Sadly, I’m now questioning every single movie purchase I make, and it’s all thanks to the new fandangled technology that the kids call ‘high-definition.’

I’ll feel like nothing short of an ass when the day comes that I re-buy my first movie in high definition.

Over the past seven years or so, I’ve accumulated quite a large collection of DVDs. I guess I was fortunate, because getting my first job coincided with the summer that my parents bought our first DVD player. Since then, I’ve spent a vast majority of the money that I’ve made on movies.

For nearly a decade, I never had any regrets when it came to purchases. Well, that’s not exactly true. Part of me does regret impulse buys like “Daredevil” and “Halloween III: Season of the Witch,” but I got over those fairly quickly.

Sadly, I’m now questioning every single movie purchase I make, and it’s all thanks to the new fandangled technology that the kids call “high definition.”

I don’t have enough bank to shell out for an HDTV, so I never concerned myself if the newly finished war that was HD DVD versus Blu-ray. It’s probably good that I didn’t have an HDTV during the format war, because having to choose sides could have led me down a path similar to one of those guys who quickly developed a massive Betamax/Laserdisc/DIVX collection.

Now that Blu-ray has become the clear format of the future, I feel like it’s time to finally take the plunge. But still, a part of me is wary of bidding farewell to my hundreds of DVDs and becoming new buddies with those thin blue cases.

I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. It’s hard to imagine picture and sound being able to evolve much further than it already has. Watching and listening to “The Fountain” in HD provides as close to a theater experience as any of us are ever going to get at home.

But I can’t help but feel that as soon as I replace by current DVD collection with Blu-ray, the next evolution in technology will already be unveiled, forcing me to continue the painful process of buying and re-buying.

So what do I really want? Would I like to be able to upgrade each one of my DVDs for free? You bet’cha. Is that going to happen? Hells no.

I guess one good thing to come out of this is the chance to have a fresh start to my collection. In this new generation of technology, maybe my Criterion movies won’t have to sit next to “The Swap,” an early Robert De Niro’s film that is painfully bad. (Only a dollar at Wal-Mart? How could I not buy it?)

Sadly, my first two Blu-ray purchases will most likely be “2001” and a Steven Seagal film, repeating the vicious cycle all over again.

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