It’s like If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, but If You Give Autumn a DVD.
I got tired of hitting paywalls every time I wanted to watch one of the thirty or so movies I like enough to rewatch. I started buying them on DVD at resale shops for $1-4. I bought a DVD player at Walmart for $25 or so. I could’ve gotten one of those at a resale shop too, but wanted to make sure the lens wasn’t scratched.
That was step one.
After I got used to the joy of single-tasking a movie, and no ad interruptions, I realized I didn’t like how hi-def the smart TV I was using made the movies look. It gets technical pretty quickly, but something about the frame rate of the TV makes older movies look like soap operas because it destroys the camera depth-of-field. This keeps the whole frame in focus instead of blurring the background the way it would on an older, less hi-def TV. I just graduated from film school and it crushes me to think of the generations of filmmakers whose work is being ravaged by this phenomenon.
Then I moved, and the TV at the new place is the perfect age: new enough to be an LCD flat screen, but old enough to keep the original cinematography of the film intact.
Step two complete.
The final stage occurred quite on accident. As I browsed at a secret resale haunt of mine, I noticed a sign – “All VHS tapes are free!” Hooray! But.. I don’t have a VHS player. I attempted to revive one that had gathered dust in my parents’ basement, to no avail. I’d ask at store after store, and they said while they do still accept VCR donations, they are rare. Finally, my mom found one for $10. It took standard AV (red/white/yellow) cables, which are still found even on most smart TVs. It also had a large “AS IS” sticker, so there were no guarantees of it working.
I tested it out with a 90’s remake of Audrey Hepburn’s Sabrina, and it worked perfectly. I realized it had probably been 15 years since I’d heard the sound of a VHS tape! It was a wonderful movie to use because it’s aesthetically beautiful, and on VHS it gets that film-grain vibe. I actually prefer the 90’s version to Audrey’s, it’s much calmer.
The last challenge is to figure out the cord situation, but that won’t take long. Now my discipline will be tested in not filling my home with VHS tapes! I found the old animated The Lord of the Rings which I’m excited to finish watching. I was shocked by how many scenes are shot-for-shot comparable with Peter Jackson’s versions. It’s cool he tied the live-action films in with previous iterations of the story!
I hope this encourages you to expand your movie collection into physical copies. It’s nice to be able to watch movies and have it really be relaxing. I didn’t realize how much I was interrupted by ads, menus, notifications and the like. On a phone that’s one thing, but for movies I love settling in for two hours mostly uninterrupted.
If you like the idea of this, get on the train now. Even in the year or so I’ve been hunting, more young people – all young people! – are now joining me in the dusty corners of resale shops looking for movie gems. And there have been several articles in the last year saying many people are switching to specific tech for specific things. Pretty fun to see it revive!