In this digital era, few people buy films in physical form. Yet over the last year or so, I have been steadily building a Breg House Film collection, entirely in DVD format.

Why?

Well, though Breg House is not entirely ‘off-grid’ (it is spring fed and has its own septic tank, but runs off mains electricity) I have so far refrained from installing a Wi-Fi connection. It would be possible to do so – the neighbours have internet – but I prefer to keep it unconnected, meaning disconnecting from the real world is easier.

Therefore, on those rainy autumn evenings, or those icy winter nights, when I’m sat in the wooden lounge, tending my Piazzetta wood stove, I wanted to have a library of films that I love, ready on hand.

You might ask why I don’t simply use a streaming service like Netflix or Amazon Prime to download movies and watch them on my laptop. Well, unfortunately, unlike the music industry, where there is now a single source providing almost any track I want, there is yet to be the equivalent of Spotify for film.

On the contrary, things are getting worse; the film streaming landscape is becoming ever more fragmented with the arrival of various competing services, each with their own set of content.

So you now have to subscribe to several services depending on which network currently owns the rights to the film or TV show you happen to want to watch. It seems that for the foreseeable future at least, we will experience a heavily fractured streaming landscape, with no (legal) single source of film.

And the fact is, many films – especially older, classic movies – are not available on Netflix, or Amazon Prime Video as part of their subscription offering.

Let’s take a few examples of movies I’ve recently wanted to watch: Apocalypse Now, Terminator (1 and 2), The Full Monty, Princess Mononoke, Alien, District 9, Seven Samurai, Gattaca, Moonrise Kingdom (I could go on..) – at the time of writing, none of these films were available to watch as part of the Amazon Prime Video or Netflix subscription.

So, on top of the internet connection requirement, and the need to pay a subscription to these services, you also have the ownership question. Netflix has steadily reduced its selection of films over the years and turned to producing its own content, as the licence for said films has expired and been re-acquired by networks who are now launching their own streaming services.

Whilst Netflix does produce some great TV series stuff of its own, often I just want to watch a specific film, and if it’s not on Netflix or Amazon prime video – I can’t. With a DVD, I have the film forever. Aside from loss or damage, I’ll be able to watch that film for years to come. With streaming services, a film can be available this month, gone the next.

Marry all this with the fact that in the UK, you can walk into any charity shop and find a healthy selection of DVDs starting from 50p, and it means that building a curated collection of films I love (and some I want to watch but just somehow never got round to seeing) is the cheapest, most sensible (and most fun), option. So whilst the CD really is now almost entirely redundant, the DVD lives on.

And finally – there’s just something nice about being able to browse a film collection in physical form.

Hence, I encourage all Breg House visitors to bring a DVD or two (as long as I don’t have it already) to help build The Mightly Breg House Film Collection, which hosts the largest selection of English language movies in the entire realm of Koroška. Probably.