Watching my collection of DVDs

The TV I inherited from Mum and Dad in 2009 - an early panel affair on its own stand, which needed a base unit on which to perch, with VHS and DVD players underneath - is now in my garage awaiting a trip to the tip. As are the base and those players. The entire kit - long outmoded - made way for a far more useful pine table and six chairs last year.

But suddenly I had nothing to play my collection of DVDs on, a mixture of box sets and single discs, many of them classic films or TV series that will go on standing the test of time, and remain watchable, for years ahead. Stuff that, at intervals, I will play on a free night when I don't need (or want) to edit photos, write a blog post or read a book. 

My DVD collection isn't all that big, but I missed watching them on the TV screen almost at once. Whereas - with only one or two winter-season exceptions - I haven't missed the programmes on the various TV channels at all. 

As an alternative, I couldn't simply slide out a DVD tray on my laptop, and insert a disc. Such things went out years ago, so that laptops could be thinner. My Microsoft Surface Book - bought as long ago as 2016 - had no DVD disc tray. And naturally my Asus ProArt P16 laptop - bought late last year - has no tray either. But I knew there was a solution: buy an external disc drive. 

When I looked into it, I was surprised how inexpensive external DVD drives were. I had noticed only Blu-Ray drives in the past, which play both Blu-Ray and DVD discs, and cost around £100, depending on brand and the features. But now I realised that a reasonable DVD-only drive cost much less. So that's what I went for early last month, ordering one from Argos, to pick up at the not-far-away Sainsbury's Local the following afternoon. The price was only £37. It was an Asus ZenDrive U9M. So it ought to be especially compatible with my current laptop.

It came with USB-A and -C cables - I chose the USB-C cable - and all I had to do was plug it into the laptop, after installing a third-party DVD player. Gemini recommended VLC Media Player, which was free, so that's what I downloaded and installed. It wasn't a stylish-looking player, but it did its job well, and I soon had one of my DVD films ready to go, as a test. 

It ran faultlessly with no glitches whatever. The picture was crisp and beautiful on the 3K sixteen-inch laptop screen, and the sound quality was good. Definitely a better experience than I used to have on the 2008-vintage TV panel! I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Bruce Lee doing his stuff: Enter the Dragon must be one of the very best martial arts films ever made. I'm now working through my box set of Jason Bourne films. 

After Bourne, maybe the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Then something lighter. Classic fare, all of it. The Asus DVD player is light, and almost the size and shape of the average DVD disc box, and can be 'filed away' neatly on the same shelving. I can see it will be easy to live with, and of course it's portable. I can use it in any room of my house, and take it on my caravan holidays too (and have done so, already, although I had no time to play anything).

One extra viewing refinement at home would be a dedicated flat surface at the right height, to place the laptop and DVD player on when watching. Some kind of folding table, I'd say. At the moment I'm improvising. But I'll look for the right thing in a shop. Maybe I have it already: the small folding table in the caravan.  

I wondered whether I was chasing an old-fashioned and almost-dead way of watching films I liked. So I asked Gemini about the future of DVDs. It confirmed that they are certainly obsolete, but not at all dead. Apparently there is niche (and growing) army of enthusiasts for 'analogue' ways of viewing films, and a thriving second-hand market. And new DVDs are still available, at least for now. So anything I can't find new on Amazon or in HMV should be obtainable in good used condition - and inexpensively. Well, then: I'll expand my collection!

The advantage of owning a physical disc, as against streaming, is that once paid for there is no further expense. No subscription to keep going. No issues with the film becoming unavailable to stream. No advertisements. And there is always the option of copying the film into one's own mobile storage, as you would do if ever DVD drives were no longer sold. 

I'm not a retro fan for the sake of it, only if there is some advantage in cost or convenience, or something special in the usage experience. It seems to me that for the time being DVDs still make sense.