My Bogie Beginning

Euphonies come hard to old men. I can attest to that.
For 23 years I have been collecting films, coming in
late and missing the laser disc, betamax options. I
came to love the VHS format, wearing out several
VCR's with taping and playing. I taped TV series I
liked, like a complete X-FILES, and movies without
commercials off American Movie Classics, HBO,
Showtime, the Movie Channel, Fox Movies, and
then when AMC sold out, and began to show
commercials to stay alive, I switched over to
Turner Movie Classics.

Five years ago I had more than 25,000 titles
in my collection. I had shelves built in the basement,
floor to ceiling, using up all 1400 square feet of
room, putting in rolling shelves on casters, and
covering up my old fireplace that we hadn't used
in years. I switched over to DVD's, and somehow
braved the ridiculous war between Blue Ray and
High Def brands. Now I have over 5,000 movies
on DVD, and just bought a 42" Sanyo HD flat
screen to show them on.

I have fretted for years about how to save the
tens of thousands of VHS copies, over half of
them compressed into 6 hour tapes, put on
black VHS tapes. The bugaboo is that those
pieces of equipment that are available for
transcribing the old analog imagery to
the more permanent digital image can only
do so in real time. I have retired, but I could
not live long enough to transcribe all those
movies.

Then I got serious and brought in a computer
whizz, who happened to be a movie buff too.
He talked to me about thinking outside the
box, about only saving digital remastered
copies of my favorite films. He helped me to
purchase the equipment I needed, a huge
8TB new hard drive to back up my Mac,
and a Elgato Eye TV Hybrid that will run
between the VCR and the new hard drive.

But then I began to screen some of those
old VHS tapes, the compressed copies,
and they looked terrible. The commercial
VHS tapes are "Watchable" but the 3 on
1's were really rife with drop out and faded
images. SO I woke up one morning and
decided that I would only save the
already digitized films, the DVD copies,
into my computer, and onto the behemoth
8TB beauty. So I am now having the cathartic
experience of culling through the VHS tapes
and deciding what to keep, and what to trash.
Technology never sleeps and it takes no
prisoners.

So I am sort of starting over with my movie
collecting, finding DVD remastered copies
of classic films and putting them on my
new hard drive; making the important
distinction between physically owning a
box or a case with a movie in it, or cyber
owning movies that I have "access" to whenever
I want. It certainly solves the space issue.

My new collection will start with the films of
Humphrey Bogart. Most of his films are now
remastered and available. I do have 10 of them
that are still only on VHS, and I will keep those
on the collection. Shopping bags of old VHS
tapes are heading to the trash, or to friends.
Bogie is my new beginning. In tribute I hunted
up 300 images from the films I have of his. Enjoy: