“Make room-Make Room”

Personal visual collection 'de-selection'.

This past week in our area we finally have most of the ‘digital TV channels’ and we are enjoying the choice. Many people we know are ‘upgrading’ their hardware, skipping a generation or two in the upgrade. My background music this morning is from Channel 10, a channel new in our area.

I also had a conversation with JB about new DVD’s he has and where should he store them. And this started a discussion again about “purchasing digital” and not having storage concerns, but that is another days post.

We have not ‘deselected’ for a while, actually since we moved last and this is nearly 10 years.

I began thinking about some of the criteria we use for de-selection at work. One is, how often something is used in the past 10 years. Coupled with this thinking is the fact I am a pack rat, and never throw anything out, ‘in case’, I do believe I should at least ‘Make room’ for JB’s new DVDs, in a place other then the floor in the lounge room.

The videos have to go… many are just TV recording for time shift and we need the space. Some may need migration to DVD if they are of family significance such as children’s birthdays, weddings etc. but otherwise they need to be de-selected. This outdated format is space hogging and rapidly moving towards a situation of no ‘playback’ hardware as our player/recorder will not be replaced. We still have one of the models that had a DVD player and a video recorder/player combination.

The main reasons we haven’t completely ‘gone digital’ in this household has been reluctance to rid ourselves of ‘favorite’ programmes in older formats that may not be replaceable and costs involved with the whole changeover process. Oh, and pure laziness while we still have the playback hardware. It also was the case that some movies or series were not as easy to purchase, in newer formats and some things may never be migrated if there is not a ‘market’ for the changeover.

The thing is no-one in this household uses this format now, or hardly ever! We all view online or digital and DVD in computers or other means. Time shifting of programs is not a problem as most channels time shift for you, online. If it were not for the fact we were looking for a copy of a movie we couldn’t purchase, at that point, I would not have remembered we had most of them.

Having a household that wasn’t ‘born digital’ with ‘digital natives’ living in it creates funny situations, as with my daughters reaction to the videos when I unearthed them to look for ‘Fern Gully’ to show her, how like ‘Avatar ‘ the story line was. ‘What are those, they are dusty and old and didn’t we have it on DVD?’ DVD itself, now an ‘old’ but current format and will probably for the generation after her, be her ‘old dusty collection’.

My plan of action is to make a list of items I believe ‘I needs’ to keep (pack rat again), and then see if I can get a new format copy, before ditching the old, much like at work. I still worry about my Aussie movie collection and wonder if I can replace them all, as larger foreign markets have bigger demand, however I realize I need to “make room”.

This makes me wonder if I will feel the same about migrating formats with favourite books to digital. Oh no, running away from that question to watch “Paperback Hero” on video. :-)

@kalgrl
#blogeverydayforjune