Will you buy an HD movie, even if you already own the DVD version?

I still have some VHS tapes lying around. But I no longer own a VCR player. I think when the last one broke a couple year ago, I didn't really see the need to replace it. If I take the time to total up all the money I've spent on home video over the past 20 something years, i'm sure it would amount to a small fortune. I've owned several versions of my favorite movies too. First there was the original release of the movie, then the special edition, then in the 90's they came out with "Digitally Remastered," and now the boxset craze. I think that makes 4 copies total. Shameful really! I'm guilty of buying into marketing several times over.

I know of a few people that went crazy once they figured out how to rip and burn DVD's. Film's that they'd never watch again, but they still owned a copy of it. Then there's the impulse buys at the local electronic stores. You go in for one thing, and you walk out with three or four reduced sale price DVD's. Two were bought intentionally, and the last one caught your eye in the checkout line. One DVD for $9 doesn't sound bad at all. But "times 3" =$27, which might at least make you do a double take.

When the HD formats first came out, I was watching every and any HD title I could get my hands on. I knew that "House of Flying Daggers" was rated as one of the worst Blu Ray titles available, but I still watched it. The reviews were right, I think the DVD had a better transfer. Once I'd gotten over this excitement phase, I became a little more grounded. But enter a new problem that we didn't have before. Some movies look so amazing that you just have to watch it. I watched "Happy Feet" on Blu Ray over the weekend. The story was quite good, and overall fairly entertaining, with some funny moments. BUT the picture quality was incredible! I can honestly say that it's the best animation I've ever seen! A film like this may warrant a place in my collection, just because it LOOKS amazing. There's a long list of titles that fall in this category. Films I have NO interest in, but found myself renting from Blockbuster online, just because they were available. Thankfully, I've since caught myself, and returned to normal.

The difference between DVD and HD is immense. But I still hear some people say that they're content with DVD and have no intention of investing in HD, or even that they simply don't see the difference! In their defense, I've seen some DVD's of late that had such a good transfer, it could have been classed as a bad HD flick. But for most of those comments, I put it down to either an astigmatism or not having a trained eye in any sense of the phrase (joke, by the way). Even if you have low end HD equipment, the difference in picture quality changes the entire experience. I will say though, that the one thing I AM still guilty of, is waiting for the HD-DVD or Blu-Ray version of a movie to come out, and ignoring the DVD release. But as far as buying the same movies over again that I already own on DVD, I've learnt my lesson from the previous formats. I won't be buying up HD movies unless I honestly see myself watching it over and over again. I'd expect that in 10 years time when Ultra-HD becomes a standard, I will own a fairly small, but triumphantly commendable HD collection.....Yeah right, who am I kidding? Have you seen the picture quality on Harry Potter?............