Collecting and Watching

[TripleHBK]

Originally Posted by mpengle

I understand the sentiment behind your reasoning but this is a fairly weak analogy. Even if I had an unlimited amount of time and was still a big reader, I would never read even half the books in my local library because I have no interest in reading them. Same goes for a streaming service such as Netflix. Just because I have access to the media doesn't mean I care about half of what is available.

To be fair and to sound a bit hypocritical probably though I have a major backlog on movies/tv shows but I'm buying stuff I absolutely want to watch myself. What good is a unwatched media library to me in the end if much of it is unwatched.

How do you know what you are going to want to watch a month from now, a year from now, 5 years from now? For many of us we build libraries of titles that look interesting but may not be something we intend to watch anytime soon due to knowing ourselves well enough to make predictions on future interests, but also in that buying now when something is on sale or dirt cheap will likely save us money later on.

I've never been much of a Western fan but I recognized that part of having a well rounded library of films was having films that fell outside of my interests at this point in time and so I've acquired a small selection of Westerns. After a few years I found myself in a Western mood and marathoned all of them. Every single one was a blind buy that was purchased due to their reputation and the cheap prices I had found them at over the years. It was a really fun experience to have so many titles to instantly jump into and watch without needing to spend a dime at that moment.

It's important to note that for many of us with Libraries of films we've figured out our priorities in life and likely have no intent on selling off our collections either. We aren't the folks that rack up huge amounts of debt and then need to sell off the collection on a whim to pay the bills because we were focused on buying every single Marvel Movie the day it releases (for example). For years I've tracked my spending patterns (and shared them here with others on site) and have always put family and other obligations first. With Dollar Tree now offering titles for $1 and so many sales and other avenues to acquire films very cheaply, I buy when the prices are good and then wait until I'm in the mood to watch them. This means I may have a substantial collection of unwatched films but in the end my goal is to hopefully, eventually, get around to watching them when the mood hits me... whenever that is.