DVD cases can present a problem, a "space" problem if you manage to
acquire enough of them. I did, and after I reached a couple hundred DVDs, I got tired of the storage space "issue" -- racks along the walls filled with DVDs and their cases. So I came up with a solution that holds to this day. In
lieu of a photo, let me attempt to explain...
I decided to eliminate the DVD cases entirely. I went to CompUSA and bought several boxes of "CD Sleeves," those cheap, thin clear plastic and some-kind-of-fiber sleeves that you simply slip CDs into. In this case, I slipped the DVDs in, and put the original cases into various packing boxes and stored them away (one nice thing about the sleeves is they hold two DVDs each, perfect for those "special edition" DVDs that come with two separate disks). That done, I was now faced with a mountain of DVDs in those sleeves, piled on the carpet. That isn't what you want, makes vacuuming hard, and if you step on them you can slip and fall down, a lot.
I shopped around and found a wooden serving tray from an import shop. It measured (inside dimensions) 20"W x 12"D x 3"H. Not too big, but the important measurements are the 20" width, and 3" height. A 20" width allows you to create three rows of the sleeved DVDs, and the 3" height lets you flip through and see them, yet they don't fall out of the tray/box. I bought some 1/4" wooden dowels, and with a drill and some glue used it to partition the tray into three rows so the DVDs could sit side-by-side in those three rows. I stained the dowels to match the tray. It looked dandy, although it took a week to get the stain off my fingers.
Then, I went to an office store and got some Index Cards, cardboard tabs with "A," "B," "C," and so on printed on them. Those were used to organize the DVDs alphabetically as I lined them up in the box I'd made. In essence, it was a "file cabinet" of my DVDs, lined up in three rows, 12" deep.
So I was done! Sort of... Another problem is, when you get a lot of "media" is, how do you find/remember what you have? Certainly you can flip through the collection, but that can take some time. But wait! Isn't this the computer age? Yeah, and I found and bought a program called "DVD Profiler" that lets you enter in a DVD title or UPC, and it pulls down from a database the details of the DVD, actor names, director, reviews, and even scans of the DVD cases I'd discarded. You can then search for a title, or more handily, print out a surprising array of "handouts" that you can toss on the coffee table and later page through (the basic program is free, but I paid the fee to upgrade, and because I liked it so much I felt obligated to give them some money).
Was this a lot of work? Yeah. But the space-savings and convenience made the work worthwhile. I no longer have racks along the walls to hold my collection, just a box sitting on a table next to my TV. It looks pretty nifty. The problem is, I'm starting now to run out of space in that wooden box, and I estimate when I hit 500 DVDs (hopefully not too soon!) I'll have to conjure up another like-box to hold the overflow. I should’ve bought two of those serving trays. Poor long-term planning on my part...