I always loved movies and going to the cinema was always a huge event. As a kid I watched mostly the Disney movies of the time (Aladdin, Arielle, Beauty and the Beast, Lion King) but I also enjoyed Star Wars (the re-release of Star Wars back in 1997 will always have a special place in my heart, because the original Star Wars trilogy on the really big screen is an amazing event), Indiana Jones and James Bond.
The first DVD I bought was "Contact" in 2001 after I bought my first DVD-ROM drive for my computer. Surprisingly the addiction didn't start with this DVD but a few months later (next DVDs were Titanic, Men in Black and the first two Austin Powers DVDs). At that time I was a student at the "Gymnasium" (can be roughly compared to the US high school, but the school systems are quite different) , so I didn't have much money, but most of it was "invested" in new DVDs. The prices back than were a lot higher than today (German DVDs are still more expensive than US ones), so the collection didn't grow that fast. At the university I have some jobs as a tutor and since two years I work part time for a software company, so money isn't that big an issue any more and my collection is closing in to 800 titles (including HD-DVDs and Blu-Rays).
One of the key factors for my collection is my hearing impairment, because on German television only the public broadcasters and two private stations provide subtitles. The public broadcasters do not have many programs that target younger audiences (and most of those programs aren't subtitled) and the private stations only provide subtitles for some movies (mostly the "blockbuster of the week" on Sunday evening). So DVDs (or Blu-Rays) are the medium of choice for me, because they almost always have subtitles (and if not, there will be a foreign release with subtitles). I am also really fond of the original audio track, because it is easier to read lips with the original sound track than the dubbing, so I watch DVDs of US or British movies with English audio track and English subtitles.

Quoting Eserage:

Quote:
Is it normal that people from Austria & Germany prefer the original soundtrack than the dubbed one? I allways thought that the dubbed was the popular choice.

Sorry, I saw that question just now. Well, I would say that about 80-90% of the people in Austria watch movies in the dubbed Versions. But the number of People who learned that English Versions are like a completely new movie is growing.
In Germany I would estimate the Number of people watching dubbed Versions at about 98%

But as I said. In austria the number of people who watch movies in English is growing. In Vienna we have 32 Movie theatres who show movies in the dubbed version and 6 Cinemas that show only Original Versions. But the number of Movie theatres who start having some showings in English is also growing.

As for Germany, they are more in love with their own language but, some of them are starting to enjoy English too. For example a big Pay-TV Network let's you choose if you want to see the movie in English or German..

It used to be very hard for us Hard Core English Watchers to get movies back in the VHS age. I mostly got mine by importing Laserdiscs. Which turned out to be quite expensive. Also there were already 2 Videostores that carried exclusively English Videos. With DVD's that all changed. Now we are free to chose and we don't have to import everything just to get it in English.

The only problem is regular Television. There everything is dubbed. That's why I don't watch TV at all.