Newish releases are on the shelves now, including these recent hits: Disney’s latest animated princess movie The Princess And The Frog, romantic comedy with Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker in Did You Hear About The Morgans?, animated superhero Astro Boy, heavy drama in Adoration, action-packed heist fun in Armored, a sci-fi/fantasy flick co-written by Peter Jackson called Jack Brown: Genius and the alien abduction thriller The Fourth Kind. Plus, more copies of Land Of The Lost, Drag Me To Hell and (500) Days Of Summer. Get ‘em while they’re hot.

Some recent trades to tell you about, too, including a whole bunch of music stuff, like Red Hot Chili Peppers: Off The Map and Funky Monks; Lynyrd Skynyrd: Freebird The  Movie/Tribute Tour (double feature) and Lyve From Steeltown; Dream Theater: Live At Budokan and Metropolis 2000: Scenes From New York; plus Jimi Hendrix: Live At Woodstock, Dave Matthews Band: The Videos 1994 – 2001 and The Commitments. That’s a lot of music.

We also have some not-music stuff. Like movies. You remember movies, right? Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 12 Monkeys, Slumdog Millionaire, Beverly Hills Chihuahua and Blackhawk Down are all I can come up with while staying in an animal theme… there’s also The Simpsons Movie, A Christmas Story, First Blood, The Hunt For Red October, Funny Farm, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Wedding Planner and Blackbeard: The Miniseries are just a few of the random smattering of titles we’ve gotten in recently.

Come, browse, enjoy.

It took a couple months of working here before I fully realized something important.

I don’t need cable.

I have 1000’s of films at my fingertips and now that I have truly discovered that used DVDs are just as good, if not better (hello? The price!!!!) than new ones, I think that I may never need standard cable again.

Granted, I do watch some online TV just to keep up with the latest stuff (I adore Glee and Bones…I NEED them), but when my fave shows  are on hiatus, I turn to our fabulous wall of ever growing television shows to see what I can get into.

Without any commercials.

TV on DVD has to be the most fabulous invention ever. You can watch an entire season of something without waiting through the ads, the weeks of  “what is gonna happen next?”, and pause it while you pee.  I know DVR makes this stuff possible for live TV too, but you still have to wait for next week’s episode and you can only record so many at a time.

So this is where picking them up used comes in.  Our television section has been steadily growing for a while and I am always impressed with the prices. I picked up the first 3 seasons of Dexter for half the cost of them elsewhere….and promptly became addicted. I am always on the lookout for the first season of something cool that my two boys will enjoy (My Name is Earl, Smallville, Malcom in the Middle) so I can see how they like something before I start investing in all of them. It has been great. My kids no longer spout commercial jingles to me, I do not have to watch the same aggravating cartoons over and over, and my cable bill is….well…gone.

Tons of my friends rent shows from other places, but I like the way we roll a little better. Getting the discs in the mail means they might very well be scratched (hey, we buff and check our stuff before sending it home with ya!), and renting them from certain stores means having to pay out more than I think is necessary. If you take a look at our ingenious rental system, you can see that you could save a lot renting TV rather than buying it outright.

A customer stopped in today having bought Mr. Show season 4. He decided he would rather rent it. He ended up only paying $2 to watch that. And walked out again with Monty Python and the Holy Grail and still had money left on his account. He was pretty pleased.

Also,  even though a show is really great….I don’t always need to own it. Case in point, I decided to check out Boston Legal. We have the 1st season and even though James Spader and William Shatner bug me, I thought I would give it a try. I discovered it is an excellent program with brilliant writing and I would gladly check out the other seasons…..but I don’t need to watch the 1st season again. It just wasn’t good enough to  memorize (Red Dwarf is a show I have memorized, so is That 70’s Show), but it was worth watchin’ once.

It is like TV for commitment-phobes.

And right now you can try all kinds of different things on for size.  All the seasons of Sopranos, Entourage, most of Charmed, a healthy selection of Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Family Guy. We also have many other shows on hand to introduce you to something new! Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Burn Notice, Laguna Beach, The Simpsons, Lost, Heroes, The Osbournes and some cool comedy sketch stuff like The Dave Chappelle Show, and Mind of Mencia. Even some old shows like Beverly Hillbillies and Sanford and Son.

I guess the bottom line is why pay for cable?

You should pay us instead. You will save a bunch of dough and support an awesome local business in the process! It is a win/win situation!