here's is how my dvd collection came to be. my first dvd like half the population was the Matrix DVD. I didn't really get a good deal ($11.99). And it was my only DVD for a few months. I didn't have a DVD player and watched all the DVDs with great pain on my computer. The software was really buggy and you were lucky if you can go through the whole movie without it crashing on you once. Only place that rented DVDs out at the time was Hollywood video. It was a descent drive from my place considering i lived about a block away from 2 Blockbusters. Then came January 2000. Some newspaper article has accidentally published rumors about how you can sign up for a $400 discount at BestBuy and then cancel it without any penalties. It sounded too good to be true. And without much thought, I decided to jump on it. It was quite an experience trying to get rid of $400. I got a glimpse of what the contestants feel in those TV shows where they can basically can have anything you want, as long as it fits in your cart. Money wise, walking out with about 400lbs of prime/choice aged filet mignon would be a good decision but not a good decision. first off, they might not have it in the quantity they are looking for. 2, where are you going to store all that extra meat? It's a unique feeling that only a very lucky few get to experience. What I walked out with was a $250 DVD player, $100 of CDRs (100 CDRs), a $20 optical audio cable, 2 DVDs (~$15 each), and a pack of gum to push me right at $400 and some change. i realized what a horrible decision that was. even at the time you could have gotten 100 CDRs for about $40 if you shopped around. But while i was shopping that day, it was all free to me, so it did not occur to me that $100 for 100 CDs was a bad deal. What I should have gotten was a performance guarentee for the DVD player. The DVD player broke within 6 months, and they told me that without a performance guarentee, it would cost me $120 for a diagnosis, and the parts were even out of warrenty after 6 months...then additional money to fix the damn thing. so i said screw it and chucked the "free" dvd player. the 3 years of internet service was easy to cancel. i never even logged in. and you can cancel over touch-tone. it couldn't have been easier to pull off. the promotion was cancelled next morning (some earlier) as lines of people were dismissed at best buy. i had convinced nguyen, dan, my sister, erik to take advantage of it the same day so they got in on it too. it was later revealed that the paper that had published the article was wrong. but microsoft decided to honor the madness anyway.



it was also during this time that i had found 2 websites. bensbargains.net and dvdtalk.com. not much goes on these websites any more. but exactly 2 years ago, there were some awesome coupons going around. so many media retail stores couldn't wait to give you free stuff. buy.com had a bunch of $20 off $20 coupons. 800.com had some fantastic deals. so did reel.com, cdnow.com, bolt.com, dvduniverse.com, myfamily.com, amazon.com to name a few. it is obvious why to see that most of these sites have gone under. one deal that i wish i could have gotten in on was the 800.com's 3 DVDs for 1cent promotion. other than that, I did pretty good. i had kept stats on my dvd collection and how much money i had through my dvdtracker account. I was averaging about $7 per DVD. many for free. 1-8 DVDs were showing up daily in different sized boxes at my door step. it was great. one other promotion worth mentioning was the microcenter promotion. basically if you sign up for a etrade account at microcenter, you get $400 cash back. so i bought $400 of DVDs at Tustin, CA one weekend. it was a bit of a hassle getting that $400 cash back, but I did get it eventually. And I put it back in etrade they got the last laugh. so in theory, the free DVDs actually costed me $1400 ($1000 was required to start the etrade account). i stopped using dvdtracker when they started charging for their services. and as the dot coms imploded, the deals ran dry...also explains how you can turn $1400 to into $0.07 when you invest in a .com. the end result was about 140 DVDs averaging $7-$8 each within 6 months of buying online.



i have bought about 50 DVDs since then (1.5 years ago till now). now, i get all my dvd's in retail stores. with the big releases (starwars2, beauty&beast, monster's inc, spiderman), you can't beat the mega franchises like bestbuy, kmart, walmart, circuit city, compusa when they decide to offer the DVDs for 33%-50% of the retail price for a promotion. i have 193 DVDs now. I regret buying a handful of them. And some I only have because they were giving them away. I still consider it my hobby but I'm a lot more picky about what I put into my collection.