If the line up on free-to-air television has you considering busting your budget and giving in to pay TV – DON’T sign up just yet.  Sensational (and free) silver-screen entertainment is just around the corner!

The good news is, you are not alone when it comes to boredom with the box!  And therein lays the solution.   Get your friends together and become your own DVD swap store.

I just counted our DVD collection – I really don’t know how this happened, but somehow we have accumulated 96 DVD’s.  We have hundreds of hours of movies and television series sitting and gathering dust in our lounge room.  

Yesterday, at a friend’s place, we were discussing movies – at least two of which I said “I’d like to see that”, and the reply was “we’ve got it on DVD if you’d like to borrow it.”   They like us, have a plethora of DVD’s which sit gathering dust.  So why not get some use (and some entertainment) out of them.

Grab your DVD’s and do an inventory, depending on how large your collection is, this should take half an hour tops.  (This could be a good job for the kids too!)  Have your friends do the same and circulate the list to everyone.

Have everyone put in their “order” – then meet at someone’s place to do the swap and head home and make the popcorn!

A couple of tips that you might like to consider:

• It may be a good idea that everyone agrees on a “due back” date – so that your DVD’s don’t disappear for months.  
• To ensure movies don’t go astray - label each DVD with your name, so everyone knows whose is whose.

So forget pay TV (with shows that repeat and repeat and repeat all month) – and pay a visit to your friends / neighbours / co-workers.   Or, if all else fails, read a book!