I've always liked movies. When VHS rental stores were booming, the cost of a movie was usually well over $80.00.
I started collecting movies when VHS become more affordable, around the $20-$25 range. I would go to Sam Goody, The Wherehouse, Tower Records etc.
I never got into laserdisc, because you had to flip or change the disc to view an entire movie.
Divx was garbage since the movie was married to the player you owned, so I never got into that either.
My collection grew drastically when DVD's came out. No more fixing the tracking dial or rewinding and the picture and sound was improved. Still have my Sony launch player DVP-S7000. It still works great after being repaired twice, so it can play The Matrix when that was released. I was so excited about DVD's coming out, that I bought several movies before even owning a player. The Long Kiss Goodnight was my first. Before the dual layer discs were introduced, I felt cheated to have to flip the disc midway on long movies like The Color Purple.
I jumped on the short lived HD-DVD train for a minute. I bought the Toshiba HD-A35. It was good at the time, except for the extremely long boot up and load times. Jumping scene to scene wasn't much better either. Occasionally I play a movie on it, but notice a lot of hiccups now. The audio/video becomes out of sync randomly during playback and I need to pause or hit track select to fix it.
I'm on Blu-rays now. My current player is the Oppo BD-95. It had the fastest access of the stand alone players of that time and was 3-D compatible. The US has given up on 3-D unfortunately...
Even though I don't have a 4K monitor or player yet, I began buying the Ultra HD movies. I'll have some media ready when that time comes.
I hit up Redbox every once in awhile too. It's the only renting I do these days.