Oops Kinza too late. I went out and bought a maple two-drawer filing cabinet for $120 CAN. There was three friggen hours of assembly, including many curses and beers. The filing area per drawer was about 26" wide by 16" deep, wide enough for four rows of sleeved DVDs. I even did the carpentry thing with an 8' length of 4" by 1/2" pine .. cut into six pieces about 16" long to serve as row dividers. The cabinet looks like it was made for a DVD collection, everything fits so well. My collection of 900 DVDs fills six rows, loosely. Looks to me like it will hold close to 1500 in total in all eight rows, packed snugly, all in a unit about 18" deep by 28" wide by 30"? high. By vinyl-sleeving the DVDs I can (1) store alphabetically (2) update easily (3) minimize storage space (4) carry DVDs around safely. I keep newly time-shifted DVDs in a separate binder (now maybe 70 of them) and bulk-update the cabinet every couple of months, at which time I also update an EXCEL spreadsheet that I print out for easy reference. Any standard letter-sized (8.5 x 11) filing cabinet will hold two rows of sleeved DVDs (with skinny divider) at say 10 movies per inch per row of drawer depth, so a three drawer unit with usable 20" deep drawers will hold ~ 10x2x3x20 or 1200 movies.
Rule of thumb for me: the cost of printing labels on DVDs or storing them should not cost more than the DVDs themselves. I spend less than 30 cents per DVD disc. It kills me that I even have to spend 10 cents for a slim case much less a storage cabinet for them.
OK let's see I'm currently using DAXONs (BenQ brand) which in my experience are as good as ANY media, and God knows I've tried a lot of brands. The 8X version burns effortlessly at 16X, scores 93+ EVERY time on Nero, ZERO coasters out of hundreds, plays on everything, as good as anything including TYs and Verbatim which I also have. They cosr me $60 CAN for 200 ... $0.30 CAN each. After I have stuffed the cabinet with say 1500 movies, and the cabinet cost $120, and sleeves cost $.06 each, that's $0.14 each, in storage costs. Total cost per movie is $0.44 CAN. LOL current exchange rate with US makes that about $0.35 US .. pretty damned close to your standard, and mine are all stored nicely and off the floor
dbennion, Just curious, where do you buy your vinyl sleeves from? I have been looking for something other than paper sleeves. From the sites I have looked at, I only see paper sleeves for the most part.
Got them here http://www.blankmedia.ca/ but it's a Canadian site, and I notice they only have paper in stock right now. Coincidently I was in Futureshop yesterday (Futureshop is owned by Best Buy CAN, but operates independently) and bought two 100-packs of vinyl sleeves ... the last two ... at $7.95 each I think. That site was selling at $6 I think. Subtract 20% for US comparison. Yes paper sleeves are easier to find for sure.
Hey dbennion, Just curious, the sleeves you have, are they clear or do they have a cloth lining in the sleeve for the data side to be up against, similar to a binder.
Cloth lining both sides on a middle panel, two sided, perfect for movies I copy to two blanks, clear vinyl so I can see the titles I scribble on the disks. Futureshop in Canada has them in stock at 100 for $8.99 CAN (maybe $7.50 US). I usually pay less that that. http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/pr...2&sku_id=0665000FS10037924&catid=&newdeptid=2
100 slim cases (50 black, 50 multi-colored) at Staples for $12.44 in most areas. Warning - the case weighs a ton.
Thanks for that info; good price for cases. The slim plastic cases, for me, have two defects, but it depends on your collection and how you use it. I'm guessing those are 1-disk cases, and I copy to two blanks most movies that won't fit onto one blank without compression. I like to keep 100% of the original movie quality, for when I decide to plunge into the 60" HDTV market. The two-disk sleeves are perfect for me ... none of that "hey where the F is part 2 of Godfather?" The other issue is one of volume. I have 900 movies, and simple storage space becomes a problem. I can probably stuff about twice the number of movies into the same row using sleeves.
Slim cases are fine if you dont have 1000+ movies you want to store and organize, taking up as little space as possible.
All of the slim cases I have used will hold 2 DVDs at once. I don't think I put too much pressure on the DVDs when I squeeze them into one case - at most, the same pressure the DVDs near the bottom of a new spindle would have. I too like to split movies onto 2 DVDs to keep the quality for my big screen.
This site http://www.blankmedia.ca/ has some two-sided plastic sleeves at $6 CAN about $5 US, per 100.
