Finally Using My DVDs

Stub • 349 Words • Physical Media, 2026 • 01/21/2026

⚠️ This post contains a rougher cut of my thoughts on the topic and may be updated in the future. Please forgive any mistakes or lack of polish!

I grew up watching some things on VHS but quickly transitioned into DVDs for most of my childhood. However for most of my teenage years Netflix and other streaming services rose in power. I also just didn’t really watch as many movies back then, its more of a recent development that has turned into a hobby of sorts for me.

In my Goals for 2026, I stated that I wanted to watch more of my DVDs because I started collecting a bit before my watching. For instance, while my parents got rid of all of our old VHS tapes, but we did have some DVDs still lying around that I grabbed, especially any nostalgic Disney films that they had.

I only have two small complaints, but I think it is mainly a symptom of the player that I chose.

  • I like knowing how long is left in a movie and that has been a bit hard to figure on my player.
    • On one movie that I’ve played so far it had a custom playbar, but not all of them have this.
    • I’ve heard that on Sony players if you hold fast forward you can see the time, but I don’t want to have to do that and lose my place.
  • My remote ergonomics pause/play buttons are kind of annoying. Why can’t it be one button?! Play is much larger than pause too.

The rest of the experience I am really happy with!

  • I was worried about picture quality primarily, especially for non Blu-ray, but I think my player has upscaling because the widescreen filled my screen and didn’t look too bad at all.
  • Pausing doesn’t show advertisements.
    • This is a new development on streaming platforms, one that is super annoying and just plain greedy.
  • There’s a subtitle button on the remote instead of having to navigate slightly different menus on various streaming services.
    • It was a surprise for me that this button was there or that subtitles were included in the movies. I think I never really started using it until streaming because of TikTok and bad audio mixing.

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