Thursday, February 24, 2011

In Praise of Old Second Hand VHS Movies

A few years ago when our DVD player gave up the ghost we bought a new one that also had VHS capability. We did this in part so that we could transfer some old stuff (plays, high school stuff, movies) onto DVD. We dutifully moved some stuff over and then mostly forgot about it. Fortunately, we've discovered a wonderful reason to still have VHS capability: secondhand Disney stuff.
You may know (if you're a parent you certainly do!) that Disney only makes titles available for short periods. Once the time is up they go back into some kind of vault and you can only get them for mucho bucks, if at all. This is especially hard on people who didn't buy things before they had kids. How did I know to buy 'Peter Pan' some five or six years ago, well before I knew that I'd have a girl that was in love with Tinkerbell? As a marketing plan it's genius but it's not easy on we poor parenting folk.
Anyway, we've found a loophole. Old Disney movies on VHS. You can find them at all the secondhand stores for a buck or two a piece. Tonight we picked up '101 Dalmatians' and (she couldn't have been happier) 'Peter Pan'.

Had an interesting discussion with my brother a couple of weeks back. He asked if we had a Blu-Ray player and I told him that I don't think we ever will. We watch most of our movies through Netflix streaming options. We may not even buy too many more DVDs. If we do they'll be ones that are otherwise unavailable or liable to disappear from Netflix.
In the space of about ten years we've gone from VHS dominance to DVDs and then Blu-Ray. I don't know how long it will be until streaming video on demand is the most common way of getting movies but I won't be surprised when it arrives.
Fast times, man. Fast times.

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