By the Numbers: A Look at My Digital Movie Collection

After I posted How Much is Too Much which discussed my feeling overwhelmed with the amount of media I have to consume, my buddy Michael wrote a post about Fanflix has been a bad thing for him. Almost daily, Michael and I exchange texts on whatever Fanflix's latest deal is. We've both have built up our digital collections, thanks in part to these discounted titles, and it made me wonder exactly how many digital movie titles I own. So, this morning, I cross references Fandango at Home, Apple TV, and YouTube to see the number.

Now, before I unveil this I do need to preface it with a few facts.

1. Most of my digital copies originated from the old Vudu Disc to Digital (Note: Apparently this still exists!). Back years ago, you could take your DVD or blu-ray, put it in your computer, and then pay $1-$2 to obtain a digital copy of a disc you already owned. This was the backbone of my collection early on.
2. Prior to the closure of pretty much all video stores, there was an aftermarket for digital titles that weren't used by video stores when they bought DVDs. So, there used to be a series of websites where you could buy new digital copies for anywhere from one dollar to ten dollars, and I bought quite a few copies of random films just because they were so cheap ten years ago.
3. My collection was once shared with my ex. In fact, the last thing she ever said to me was how mad she was that I was keeping all the digital movies. Ha! So, in my collection, there are quite a few titles I don't care about at all. Things that I would never watch, so that skews my data some.

Already, onto the numbers.

Total Number of Digital Movies Owned: 547
Total Number of Movies I've Watched: 382
Total Number of Movies I'd Rewatch: 130
Total Number of Movies I Own That I Haven't Watched, but Want to Watch: 47
Total Number of Movies I Have No Desire to Watch: 117

The 117 films that I have no desire to watch consists of movies that were my ex's, movies that came with bundles, or movies that I started but ended up not liking and turned off. So, if we remove these titles, which no doubt skew my data, we can get a new set of numbers that better reflect where I stand with this digital movie backlog.

Total Number of Digital Movies Owned: 429
Total Number of Movies I've Watched: 382 (89% of the films)
Total Number of Movies I'd Rewatch: 130 (30% of the films)
Total Number of Movies I Own That I Haven't Watched, but Want to Watch: 47 (10%)

So, what are my thoughts. First off, holy shit. I had no idea I owned that many digital movies. I mean, I knew it was over 300, although I feel like its only 150, but damn.... 547 or 429 films depending on how you look at it. That's nuts.

I was impressed that I have watched 90% of the films from the second set of data, which leaves me only 10% of films that are unwatched. I'd rewatch about a third of the films which isn't too bad.

What this digital collection doesn't account for are the movies I have on my Plex or the movies that are consistently rotating on and off my Plex which would put this number significantly higher. Also, at least for some of the Fandango at Home movies, they are in standard definition which leads me to seek the title out elsewhere. About a month ago, I turned on Final Destination 4 to watch with my wife and I had to turn it off because it looked so terrible. I ended up booting up HBO Max and watched it in HD.

On a bright note, if I own the SD version on Fandango at Home and it's a Movie Anywhere title, Apple automatically upgrades it to HD and even 4K. So, I spend most of my time watching movies through Apple TV so I can have the best quality.

I've tried to be more selective in what I purchase digitally these days. I'm not too concerned about things disappearing since I don't buy from small companies and in the past twenty years I've yet to lose anything digitally, and if I do, I'm not too mad about it. When I worked at Blockbuster in 2001, a rental price for a film was $4.21 with tax included. That got you a new release that was due back by midnight the next evening. If you were to scale those rental fees towards what I've paid digitally, I've made out like a bandit renting these films for years and years.

I try to be more selective because I'd rather snag something to watch on my Plex if possible. I make exceptions for titles that are hard to find, which most recently has been television shows. Maybe, I'll follow this post up with a look at my digital TV collection (which is MUCH, MUCH smaller). For example, I recently picked up The Mary Tyler Moore Show because I was watching it on Hulu and then they got rid of it. It wasn't streaming anywhere else, and so when I saw it on sale for $15, I snagged it. Its a fair price and I'm enjoying exploring the world of Mary Richards and all her kooky neighbors and co-workers.

So, I guess the question is, do I focus on watching that last ten percent? Would I feel better about my backlog if I did? I'm not really sure, since I'm still rumbling with some of this, but it's nice to see the numbers and have options.

(If for some reason you are curious what movies are in my collection, I pasted the spreadsheet I used to collect this information onto a page you can see here.)