more than ten genre flicks from the last 5 years.

Taking into account that I'm only talking about films, not Television series, here's what I've got.

In Fantasy since 2004, I own Pan's Labyrinth, Mirrormask, Lady in the Water, and Stardust, all of which I've watched on DVD at least twice, most of which I've checked out the special features on. When I think of spending money on Fantasy films, I just find that a lot of it ends up going to stuff that would be perfect Christmas or Birthday gifts for my daughters.

In SF since 2004, I own Children of Men and Sunshine. I know that you can consider most Super Hero flicks to be SF, but as I buy most of them for my kids, they aren't really my collection. To be fair, since my BFF Mike is a huge SF and Super Hero fan, I can borrow these titles from him so there isn't as much of a need for me to purchase these.

In Horror since 2004, I've got Shawn of the Dead, Planet Terror and Slither. I am a pretty big horror fan, but even taking into account the 2009 horror films I'd like to own (Drag Me To Hell and Zombieland), I'm just not finding a big need to re-watch a lot of newer horror movies.

When I think about a movie that I might like to own, I have three filters that make sure I don't end up broke (pictured right).

1) Do I have somethings I'd rather do with this $20 bill?

2) As much as I liked it in theatres, will I ever re-watch this film?

3) Would I be embarrased if someone saw this on my DVD shelf?

I still by a lot of DVDs, but these days more of them tend to be hard-to-find classics and hidden gems of genre films. I hope that means I'm getting more discerning in my selections, rather than just being picky.