Anyone ordering MR on DVD?

Model Railroader is offering their first 75 years on DVD for $200.

http://www.kalmbachstore.com/15120.html

I for one am definitely in. What's your take?

Tom

When the question of if, when and why hasn't MR already done this arose in years past on a couple of other sites I peruse, most folks were turned off if a potential price of $200, or more, was suggested. Seems most anticipated a full set's cost to be no more then $100, if not less, as is the case for several similar big name compilations (National Geographic comes to mind at about $80). Based on the responses I saw on-line, I suspect that sales of the MR disk set won't be exactly overwhelming. It really doesn't matter to me since I have MR in library bound hardcopy from 1940 to date and find paging through them randomly much more enjoyable than gazing at a screen version.

CNJ999

It has been discussed on the MR forum, the DVDs will include complete issues - all ads, columns, workshops etc, so that's a big plus. This is for the yeas 1934 to 2009, to tie in with the 75 years of MR, which is why they haven't released such a DVD set earlier -perhaps the 2010/2011 issues will be included in the 150th Anniversery quantum 6D-pack due out in 2084CE.

Yeah, the price is somewhat of an issue. I had expected $120-140, so 200 was a bit of a unhappy surprize. Some posts were trying to make a price-per-copy comparsion (it's cheap at 2.15 a copy or something), but others were like meh...

From the MR threads, my take is that people seem to be waiting to see what else is included for the price. Note, the DVDs will not be viewable on tablet computers and the like, which may be a problem for some - OTOH, they are supposed to be fully indexed.

Sir Ray wrote:Note, the DVDs will not be viewable on tablet computers and the like, which may be a problem for some - OTOH, they are supposed to be fully indexed.

It's a huge turn-off that this set--and the "Trains" DVD before it, which I bought not knowing this fact--can't have the files ported to an iPad or some such thing. Such inflexibility is, in my opinion, quite short-sighted. If they're worried about copy protection, fine, but there should still be a way to authorize a portable device or two--heck, even a second computer--to open the files. Until and unless they figure out a way to let me browse the "Trains" PDFs on my iPad, they won't be getting another cent from me for any other collection.

I'm still up in the air about ordering the set.

I do agree that Kalmbach made a big mistake in not making this set viewable on tablet devices. There are too many i-Pad and Kindle users out there to ignore. I have an Acer netbook without a built-in cd tray. Since I don't really want to buy an external cd drive (kind of negates the purpose of having a netbook) if I get this set I suppose I'll just do what I did when I bought a compilation DVD of one of my favorite ham radio/scanner magazines. I just copied the dvd to a flash drive. Now I have the option of downloading the magazines from my flash drive into my netbook or just leaving it on the flash drive and inserting the flash drive anytime I want to read an article.

As for the price of $200.00...it is a bit steep but since you're getting the entire content of each magazine it's a little easier for me to justify the cost. I have several issues of MR from the early 70's and half the fun of reading those old issues is reading all the old ads!

My birthday is coming up at the end of the summer...maybe I can drop some hints around the family!