I would like to hear how other fans have organized/converted their episode collections. I still have all the episodes on VHS sitting in my childhood bedroom closet (except for ONE tape that was lost, with Gunslinger, Lassie, & I Accuse My Parents – so only Lassie is really “lost”) – the task of converting them is SO daunting! How have people gone about this? Or is it ok to just leave them on VHS forever – is there a time limit on video quality of that? I’d love to hear people’s suggestions.
Well, to start with, here’s my shelf.
All the Rhino sets are together on the top right. The rest are in DVD slimline cases, in order, starting with the KTMAs at the top left and ending with episode 1013 on the second shelf on the right. The Shout! Factory disks have been removed from their sets and filed, in episode order, among the recorded DVDs. The third shelf is Cinematic Titanic, (prerecorded) RiffTrax and Film Crew DVDs along with miscellaneous stuff. The bottom shelf is CDs with RiffTraxes on them. Scattered on top of them and jammed on the right are bad movies for riffing later.
My collection was once much larger in terms of bulk. Back then I had every episode from season 2-10 on its own VHS tape at SP speed. I taped the season 2-6 eps during the wondrous summer of 1995, when Comedy Central ran every episode, in order, at midnight, on a nightly basis. What a boon. My original season 1 tapes were three episodes per tape, EP speed — back then who knew they’d be so precious?! I was looking to save tape in those days!)
The result was about 200 VHS tapes (some of which dated back to 1990)! I moved several times after I assembled it. Packing it up and carefully moving it was a nightmare.
Eventually the jumble of unlabeled or only partially labeled tapes became too much and I bought a Seiko label printer and special spine labels (I still have a couple of boxes of spine labels somewhere, though the label printer broke a long time ago) and made neat labels with the spaghetti ball on each one. Only a few are left–check the third shelf on the right, next to Bender, to see what they looked like.
A few years ago DVD recorders finally got cheap enough and I broke down and bought one, and began the long process of converting every single dang episode that wasn’t on DVD. I chose DVD+R, by the way. I’m just a positive guy. :-) DVD experts are free to tell me if I chose incorrectly. The process took months but I finally got it all done. As part of the process, the first thing I did with each tape was fast-forward it to the end and then rewind it to the beginning. I’m told this kind of “wakes it up” and helps it play cleanly. Many of them hadn’t been played in more than a year. However, I should note that doing that caused five or six of them to break off the reel at one end or the other, requiring me to open the tape up and gently use scotch tape to reattach the tape to the reel. I got pretty good at it after a couple of times. Only one tape was actually broken: completely frozen tight and unplayable. It’s at moments like that that we depend on the kindness of fellow MSTies. A good friend sent me a replacement.
I did some quick Googling and the authoritative sites I saw said that VHS tapes are supposed to last 20-25 years under proper storage conditions (in their case, standing on end, not too much humidity, etc.). My oldest ones were about 15 years old and they had not always been very well cared for. Anybody with expertise on the care and feeding of VHS is welcome to chime in.
So, what about you? Tell us about your collection and how you built it. If you started on tape, have you converted to DVD? How did that go? One issue you have to face when you do that is the issue of “include the commercials or not?” I included them, seeing them as a bit of history to be preserved. What did you do?
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Essentially, my description is about the same as yours. I first taped, have a bunch of VHS and then went digital by downloading to various storage devices. VHS is sort of like 8 track tapes archaic and endearing. I do have my digitals loaded on DVDs as a backup. Certainly go digital for the flexibility.
I’ve got my stand-alone Rhino dvds, all the Rhino box-sets that then continue into the Shout Factory dvd sets. That’s followed by the Film Crew dvds and finally my Rifftrax dvd collection (of which I just got in the 2 new shorts collection). I have a couple of very old VHS tapes I made during the Sci-Fi channel days, but I have dumped most of them as the episodes I had are now on my dvd collections. That’s pretty much it…
I use the complete DVD set of Full House and Mr Belvedere as book ends for all my MST3K episodes.
I still have all my VHS tapes (purchased and personally recorded) as well as the boxes my DVD collection came in, but I have the discs organized by episode number in a 200-disc carrying case. It makes finding specific episodes much faster/easier.
About five years ago, I bought an analog-to-digital converter transfer all the personally recorded tapes to DVD on my computer — a very time consuming process, but an enjoyable one as well, since I was “forced” to watch all the episodes again.
I also have about 60 episodes converted to mp4 (with chapter breaks) on my computer. That’s another project that will consume a few hours a week for quite a while to complete.
Well I only own The Essentials with Manos and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians on DVD. I also have Shorts Vol 1 on VHS somewhere in the house. But the small amount of items I have doesn’t mean I’m not a big fan. I usually just go down to my public library and check out episodes from time to time.
I never had any episodes on VHS. When I spent most of my time at ‘home’ I had every episode from the KTMA years to Diabolik on DVD, on their own rack, in episodic order. I own every commercially-available ep, then I rip them to preserve the original. I obtained the other episodes through DAP.
Since I’m a truck driver and now spend 99.5% of my time on the road, I donated the entire collection to a friend and carry the complete collection on a couple of portable hard drives that go with me in the truck :grin: I do the same thing with any other DVDs I buy…space is at a premium in my truck, naturally. Just to make it clear, I’m ethical about it..I only rip DVDs I actually OWN.
Here’s a photo of my collection.
http://www.pixavid.com/lDK17H/
Yep, I know, it’s impressive.
I only got a DVD player in the last year or so and it is monoplized by my 4 yr old’s Little Einsteins, and Jay Jay the Jet Plane DVDs. I would like to expand my MST DVD collection beyond my copy of MST: the Essentials but everytime I’m going to the garage door opener breaks or my wife announces Zach outgrew all of last summer’s clothes but she’s found a nice lot of shorts on E-bay. Oh well.
Anyway, I have most of the Sci-Fi years and a lot of the Joel era syndicated ones from 94-95 on VHS and a few store bought episodes like Red Zone Cuba and the movie. I had Pod People but haven’t seen it in a long time. The worst thing I ever did with them was try copying some of my Joel ones, editing out the ads. I made a couple of really poor copies and then copied over my original Amazing Colossal Man with, get this, a Earth: Final Conflict. Why oh why!
I still watch my VHS. I watched some of Track of the Moon Beast last night before I fell asleep in my home (I call it Antiseptic Manor).
Oh! Some advice please. When copying digital to dvd disc, for space considerations, I would copy 4-5 episodes per disc. Although I can view them on my puter, my dvd player will not play them. What gives? Thanks.
It sounds like you need to “finalize” the disk. I know on my vcr/dvd combo, the disk will not play in anything else unless you finalize.
If you’re doing it on your computer, it may be the age of your dvd player. I know my family has a couple older dvd players that will not play dvdr disks very well if at all.
Len-yes they have been finalized. However, the player was purchased just prior to the advent of recording dvds. No wonder it was on sale, thanks.
I’ve got every retail DVD volume and individual releases. The rest of my colletion is a hodgepodge of various online vendors and Dapcentral.org. All episodes and pretty much any special you can think of I’ve got in some digital format. Mostly DVD.
These days my collection is boxed up and my DVDs sit ripped on a 1TB networked hard drive. I can view any episode at any time across my house over a wireless connection in the best quality that a consumer can find.
My only wishes for my collection at this point are that I would have liked for the series to still be in production today and the fan copies of unreleased episodes to all be in broadcast quality.
I wasn’t able to watch MST3K until my cable company at the time picked-up the Sci-Fi Channel in 1997. I started taping episodes around 98/99 when the future of the show was in doubt, so I missed taping quite a few episodes from the last three seasons. I picked-up most of the commercially released VHS tapes when they came-out, and then the DVD sets as they were released (had to sell them recently, unfortunately … “hard times”).
I have converted many of the episodes I taped to DVD, cutting-out most of the commercials, leaving in ones like the supervillainous “driveway.com”. I’ve also transferred the store-bought tapes to DVD because VHS doesn’t last forever and I would watch them often. It’s a project I need to get back to someday.
I acquired DVD copies of a few other episodes over the last couple of years, but I’m still a long way away from having every show. I’ve recently gotten into watching episodes online, which is nice because probably half of what MST produced is still “new to me”.
Regarding everything post-MST, I have all the Mike Nelson commentary movies together, along with The Film Crew films and four of the RiffTrax DVDs (the shorts). I only have one CT DVD … and that quantity probably won’t change anytime soon since I wasn’t impressed by it.
As for organizing everything … it isn’t beyond being all grouped together! I watch the shows I have a hard-copy of quite often, going through my favorite episodes every few months, so things get out-of-order rather quickly as I make one pile after another.
It’s quicker to just name them:
DVDs:
Cinematic Titanic 1-7, LIVE:East Meets Watts, LIVE:The Alien Factor
Film Crew 1-4
MST3K Shows#106, 209, 506, 507, 512, 513, 515, 517, 619, Esst Vol. 1; Collection Vol. 1-17 and 10.2 single disc
MST3K The Movie
Rifftrax Shorts Vol. 1-4
Rifftrax Live: Plan 9 & Live: Xmas
Rifftrax: NOTLD, Plan 9, Reefer Madness, Swing Parade, House On Haunted Hill, Carnival Of Souls, Little Shop Of Horrors (Including all previous Legend Film/Off Color Film versions with Mike solo), Missile To The Moon, Voodoo Man, Planet Of Dinosaurs
Related: Freaks And Geeks Complete Series, 3 Stooges In Color (Film Crew Hosts), 3 Stooges Greatest Routines (Mike & Kevin host), Chad Vader Season 1 (Mike & Kevin appearance), Star Wait (commentary by Joel, Josh, Trace) & several various dvds w/o Rifftrax
Rifftrax: all 5 MP3 discs from the website & all movie VODs
VHS: MST3K (nearly) all episodes from various sources (only short about a dozen)
OFFICIAL VHS: MST3K show 309, Tom Servo’s Favorite Host Segments#1-5, Raw-The Last Dance, Poopie 2, MST Scrapbook
MISC: Vol. 13 & 16 box set bots, planet logo mouse pad, MST hoodie, MST bot shirt, planet logo shirt, Cinematic Titanic t-shirts (Time Tube, Live Tour, East Meets Watts, The Alien Factor), 2 Rifftrax buttons. Signed silhouette poster (CT).
I have a collection bordering on obsessive. It includes all the Rhino/Shout Factory DVDs, several dozen tapes that my brother is working on converting to DVD, the DVDs of ‘The Film Crew’, the Mike Nelson commentary films, a few ‘Cinematic Titanic’ DVDs, lots of MST merchandise from the catalog they used to put out, a dogeared copy of the ‘Amazing Colossal Episode guide, a poster from ‘MST3K: The Movie’, and the SOL model from Janus. Whenever I get employment again, I’ll get back to work expanding my collection again.
I was in the same boat Bchat, except we didn’t get SciFi until after the show ceased production and we never had Comedy Central until long after MST3K moved to SciFi. My VHS collection was mostly taped by a friend who had CC and SciFi. Those tapes are mostly in basement collecting dust.
I have almost all the shows on DVD (Rhino or Shout! Factory as well as many that I bought on the internet). The first batch I bought on the internet had two shows per disc and are of fair quality. The last set I bought were of very good quality and have only one show per disc.
My collection starts with the internet episodes, followed by the Film Crew, then Rhino, Cinematic Titanic, next are the Shout! Factory episodes and last are the Rifftrax DVDs
Jimmy Bruce #7 – Hahahhaha!! That’s awesome!
Same here, anything commercially available, I have purchased.
IF I didn’t believe in piracy and IF I had a high speed internet connection and an account with DAP and IF I knew how to use VirtualDub, I would have a digital copy of all episodes and all specials stored on a ~600GB USB drive at work. I would also have all episodes encoded to DIVX and stored at home on a flash drive which I could stick in my DIVX-playing DVD Recorder and watch any episode any time I wanted.
You know, IF.
I didn’t record MST3K when I had cable in 1990-92, and didn’t have cable again until just after the new episodes ceased in 1999. So my collection pretty much consists of these things:
1) Rhino/Shout! DVD releases
2) Grey-market DVDs of most other episodes
3) BBI VHS exclusives (Last Dance, Favorite Host Segments, full-length Poopie! II, etc.)
4) A few traded episodes on VHS (mostly KTMA)
5) Digital-8 tapes (that’s DV-format video on Hi-8 tapes) off-air recordings of Sci-Fi reruns with the commercials edited out, plus Digital-8 copies of some traded VHS episodes and off-air VHS recordings with commercials edited out
6) A few homemade DVDs I got really fancy with for my own amusement, around 2003-04, with full-motion menus, the appropriate clips from Poopie! and Poopie! II, deleted scenes from the movies, etc. As luck would have it, almost all the ones I chose have since been released commercially.
7) The Amazing Colossal Man Rhino VHS, and a DVD-R copy thereof
I tend to throw away any superseded versions (like grey-market DVDs of episodes that Shout! later released), unless they contain something unique of their own (e.g., MST ads or bumpers).
I also have all the CT and FC releases, and the three-riffer Plan 9 and first two shorts collections from RT. For my own amusement/convenience, I’ve made my own RT DVDs of “World Enough and Time” and the Star Wars Holiday Special by ripping the video and audio from unriffed DVDs I own of these, syncing up the RiffTrax (and removing the DisembAudio cues) in FinalCut, exporting a mixed audio track, and burning the whole shebang to DVD with DVD Studio Pro.
I see why you are the mod (or is it owner?) of this site. You deserve it. Geebs. I have 2 Rhino and 2 Shout DVD collections, Rhino single DVDs, a couple Legend DVDs, several Rifftrax commercial DVDs, one each Rifftrax and CT downloaded DVDs, and an unknown number of VHS and computer file episodes. It’s not that well organized yet!
My collection is kind of small compared to, say, Sampo’s. I only own about half of the commercial releases and no recorded episodes. Anyway, the sets I’ve got right now are:
20th Anniversary Set
XIV
XV
XVI
Oh, and Rhino volumes 1, 2, 5, 8, 9, 10, (the original set with “Godzilla vs. Megalon”!) and 12. Plus, “The Crawling Hand,” “Mitchell,” and “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.”
I came late to the party- first episode was 807 on Sci-Fi. Naturally, I was hooked and began taping the episodes, first with, then later without commercials. Built decent collection of Sci-fi (for some reason there were a few, like 806, 815, 909) that I missed- so I began to search the web. Bought all the VHS Rhino tapes between 1998 and 2000- bought the entire series on Video CD from a tape trader- then, upgraded to DVD-R- buying several different sets from various traders. As far as organization, Rhino from left to right, followed by Shout- then fan copies in numerical order in jewel cases. Then, CT and Film Crew. I don’t have any rifftrax- I synch those up for the blockbusters when I have some spare coin. Right now I just moved so my episodes are in a closet, but I know where everything is- Leech woman is on deck..jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeddddddddddddddddddddddddd.
@JimmyBruce (#7): Ah, got one of then Goldstar bookshelf numbers.
My collection is much the same: Home recordings on VHS, gradually retired as the DVD sets come out. I can see signs of wear on some of mine already, but that has to do with the frequency with which I view them. I think that can contribute to the degradation of image and sound on a magnetic tape.
I started recording in 1997, concurrent with my discovery of the show when it moved to Sci-Fi. One thing I regret is not being more active in buying the Rhino sets as they were issued. If I had gotten off my duff, I’d have volumes 9 and 10 right now, but hey. It taught me to snap up the Shout! sets ASAP.
While I was in high school in the late eighties/early nineties, I recorded I don’t know how many episodes from Comedy Central onto VHS. Unfortunately, not realizing that MST3k would be extinct from reruns in about ten years time, I very foolishly recorded over many of those episodes. (Darn it!) However, about fifteen or so episodes that I recorded did survive in my VHS collection.
I purchased a DVD recorder about six years ago, and started the task of transferring those episodes that I still had on VHS onto DVD. The only problem: I had this bad habit of not labeling many of my VHS tapes, so I had to gather up all of these mystery tapes with no label, plug each one into the VCR, and hope I would come across another long lost MST3k episode. For most of those episodes on VHS, I was smart enough to record them on the “SP” speed, so the picture and sound quality during playback was pretty decent.
I am pleased to say that I have most of my favorite episodes in my DVD collection today, whether they are VHS-to-DVD transfers or from Rhino/Shout! Factory. As for the ones that are not still available on DVD, all I can say is, “Thank God for YouTube!”
I may have grown up in the hayday of the VHS, but I didn’t actually have a job until like, two years ago, meaning what I could buy was limited. But given that I wasn’t a major fan of the show until two years ago, I’d say MST came in at a perfect time to exploit my wallet.
…Which also means all of my collection is on DVD, sans three tapes I bought on eBay a few months back. I am of the breed that rarely buys DVDs for anything because I don’t have much of a drive to watch things. So the fact that I own all of the MST3K boxsets (sans 6, 7, and 9, woefully out of print), plus the movie and the Essentials, is beyond mind-blowing in terms of accomplishment.
Image of said collection, collaged from four separate pictures
I realized that my collection is scattered all over the house. I blame going to college (wherein I brought all my MST DVDs, just in a CD case), coming back for summer, and watching different sets in different locations.
All I have is a big disc wallet!
You can’t really see an image of my collection since I have a decent amount of VOD and files and whatnot, but I can outline most (if not all) of what I have. It’s simulatenously a source of great pride and great embarassment.
-Every Rhino/Shout Factory DVD box set, excluding Volume 10.5 as I have the original Volume 10 (although I do have the replacement Gila Monster dvd, sold individually), and all the Rhino one-off DVDs with a couple exceptions (Hellcats [which I do have on VHS] and the Amazing Colossal Man, which I think was VHS only anyway.) I had all the one-offs in VHS form but sold them on eBay once I got DVD replacements. Also have the movie on DVD.
-A sizeable collection of taped episodes from the SciFi era (which is when I started watching), three to a tape. I’m missing a few early season 8s and I think two Season 10s (Track of the Moon Beast and Blood Waters of Dr. Z), but the rest is all there. They have been watched to the point that they are in relatively poor condition.
-Given that I buy the DVDs as they come out, I feel comfortable enough admitting that, thanks to the DAP, I also have files for most of the series, which I have rather laboriously converted and stuck onto my iPod, as well as backed up onto an external hard drive for when my iPod inevitably dies.
-Cinematic Titanic: All the studio-recorded DVDs as well as the live recordings of Alien Factor and East Meets Watts. The first two studio DVDs are signed; brought them with to the two live shows I went to.
-Film Crew: All four DVDs.
-Rifftrax: VOD versions of every short (excluding the one they just came out with yesterday or so, which I’ll snap up probably right after finishing this post) and every movie available for VOD. (They’re all on my iPod, except for Troll 2, which they never made an iPod-friendly version of.) Also a scattered assortment of Rifftrax for movies I already owned.
-Books: All three of Mike’s books (Death Rat is signed), and Kevin’s book, and of course the episode guide.
I think that’s everything.
My collection is set up like this:
Top shelf is just large enough to fit 12 DVD box sets. So I put the 12 Rhino volumes there. The ‘Giant Gila Monster’ stand-alone episode that Rhino released is resting on top of these sets.
The second shelf has the (almost) entire single episode Rhino DVDs in episodic order (minus Manos: The Hands of Fate, which I didn’t buy in anticipation of ‘The Essentials’ set). Speaking of which, next to those 9 DVDs is The Essentials Set with ‘Shorts: Volume 3’. Then I have the 5 current Shout! Factory DVD sets, followed by the ‘unreleased Japanese monster episodes’ I collected from MST3K Videos website–Godzilla Vs. The Sea Monster and the five Gamera episodes from Season 3.
On top of my PC sit the Crow and Tom Servo figurines from Shout! Factory, and the ACEG is on my bookshelf. And that’s it.
Fart Bargo:
Did you record the DVD’s as DVD or are they in ‘computer files'(.avi or .mpg are common formats)? An old DVD player may not accept both DVD-R and DVD+R, I have a 5 disc unit that has problems with BOTH formats burned, but plays Commercial DVDs. IIRC, the DVD-R’s were able to play in it, though I don’t always have that happen. Trying to get more than 2 episodes on a DVD (single layer) will cause more problems than most machines can handle – I have problems whenever I try to have more than about 120 min worth in DVD format.
For me: Started with VHS recordings, which I dubbed (via Go-Video, the dual VHS unit) to remove commercials in most cases, though I had later found MST3K episodes among other movies. I also had the “Columbia House subscription” after I’d gotten some at a local video store that later went out of business.
From those, I added some other episodes borrowed from a friend (keep circulating those tapes!), which went into computer files, then to DVD. [Also converted my VHS to DVD]
When the Rhino sets started, I got Vols 1, 6,8,9,10 (Godzilla) and some of the solos. I skipped some because I’d already gotten the episodes included (missing out on extras thereby).
I haven’t really gotten any of the Post MST3K’s (Film Crew, Rifftrax, Titanic)(unless you include the Best Of.. available on YouTube).
To complete the collection, I found the Dapcentral.org files available, and filled in the early episodes that were missing from my collection, so I have all the ‘available’ episodes and some of the additional material (Poopie, shorts(originally in VHS), etc.)
What I’ve been working on recently is finding and downloading the UNMSTed movies… The Last Chase, Manos: The Hands of Fate, Swamp Diamonds/women, etc.
J/P=?
John-they are avi and it sounds like I have an old dvd player and overloaded the discs, thanks.
I converted my VHS tapes to DVD (DVD+R as well) for episodes that haven’t been released on Rhino/Shout or the Digital Archive Project. I just recently ditched all of my tapes for episodes that have been released, so my VHS collection is pretty small now. I left commercials in, but put chapter stops around them so I could skip them. I put all my DVDs in slim DVD cases with JoshWay’s excellent covers (with a modifcation of replacing the standard MST3K copy on the back with the episode guide info). Here’s a picture of my DVD collection (the MST3K DVDs are at the bottom):
http://i267.photobucket.com/albums/ii301/eegah/dvds_sm.jpg
Mine are all in a drawer. Sorted by Company, then by whether they are single eps or box sets, then by quality of the set.
Wow eegah, that’s organized. Now when are you going to replace your vhs of FAIL SAFE?
@32 (kbrubaker): Interestingly, I need to replace both my VHS of Fail-Safe AND Dr. Strangelove.
I used to have them on VHS with 2 episodes on each tape,except for some of the first season,since the ones they showed on Comedy Central they were scrambling the channel or something like that.Whenever Rhino would come out with a new set,I would get rid of the tape until every episode from each tape was gone.The only VHS tapes I have is the MST Scrapbook and Raw-The Last Dance.I did have The Amazing Colossal Man on VHS,but decided to get it on dvd-r,since I no longer have a VHS player.I tried trading with other fans for a while for episodes I didn’t have on VHS,but got burned a few times when I was sent inferior quality tapes or no tapes at all.From then,I went to other websites and bought the episodes I needed.For those episodes that aren’t on DVD yet,I have them in multi-colored cd/dvd sleeves with the name of the movie on the top and have all of them in 2 small recipe boxes,which I bought at Hobby Lobby.
eegah #30 – Now that’s cool. Everything organized, everything with labels, everything well protected. Kudos! I’m just not that kind of collector, though. If I CAN fit in on a smaller medium, I will.
One of my favorite things to do is to take my flash drive with all of the AVIs, put it in my DVD Recorder, hit random, and just let it play. My HDMI-1 is a 24 hour Mst3k Channel!
Now, my Transformers are a different story.
Well lets see… I don’t have everthing together on the same shelf but they are all out. My Rhino releases are all on the top shelf (all Rhino box sets that is) which is also shared with other DVDs. Shelf number two has the Shout Factory, Rifftrax, Cinematic Titanic and Film Crew releases. Shelf three has my vhs-converted-to-dvd episodes which are everything that hasn’t been commercially released from Season 1 to 10(still missing the KTMA’s, World Without End and The Day the World Ended). I decided it was time to upgrade from vhs when my Puma Man tape broke and I spent an hour taking it apart to fix it. I decided the best way to keep the converted episodes was to get two large CD/DVD Storage folder books. Its easy to find the episode you want with just the flip of a few pages. :mrgreen:
Insane, I just built a shelf for my collection today.
I’ve haven’t been collecting long, I have a few Shout! sets, a couple of Rhino singles, and around 50 fan-made DVDs. I’m planning on Putting all my fan-made DVDs in the back of the shelf in order, and all box sets in front of those in order by volume, then all Single episode DVDs after that.
The episodes I don’t have would make a much shorter list. I started watching during the Comedy Central, I think season six. MST3K was on all the time and I recorded a lot of episodes, continuing through the Sci-Fi years. I had use of a DVD recorder just long enough to transfer it all. I printed up nice generic covers for all of those, which include favorites like The Dead Talk Back, Horror of Party Beach, Revenge of the Creature, The Screaming Skull, The Human Duplicators and scores that have been repalaced by commercial releases. I’ve tried to buy all the Rhino and Shout releases. Then I’ve picked up a good number through “trading”, mostly episodes that I stupidly recorded over when I thought MST3K would go on forever. So, uh, I should have had those episodes, anyway! Yeah! It’s Satan’s fault!
The best stuff I have in my DVD changer, the rest on shelves. And what I need is some MST3K merch to put on the shelves with them! This show cries out for merch.
A friend and I, between the two of us (mostly him), taped all the episodes. I later converted them all to DVD, where they rest in a couple of bookcases. Our taped versions have been supplanted by Rhino/Shout versions as they’re released. Got all the CT and Film Crew as well. My 20th Anniversary set and Episode Guide were signed by the CT folks when they came to town.
Courtney should absolutely transfer her tapes to DVD soon. They don’t last forever.
I’m with #25- Most of what I have on DVD is in one of those 200 disk folders. I have most of the CT and MST3K commercially available DVDs and a few tapes. I just never got into converting for some reason.
I put all mine into slim cases recently, so I’ve been printing out JoshWay’s covers. Also just put my Rifftrax’s to slim cases and have been reprinting all of those.
Simple, but I like it.
I recorded episodes 3-4 per tape (6 hr & 8 hr), sometimes with commercials, sometimes edited. I only, originally, recorded the episodes I liked so my collection was large, but not complete.
In retrospect, I am sorry I edited so many commercials out. At the time they were a pain, but seeing them now, they are a bit of nostalgia. The sprint “ten cents a minute” wave, the introduction of AOL and then the overwhelming of it. Car commercials and movie commercials, but no cell phone or internet in the beginning. Even the Comedy Central “Hit shows” that are no longer. Sampo reminds me of my loss when he talks about the commercials on his tapes.
(I had the same thing when FX first came on. Remember that they hosted the programs out of a loft in New York? They had hosts for the day’s programming, a more personal feel. I recorded the Green Hornet but recorded over them when Encore started showing them without commercials. I was a fool.)
I bought Season 1, and a few KTMA shows, on tape from a very good site that cropped up as the Internet boomed in the late 1990s. They were as good as my ELP copies and what I could expect at the time.
I also subscribed to the Columbia Video club and got all the Rhino releases, though returned “Red Zone Cuba,” I thought it was THAT bad.
As DVDs replaced “Circulate those tapes” sites I upgraded ahead of the glacial pace of Rhino. I also moved from individual cases to binders with archive quality pages.
That is where I am today. I downloaded all of KTMA and Season 1 in AVI files an a few DVDs, for historical purposes. I bought a DVD burner ($79 brand name at Big Lots) and converted the tapes that had good enough quality. I did not buy top quality tapes back in those days. I was a poor broke student. I fill in with a good MST3K DVD site with good prices and very good quality. All in a binder.
I buy the Shout! sets as I can and save the art work but use the cases for other projects.
I did keep the 20th Anniversary set complete, but I display my Crow and Tom in my den, next to my autographed pictures of everyone I have met at the conventions.
Oh, and of course, I have the Film Crew, and Rifftrax, and a few Cinematic Titanic Live shows.
(Of Course :mrgreen: )
My DVD collection was getting way to big. I had to make a change or my home would end up looking like a video rental store. I bought some briefcase style dvd “wallets” as some have mentioned above. These things are great space savers. One briefcase is dedicated to a complete set of MST3K, Rifftrax and CT DVD’s. As new compilations come out of MST3K I pull the fan copy out of the wallet and install the new dvd, the box goes into the trash except for the lobby cards, the lobby cards are put into a cheap poster frame and get put on the wall.
I came to MST3K during the Sci-Fi Channel years. I managed to record about 26-28 of those episodes on VHS when they originally aired (or were repeated). I recorded them in SLP format, so I’ve got about 8-9 of those VHS tapes laying around.
Then DVD came along, and I’ve managed to buy everything MST3K that’s been commercially released (except the Amazing Colossal Man VHS tape Rhino released then pulled). I’ve also got everything Cinematic Titanic has released thus far, as well as two of the four Film Crew releases and seven of the Rifftrax DVDs (the first four SHORTS DVDs, Plan 9, and two more SHORTS DVDs on the way). All the DVDs are grouped together on the top single shelf on my book case, right next to my entertainment center (since they’re the DVDs I watch most often).
Finally, through various trades over the years, I’ve ended up with about 70 or so episodes on DVD-R format. I’ve counted it up, and all told, I’m currently missing about 47 MST3K episodes (not counting the KTMA stuff, which is low priority for me). I’d like to finish up my collection at some point, but I’m pacing myself. I’m content with what I’ve got for the moment. I’ve got all the biggies, the classics, your Coleman Francises and your Tor Johnsons and your Joe Don Bakerseses and your Joe Estevezes and whatnot. :smile:
Bart:
Regular DVD’s have .VOB files (if you look at them in MS Explorer or other file viewer) along with .IFO and more. I determined from the fact that it takes 35 DVDs with 4 .AVI’s each that you need 150 Gigs of storage for the whole set! (though with 1T drives….)
Also, I forgot to mention storage – the Rhinos I have are just left in the boxes, with the commerical VHS in storage (backup). The other home-burned DVDs are kept in paper envelopes in an old 5.25 disc storage double drawer unit.
The home VHS were given to a friend who still has a working VHS machine (I have several VHS units, none of which is fully functional, unfortunately… got most because someone would give me their unit, since I’m known to be able to ‘fix’ some problems). I need to get the money to have one (preferably the GoVideo with dual VHS) working so I can dub a wall full of tapes (I have over 100 tapes with average of 3 movies per tape (EP or SLP speed).
I became a fan when MST3K came to Sci-Fi back in ’97, maybe a little late in comparison to the entire run, but still during the original airings. I’ve been a MSTie ever since. I taped some episodes right before my parents cancelled cable towards the end of season eight. Right after that, I asked my aunt to tape a few episodes, and it was that small handful of eps that I had that kept me hanging on. It was around that time that Rhino started releasing their VHSs, and I bought a good number of those, as well, which was my first introduction to Joel. My aunt taped a few more episodes for me over the next few years (including the tenth season premiere, which recorded without sound for some reason, and the series finale, which came out fine). By the early 2000’s, I was both buying & trading online, and I discovered my other aunt had Sci-Fi on her cable provider (it had been added to basic by that point), and since she lived very close by, I’d walk over on Saturday mornings and tape every episode I could. By that point, I had a very nice sized collection, albeit Sci-Fi era centered, by the time I started buying the DVDs.
Anyway, today, I still have all my VHS tapes, and a good chunk of the DVD releases. Also, I still buy unreleased episodes online (just got two eps I’ve been dying to see, actually). At some point I should start putting the unreleased episodes I have on DVD, but apparently, DVD+/-Rs, I’ve read, actually have a SHORTER shelf-life than tapes, so it’s not high priority (is that even true, BTW?).
For the record, I have many tapes from the early/mid-80’s that still play fine (in fact, some of the shows I’ve discovered from the late-80’s have survived in amazingly good quality, even if recorded in SLP). Also, I have an official copy of M*A*S*H from 1978 and an official copy of Dirty Harry from 1979, and both still play fine, or at least they did last check. VHS, IMO, is a bit more resilient than given credit for.
I started watching mst3k during the sci-fi years, and have not been able to get into the cc era episodes. Although, I do have four of the Rhino box sets preferably the ones with episodes from 8,9, and 10. I also recently “found” those three seasons on the internet and I’m currently watching them on my PS3.
When I first started watching the show, around season 7 on CC, I did a lot of tape trading, so now I have just about every episode on VHS. I have a video capture card and I once got ambitious and decided that I was going to convert all my VHS tapes to DVD. I did about 3 episodes and realized it was a huge task, so I stopped. Maybe it’s just me, but my Pinnacle Stdio program constantly froze, which is the main reason I stopped. I got a Mac Book Pro, maybe I can try again on that. When I do get in the mood for an episode from my VHS collection it is fun to see the commercials.
I used to have my collection on VHS gloriously displayed with black sleeves for all my tapes and white printed labels affixed to each one. I’ve been transferring them to VHS so they won’t degrade any further, so all I have right now are a few spindles and a boxes filled with my old tapes. Plus a bunch of Rhino and Shout Factory DVDs.