THE CRAP I'VE BOUGHT: A Tale of the Angry Home Theater Enthusiast

[Anderson]

The CHUD Sewer is a large place. I'm willing to bet that we've all seen the worst of the worst shit ever dropped onto the Home Video market. Therefore, I'm asking you to participate in a new project.

I want to see what's the worst shit to ever be sold to us on DVD, VHS, Beta, VCD or DIVX. I want to hear your worst experiences with any tape, disc or whatever. Got a shitty retail experience involving the purchase of a DVD or a VHS tape...I want to hear it.

Did you ever get suckered into early adoption? Do you still own a laserdisc player? I want to hear your collective experiences. Preference will be shown to those that send in videos, but I'm also looking for good written entries as well.

Post your videos, your links, your essays, your mad ramblings on the CHUD message board.

[Gabe Powers]

HD DVD player. I didn't even buy it with my own money and I want it to disappear. Still, I liked it more than Blu-ray overall, I just hate having so many things on the shelf.

[Anderson]

That's what I'm looking at.

The living museum of shit that some of us collect. I recently discovered about 6 Divx discs. They were behind a stack of Laserdisc I picked up for about 5 bucks from Half Price Books.


Why did I buy the Laserdiscs? Well, because I found a Laserdisc player at a yard sale. Why did I buy that? Well, because I'm an idiot.

But, I see that shit happen so much and so often. I want to understand what drives a certain portion of the population to that kind of stuff. It goes beyond mere geekiness. There is the drive about tech collection that just speaks to a certain kind of person. What does that mean?

[Ryan S~]

I don't know if this counts but I bought a ColecoVision with twenty five cartridges at a garage sale for ten bucks. I've played it once but I refuse to get rid of it. I love it and I hate it all at once.

[The_Lucas]

I bought the Criterion edition of Spinal Tap on Ebay. I didn't, nor do I now own a Laserdisc player.

[Anderson]

What about things that you once got and now hate?

I remember standing in line outside of Suncoast to buy a VHS copy of "Stay Tuned" for around 40 bucks. Now, I can't walk past it without wanting to kick my younger self's ass.

[Gabe Powers]

I bought Dancer in the Dark because all my friends assured me I'd love it. I did not.

[Barkatthemoon]

I bought a DVD recorder to back up my VHS movies, and try to record rented DVDs when I could. Not only would it not record any of my ancient VHS movies, three of the four blank DVD-Rs I purchased wouldn't even boot up for recording at all. $99 paper weight setting in my closet.

I bought a $98 blu-ray player on Black Friday, but I don't own even one blu-ray disc because I keep buying cheap used DVDs at Hastings. Still in the fucking box I shit you not.

I've owned a portable DVD player with a 10" screen for over three years. The only thing I have watched on it was season one of Metalocalypse, and Robot Chicken when I was sick in bed. It now lives in my dresser.

I've bought so many used DVDs I have never watched it should be a crime.

[Phil]

I have a box of VHS tapes in the basement. Each was dubbed in real time from a buddy's laserdisc player, because it was the only way to get movies widescreen for a while. I must have spent days dubbing that shit.

[James May]

I have a box of Phil's VHS sitting in my basement.

[Barkatthemoon]

I own:

King Kong: Extended Cut
The Frighteners: DC
Pathfinder UR
Pan's Labyrinth 2-disc
Terminator: SCC S1
Alexander Revisited
Mallrats: 10th Anniversary
Robocop: 20th Anniversary

Still in their original shrink wrap.

[Phil]

Originally Posted by James May

I have a box of Phil's VHS sitting in my basement.

Awesome

[Judas Booth]

Originally Posted by Phil

I have a box of VHS tapes in the basement. Each was dubbed in real time from a buddy's laserdisc player, because it was the only way to get movies widescreen for a while. I must have spent days dubbing that shit.

I've got a whole bookcase in my basement filled with VHS tapes like this. Send my your address information and I'll ship them all to you.

[Phil]

Send them to James May. Or anyone in this thread.

[Barkatthemoon]

I bought a used copy of Norbit because it was just as cheap as renting it. This girl said it was funny as shit, she wanted to watch it with me, and I wanted to get laid:



Beat that.

[Humanoid]

I bought Scooby Doo 2 because it was cheap and I was drunk. All I remember of that night is going into the store to buy a chocolate and walking out with the DVD, grinning from ear to ear because I'd just made the smartest buy in the history of mankind.

[BadlyDrawnBagel]

I bought a portable DVD player years ago when they were kinds pricey. If it has ten hours of use I will be surprised. Early adoptee prices are fun to look at years later. Bought a Toshiba DVD player and a couple of movies (Austin Powers and True Romance, I think) for almost $700 in '97 or so. I also remember a few years later buying my first external CD burner for the tidy sum of about $600. Hell, I was bored at work the other day and took a look at all my Amazon purchases, and was shocked to see I paid $75 for a 2 gig memory card just 2 1/2 years ago, and almost that much for a 512 mb only a year or so earlier.

[MoonBaseNick]

I REFUSE to get rid of the 4 different versions of the Star Wars trilogy on VHS

[Alex Augustine]

...my 36" Toshiba TV that outputs 480p. I spent $1200 on it in 2003 I think. It weighs 100lbs and I despise it.

[Anderson]

Originally Posted by Alex Augustine

...my 36" Toshiba TV that outputs 480p. I spent $1200 on it in 2003 I think. It weighs 100lbs and I despise it.

Ha! If you could elaborate further. This is a little closer to what I'm looking for.

[Alex Augustine]

Originally Posted by Anderson

Ha! If you could elaborate further. This is a little closer to what I'm looking for.

Well I bought it so I could play the original xbox in PROGRESSIVE SCAN! I hooked it up with some ridiculously huge monster cables. Oh and its got a 4:3 screen. At the time I was living with a girlfriend and when we broke up, the ownership of the TV was disputed. I let her have the Neo Geo arcade machine so I could keep the TV. Its not my bedroom TV and it takes up so much room. So dumb, so dumb....

[Ken Savage]

My wife is fond of car boot sales, which are basically a bunch of people getting together in a field to sell their old crap.

For a couple of months I got it into my head that if I bought old games consoles from these things and sold them on ebay I could make some serious money.

Below is the list of crap I bought thinking I would make a mint.

An Atari 2600 - doesnt work.

A Sega Megadrive - Can't seem to tune it into any tv I own to test it

2 x Commadore 64's - even with all the combined parts I have I cannot get the thing to work for longer than 5 minutes without it falling over.

A very old Apple something pc which works but is missing a keybord and mouse.

An n64 - which did work and I use it to play Goldenye with my mates when we come back from the pub drunk.


So yeah, I basically have a garage full of crap. And even with the knowlegde that stuff bought at a car boot sale never works i know that if I saw an Amstrad CPC464 (my first computer) I would buy it without a second thought.

[Supremo]

I bought 300 on Blu-ray because of the endless hype for the film, watched it once, and was happy to let it collect dust on my shelf for an eternity. It finally got a rewatch this week when a friend borrowed it, and he gave it the perfect review: "This movie is totally useless except as gay porn."

[John Bierly]

This really isn't a negative story, but:

In August '06, the Gin Blossoms and Nina Gordon (from Veruca Salt) put out albums on the same day, so I bought them at a Wal-Mart just after midnight on release day so I could load them into my iPod and listen to them the next morning at work.

The woman in front of me in the checkout lane, whose cart was sagging from too much grocery weight, said, "Please go in front of me. You have two things, and I bought the whole store."

"Thank you," I said. "That's very sweet."

The creepy old man in front of HER said, "You can go in front of me, too. It's going to be a long night."

He smiled a crazy smile and brandished his own two items -- a Jimmy Buffett concert DVD and big box of Ex-Lax.

On a more topic-related note, I recently bought a really nice Samsung home theater system but could have had twice the setup for only a little more money if I'd waited another three weeks. Charming. The window for returns and exchanges? Two weeks. Don't get me wrong. It sounds fine. I just hate knowing I could have done better.

I also used to spend a small fortune on widescreen VHS movies. I don't remember how much I paid for The Frighteners at Suncoast, and I'm glad I can't.

[Anderson]

This is gold.

[Egg]

I fucking hate my PSP. I paid $250 to play Lumines and watch the first third of Hellboy.

It made a good first impression. I thought I'd be using it to listen to music, watch movies, and play games all the time. Maybe if the storage space on the card wasn't so puny, or if UMD wasn't totally worthless and redundant, or if larger memory cards hadn't been so expensive, maybe I would've watched a couple more shows before letting it rot in its little black bag.

I also bought one for my wife.

Idiot.

[Khaunshar]

I bought an Xbox (not 360) in a second-hand shop for the equivalent of about 40 dollars about 2 years ago, to play Jade Empire, because I had seen the game at a friends, loved it, and there wasnt any talk about a PC Version to use on my pretty nice gaming rig.
3 weeks later the improved, extended Edition of Jade Empire for the PC is announced and followed a few months later, at which point my desire to play a now (in my mind... I am weird like that) inferior, incomplete version vanished instantly, and the Xbox is now just a brick in my closet.
I think I played a total of 10 hours.

[Judas Booth]

I remember going to Europe in the late 80s and buying a few concert vhs tapes and CDs. I was really disappointed to find out that those VHS tapes wouldn't play in the US; funny how the sales clerk didn't mention the whole NTSC vs PAL thing when I bought them. Lesson learned, I guess.

[Jackson]

I bought the original Nintendo DS the day it was released. I thought this going to be great, Mario, Zelda, Metroid in 3D, two screens. waited waited waited, still no good games came out. Then I sold it and jumped on the PSP bandwagon when that came out. Groundhog Day. Waited waited waited, no good games came out.

I later sold the PSP and bought a DS........

[Nexus-7]

Originally Posted by John Bierly

I also used to spend a small fortune on widescreen VHS movies. I don't remember how much I paid for The Frighteners at Suncoast, and I'm glad I can't.

Yeah, I had a fuckton of these, and they were usually 10-15 bucks more than the fullscreen versions at places like Suncoast. The only thing worth holding on to from that whole situation was my widescreen subtitled copy of Drunken Master 2.

[Van Read]

I bought a 32" JVC iArt CRT TV for my honeymoon (biggest, nicest TV that was better than anyone I knew had at the time (as Borat once said: King of de castle, king of de castle). Then about a 7 months later, the HDTV/flatscreen CRT craze hit.

So when I got enough bread 4 years later, I got myself a 60" rear-projection HDTV (biggest, nicest TV that was better than anyone I knew had at the time (as Borat once said: King of de castle, king of de castle). Then about 7 months later the LCD/Plasma craze hit, and were becoming affordable.

I'm always behind.

[Alex Augustine]

Originally Posted by Egg

I fucking hate my PSP. I paid $250 to play Lumines and watch the first third of Hellboy.

It made a good first impression. I thought I'd be using it to listen to music, watch movies, and play games all the time. Maybe if the storage space on the card wasn't so puny, or if UMD wasn't totally worthless and redundant, or if larger memory cards hadn't been so expensive, maybe I would've watched a couple more shows before letting it rot in its little black bag.

I also bought one for my wife.

Idiot.

This is me. I'm putting mine up on eBay tomorrow.

[Martianman]

I fell in with both the Divx and HD-DVD crowds. Don't regret the HD-DVD purchase, as I'd still be using it if I had not screwed up the BIOS flash. I bought it on one of those Black Friday deals for $80.

I bought Divx when I was buying a new TV, and CC was practically giving the player and 10 movies away. I even returned one player and got another for some reason or another. I think I finally got rid of the discs themselves about 3 months ago. I think I gave the player to my stepdad, just to use as a DVD player.

I'm sure I've bought other shit too...while my wife and I were DINKs, we bought early adopter stuff all the time.

[BankytheHack]

When I was in the 8th grade I saved my hard-earned grass mowing money so I could buy Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers on VHS. The magical price of this VHS movie in September of 1996? $88.

[TzuDohNihm]

Originally Posted by BankytheHack

When I was in the 8th grade I saved my hard-earned grass mowing money so I could buy Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers on VHS. The magical price of this VHS movie in September of 1996? $88.

I know I had to pay $90 for Batman.

[BankytheHack]

Wasn't Batman one of those rare sell thru titles?

[Judas Booth]

Originally Posted by BankytheHack

Wasn't Batman one of those rare sell thru titles?

I'm pretty sure that it was a sell-through title. I think that I bought it for around $15 when it hit video back in my college days.

[Egg]

Back when I was getting my first HDTV, I got talked into a Monster power strip. I think it was around $70.

For those who aren't into home theater, a Monster power strip is a device at Hi-Fi Buys that rips off your pants when you swipe your credit card at the register.

[BrianM]

I bought a panasonic portable dvd player before a long plane trip. It will only play about 1 of every 3 discs, and the battery lasts about 10 minutes longer than the one in my laptop.

Do any of you old fuckers remember VHS rewinders? I still don't understand that compulsion, but lots of my friends had them.

[Judas Booth]

Originally Posted by BrianM

Do any of you old fuckers remember VHS rewinders? I still don't understand that compulsion, but lots of my friends had them.

I remember them very well. We were all sold the lie that excessive use of the rewind button on your VCR would wear out the motor.

[HBarr]

I thought it was due to causing head damage (thereby causing tracking issues). I had one too. :frown:

[BadlyDrawnBagel]

My grandmother bought me a VHS rewinder at least three different years for Christmas. " I know how you like to look at your movies", she would slur each time.


She was a heavy drinker, you see, but that's no excuse.

[Rene (Mr.Eko)]

I've got a shit ton of dvds that I'm going to offload soon because I got suckered by those $4 sales or the always good excuse of "It's cheaper to buy than to rent"

I've posted about Big Lots, and it's treasure trove of $3 and $2 titles. There's a lot of good, and some crap.

Now I have to offload titles that are non-anamorphic since I've gotten an HDTV. Some are misprinted like Halloween H2O, and some are just shit like Be Kind Rewind. Yeah, I didn't like that flick.

I got Desperado on vhs back in '97 for $19.99 at SamGoody. I still can't fathom I spent that much for a vhs. Although at that same store I got the Munich 2 disc, so it's not all bad.

Back in 2007 my girlfriend bought me an HD-DVD player, but I'm proud of it, and I still pick up HD-DVDs. No regrets here.

[bendrix]

I went through two Minidisc players, a portable and a shelf unit, pretty much for the sole reason I loved that they displayed the track name while it was playing. (Yeah, I was late to the whole MP3 thing). I bought the portable new, the shelf unit at a garage sale. I ended up throwing the shelf unit down the stairs, not only because I was fed up that it had stopped working, but because I realized I was a fool for wasting cash on a format pretty much doomed from the start. I mean, I even bought prerecorded MDs.

I vowed never to be taken like that again. I was savvy now, wise to the wiles of the electronics hype machine. Which led me years later to ask my girlfriend to get me the HD-DVD add-on to the 360 for Xmas. Blu-Ray? I had been burned by Sony's proprietary formats already. And one month later, Toshiba announces they're discontinuing production.

My sole consolation: seeing ten copies of Samuel Jackson/Eugene Levy's The Man on UMD at Target. At least I missed that train to nowhere.

Originally Posted by Judas Booth

I'm pretty sure that it was a sell-through title. I think that I bought it for around $15 when it hit video back in my college days.

Yeah, this was the first movie I could ever afford to buy. 20 bucks--I can even remember the newspaper ad.

The Batman NES game, however, that was like $90 when it came out, I think. I never got to play it because it was always rented and there was no way in hell my parents would spend that much on a video game.

[TURBO-1984]

Originally Posted by Van Read

I bought a 32" JVC iArt CRT TV for my honeymoon (biggest, nicest TV that was better than anyone I knew had at the time (as Borat once said: King of de castle, king of de castle). Then about a 7 months later, the HDTV/flatscreen CRT craze hit.

I got the 27" version of this around 6-7 years ago. Half the reason that I haven't upgraded to an HD flat screen is that I dread having to lift it out of my TV cabinet.

[Martianman]

I have a Samsung 30" CRT HDTV in my bedroom that I'm currently trying to figure out how to get rid of and convince my wife to let me replace it with a 26" or 32" LCD. So I guess that's another one.

And ah, the mention of Monster products. I actually steer my non-Home Theater savvy friends away from Monster stuff. I think I bought a Monster S-Video cable years ago for like $45, then saw another S-Video cable at WalMart for like $6 a few days later. I then vowed to never buy Monster products again.

[TzuDohNihm]

Originally Posted by BrianM

I bought a panasonic portable dvd player before a long plane trip. It will only play about 1 of every 3 discs, and the battery lasts about 10 minutes longer than the one in my laptop.

Do any of you old fuckers remember VHS rewinders? I still don't understand that compulsion, but lots of my friends had them.

Originally Posted by Judas Booth

I remember them very well. We were all sold the lie that excessive use of the rewind button on your VCR would wear out the motor.

Originally Posted by HBarr

I thought it was due to causing head damage (thereby causing tracking issues). I had one too. :frown:

I had one simply so I could watch more movies at a time.

[Van Read]

Originally Posted by TURBO-1984

I got the 27" version of this around 6-7 years ago. Half the reason that I haven't upgraded to an HD flat screen is that I dread having to lift it out of my TV cabinet.

It's a fucking GREAT TV. Just out-dated

[Fafhrd]

Originally Posted by Barkatthemoon

I own:

King Kong: Extended Cut
The Frighteners: DC
Pathfinder UR
Pan's Labyrinth 2-disc
Terminator: SCC S1
Alexander Revisited
Mallrats: 10th Anniversary
Robocop: 20th Anniversary

Still in their original shrink wrap.

2 of these (arguably 4) do not belong in a 'crap' list.

[Pauly Shore's devil spawn]

I don't really use my PSP, but it has its uses on the occassional out-of-town trip we take.

As for my two HD-DVD players, I don't regret it one bit. I still buy HD-DVDs to this day for between $2-$5 a pop. A list of fantastic flicks I've bought on HD for a fraction of the blu-ray price:

-Fast Times at Ridgemont High
-Bourne Trilogy
-The Frighteners DC
-Unforgiven
-Enter the Dragon

... and probably about another 130 titles.