This is a subject I've been thinking a great deal about in recent years. Back in the early 00's, like many people, I was a somewhat avid DVD collector. For about eight years I would regularly buy movies and receive them as gifts, then put them up in the bookcase with my collection. I'd say all totaled I have about 300 movies and about 100 boxed sets of TV shows (individual seasons or a few full series collections).

Eventually, like many, I figured out that I don't watch these movies. Of those 300 films, I'd estimate that I've seen no more than 40 of them more than one time, 20 more than twice, 10 more than three times, and so on.

So that's a lot of wasted money on those shelves. As a result, my purchasing behavior has changed drastically in the last few years. When bluray was settled as the standard, I swore that I would not own another movie unless:

a) it was one of my favorite movies
b) it was a movie that really showed off HD (I bought Sunshine, for example, because of this)

Even under these rules, I haven't bought many blurays because I know I won't watch them many times. Plus, HD isn't as novel as it used to be, so rule b) isn't as applicable anymore.

Now, I'm far happier renting, and I've saved a great deal of money. This is even with renting HDX movies via vudu, which typically run $6. I'd have to watch a movie like that three times to make owning it more cost effective. The way I look at it, even if I watch one movie five times, there's plenty more I'll only watch once, so I'm still ahead of the game if I rent it every time.

With all that said, I'm curious what kind of behavior you all have observed of yourself:

(In this poll, "now don't" should say "now buy few." It looks like I can't edit a poll...)

None of the above.

Used to buy a few movies, now buy zero.

I buy them at garage sales for $0.25

Uhhhh... what he said.

I've probably bought five movies in my whole life, don't plan to buy any more.

tanstaafl.

I have never been a big movie watcher so I never bought many. My wife used to buy a ton of them but has pretty much stopped and mostly just watches whatever Netflix has available for streaming. I never thought they were worth buying when she did buy them because they would get watched once if that.

Buying DVDs was still cheaper than going to the theater. Plus I could pause and rewind the nekid parts.

Almost never bought DVD's. Don't intend to buy any. Not really a movie person - better things to do with the brief spare time I get :-)

Used to buy many, now buy few.

Basically, anything I plan to watch more than once. This means anything by Christopher Nolan, the LotR trilogy, and quite possibly the Avengers if it lives up to my expectations. I've also enjoyed the new Bond movies and will likely CI sider getting the new one on Blu-Ray if it's any good. I've gotten decent mileage out of the last two.

I think my main problem is I just don't watch too many movies these days, but there are some movies I like that I will re-watch (I've seen Inception 4 times since I got it and Memento countless times).

I've noticed that issue too. I either don't have the time to watch movies, or I watch more TV now.

And I apologize, I meant to make it clearer that if you never buy/bought movies, "few" applied to you.

Same here

TV certainly takes a bite out of my movie watching. I don't watch much TV, but given a choice between renting a movie I haven't seen or watching an episode of Fringe or House, and I'm watching the episode.

One other thing that impacts me, but probably not a lot of others, is that I found an oline live poker "show" that has a new episode available every Tuesday and Friday and is three hours long. With and iPad/Apple TV combination I can watch this on my TV, it's free, and it's really enjoyable to me. I'd rather watch that than rent a movie unless it's a movie I'm really anticipating.

I used to buy DVD's but since I was underwhelmed by bluray, and its screwball menus - my buy rate has dropped drastically.

I really want to express play a movie! Drop it in hit play, and see the movie company's logo.

The players are not much better. Three different buttons that say menu. At any given moment, 2 of which generate only messages saying they are invalid.

Bluray players are a huge problem that seem to get no attention from the companies who make them. I have a very highly regarded model, but it got to the point where it was incredibly slow, and half of the movies I played on it would have audio problems. I switched the sound mode on it for nearly every movie I put in.

At first I thought it was because my old receiver couldn't understand the newer Dolby standards, but when I upgraded that to something that's able to handle everything, I still had audio problems. At one point I wanted to watch the Dark Knight so much that I had to set aside the bluray I have and rent it from vudu. That's just stupid.

Fortunately, my Sony Google TV is a great bluray player and surprisingly fast. *edit* Though, that could be because it has the advantage of always being on and ready to go */edit*

The ones I have are mostly Blu-Ray, but that is only because I have a PS3 and it just works beautifully. I seem to get about 3 or 4 a year as birthday presents. I think the kids like films.

Between the DVR, Netflix and HBO2Go, I don't have any reason to purchase movies, or even television series. I think the last ones I purchased were the Resident Evil series on Blu-Ray. I may get Justified some time, but not in any real rush to do so.

Ooo, good point. Netflix alone has killed a lot of my DVD purchasing.

BluRay hasn't really received significant enough studio attention despite being crowned "the winner" - this is probably because compared to DVD, it hasn't made as big an impact with consumers.

Disney is missing BluRay releases of most of its titles as well as the vast majority of titles it controls for companies like Studio Ghibli. Even Pixar releases on BluRay have been slow. And DreamWorks hasn't released the better bug movie Antz yet either. That one on my mind because my daughter has watched A Bug's Life about 20 times in the past two weeks.

Yeah, I only meant that bluray won vs HD-DVD. It clearly hasn't replaced regular DVD. I don't think Sony expected that by now, the DVD section in Best Buy would still be bigger than the bluray section. They really need to get the prices on the discs down first, then improve the performance of the bluray players. Of course, that was if bluray wasn't already irrelevant (which it is).

I wasn't commenting specifically on your "winner" mention Matt, just adding some additional thought about formats, adoption rates and disinterest. In the end I just want to see some of my favorite movies, and introduce my daughter to to some classics and fun flicks, in HD, regardless of format. BluRay has been a let-down in this respect, especially considering that some titles are broadcast in HD (Disney TV for example) but not available commercially.

Oh, I definitely agree. I was just mentioning that in case I wasn't clear about the "winner" thing. I certainly didn't want to make bluray sound like a winner!

One thing I really think is lacking is the whole idea of "special features." I'm not terribly concerned because I know I already don't look at most of the extras I get on my DVDs and blurays as it is, but I do admit to watching a commentary track or two in the past. I wish there were a more standardized way of adding special features to streaming movies. There are some workarounds, like downloading an audio file and listening to it on an MP3 player, but it's messy. In that example, you have to sync it properly and it's awkward to experience it with another person.

Oh well, like I said, I'm not losing sleep over it. What does piss me off is when the digital form of a movie costs just as much or more than the physical version with all those extra features. As much as I love vudu, there's no chance in hell I'd ever buy a movie off of there for $20, which seems to be the going rate.

Well, who cares as long as Iron Sky isn't available in any of the formats?

Haha, really? I thought that was out by now. That's not actually going to theaters, is it?

Running in cinemas in Finland and Germany...

I saw the trailer for that, it looked hilariously bad, so bad I really would quite like to see it

Especially as the soundtrack is by Laibach...