I vividly remember our family buying its first DVD player in the summer of 1998, when the technology was still relatively fresh, yet marketing for it was inescapable. 

We, like many other early adopters, took advantage of a promotion that got us free DVDs with our brand new (and surprisingly heavy) Pioneer DVD player. Unsurprisingly, the promotion would be aligned with a particular studio—we ended up kicking off our budding disc collection that day with a handful of Warner Brothers DVDs, all housed in the now detested “snapper” cases: The Fugitive, Twister, Eraser and Executive Decision. 

That same fateful day, I was also given the freedom to choose any DVD that I wanted from any store in our local shopping mall. It was with great excitement that I, at twelve years old, started building my personal DVD collection with a copy of Starship Troopers that I purchased from Suncoast Video. My life was never the same. 

Fast forward several decades and there has arguably never been a better time to collect physical film media than right at this very moment, as home video preservationists work to increase access to cinema’s storied history. 

Sure, there will always be titles that don’t make the leap from one format to another for a multitude of reasons (license agreements and availability of film elements being the most often cited). But in terms of sheer volume of unique releases on a monthly basis from boutique labels (not released by major studios or their affiliates) and the ground that those releases are covering in regards to creating the fullest picture possible of moving image heritage on a global scale, there is no time like the present. 

2023 is already a banner year in home video with filmmakers like Lukas Moodysson, Nina Menkes and Michael J. Murphy receiving exhaustive, career-encompassing sets from Arrow Video, Arbelos and Indicator, respectively. Add to that the upward trend of upgrading catalog titles to 4K UHD, with films as varied as The Slumber Party Massacre, Marathon Man, The Return of Swamp Thing, Marquis De Sade’s Justine, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Dazed and Confused all seeing UHD upgrades via boutique labels in the early months of 2023, and all via different labels, at that. 

But to explain why things are moving so quickly forward for film lovers, we need to jump back. 

In the years prior, those of us building up VHS libraries were at the mercy of previously viewed copies. We’d obtain these from our local video shops (major chains like Blockbuster or mom ‘n pop shops) after the new releases lessened in popularity and they had more tapes than they could possibly keep renting. Or, for a new VHS, we’d need to pay the price that rental shops were paying distributors, which could have you shelling out around $100 (or more) to own a popular title. But with DVD, you could go to your local Best Buy on September 21st, 1999 and buy The Matrix at the MSRP (or lower) of $24.98. 

More than two decades later and this is something we’re entirely accustomed to now, not to mention having various other avenues and nefarious platforming strategies for how movies are accessed digitally in addition to physically. 

But what DVD managed to do, even more so than VHS, was democratize home video collecting. With VHS, there was guesswork and even research involved with how to buy something, if it was even available, and the cost of entry could be steep on a per title basis (especially if your interests went outside of the mainstream and/or were international) but with DVD, retailers and studios alike saw a market that they didn’t with VHS, turning home video into something that was typically rented into a commodity posed to battle for precious shelf real estate in consumer’s homes, alongside books and CDs. 

It’s safe to say that for many, if not most, current-day home video collectors, DVD was the catalyst for their collections. There are plenty of people out there that did (and still do) collect VHS, LaserDisc and even other, more niche, formats like CED or Beta, but DVD saw a sea-change in not only how we collect home video but why we collect home video. 

LaserDisc offered the potential for ancillary materials like multiple audio tracks, extra features and even multiple cuts of the same film packaged alongside the theatrical release, with both major studios offering more lavish sets than their VHS counterparts alongside boutique labels like The Criterion Collection vying for both the money and respect of serious collectors. DVD took what had been happening for years, on a small scale, with LaserDisc, made it the norm and then expanded upon that until there was seemingly nowhere else to go. 

Flash forward fifteen years and we could be considered to be living in yet another Golden Age of home video. The HD wars are long behind us, Blu-ray has had a very healthy run (and is still going) and DVDs, at least for serious collectors, are a relic of the past (and the $5 bin at big box retailers).

The new format of choice for A/V enthusiasts is 4K UHD—which offers four times the amount of pixels as Blu-ray alongside HDR, giving an increased range in color—and the television sets and projectors and sound setups to go along with them. In fact, new market research suggests that the market for DVD and 4K Blu-ray players is only going to expand over the next five years.   

For people who care about presentation, there has never been a better time to collect physical media. And if the advantages in technical specifications weren’t enough, the floodgates have seemingly been opened for just about anything to get a luxurious disc release, from an ever-increasing plethora of boutique home video labels fulfilling desires of collectors around the world. 

In the heyday of DVD, the big name for home video enthusiasts was the Criterion Collection, a home video imprint that spawned out of the Voyager Company and was aligned with Janus Films, a theatrical distributor known for bringing world cinema to the US. Criterion was joined by the aforementioned Anchor Bay as well as boutique labels and distributors like Blue Underground, Kino Lorber, Tartan, Shout! Factory, Milestone Films, Mondo Macabro and more for DVD releases that combined offbeat curation with robust supplements and the AV presentation that collectors expected. 

Blu-ray expanded upon that greatly with an international roster of labels unearthing forgotten gems while also offering up seemingly definitive presentations of revered canonical staples. Labels like Arrow Video, Grindhouse Releasing, Second Sight, Indicator, Severin, Twilight Time, Olive Films and many more all contributed to the home video collector marketplace by bringing their own unique brand to the format. 

Now, in 2023, there is a dedicated label for just about anything a cinephile could want, with certain labels focusing on specific regions, eras, genres or modes of film production, leaving nary a stone unturned. Often overlooked, or even intentionally marginalized, filmmakers are finally getting their due, with unexpectedly comprehensive collections created for filmmakers like Ray Dennis Steckler, Andy Milligan and Al Adamson (all via Severin Films) and nearly unheard-of cult impresarios like The Ormond Family getting a similarly lavish treatment from Indicator this year. 

That this is happening alongside exhaustive boxed sets for revered, canonical, figures like Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Wong Kar-wai and Agnès Varda (all from Criterion Collection) allows these filmmakers to be put into context with one another, leveling the playing field for in depth study and, to an extent, the preservation of their work. 

It’s only now, with the current ecosystem of the multitude of home video labels, and the increased, dedicated audience for them, that things like this have become possible. 

It is happening at such a rapid rate that my consistently updated list of titles missing from Blu-ray that I’m personally longing for, is shrinking seemingly by the week. While not exhaustive, and admittedly based on personal taste, the list exists as evidence that not only are many films being released on a constant basis, but there will always be more where they came from. 

We also live in an era where the ability to connect with fellow collectors is increasingly easy. Dedicated collection tracking apps and forums, like those offered via blu-ray.com, and numerous blogs and podcasts devoted to covering the onslaught of home video releases on a weekly basis, ensure that the culture of home video is being embraced to a degree it has never been before. 

Here on Letterboxd, there is even a handy tool that gives Pro and Patron members members the ability to filter lists via ‘own’ and ‘owned’ tags, something I personally use on a daily basis. I easily created a list of my disc collection, tagged it as ‘owned’, and now when I browse films on the Letterboxd site or app, including user created lists, I can filter by titles I own. Here are some others, from Ruz-El, Leon Vegas, Darren Carver-Balsiger, Amanda, and this whopper of a list from Bat the Blu-ray Collector. It’s easy to find more avid collectors to follow via a simple search of the tags.   

The social connectivity and clever curation of the Letterboxd platform is thus merged with personal collections, erasing (or at least lessening) the need for cumbersome collection-tracking software—and allowing cinephilia and collection-building to exist in tandem. Plus, using the tags ‘own’ or ‘owned’ opens up extra features for subscribed members: the ability to show or hide films you own when browsing any Letterboxd lists, and for the forgetful, your own ownership status will show up in the “Where to Watch” panel, so you can take a walk to your shelves before you hit “rent”. 

Ultimately, anyone building a collection, big or small, public or private wants the same thing: for these films to be seen. And right now, whether you’re more interested in the films of the French New Wave luminaries or filmmaking in the gutters of ’70s Staten Island, there couldn’t be a better time to be a home video collector or an avid cinephile.