Boltz DVD Multimedia Rack

All DVD fans know that having DVDs is one thing but an equally important thing is having somewhere to put them. I’ve seen them placed in dozens of different places, in cupboards, on shelves, on the floor stacked one on top of another and heck even in boxes believe it or not. Despite the varied locations though every person I asked didn’t have them the way they did because they liked it that way but rather because of necessity and the lack of a good DVD rack system. That problem hadn’t occurred to me until I started looking for a replacement for my ex bookself now converted to a DVD rack. What an eye opener the experience was...

Off I went to the stores looking for a rack. After a couple of misses I found some stores that actually HAD racks, although it was clear that CD racks were still outnumbering DVD racks by 100:1. That would not have necessarily been a problem had the few DVD racks that were available been semi attractive and functional. The reality was unfortunately very harsh. The VERY few different racks that I came across seemed to have been designed and constructed during a drunken frenzy by their manufacturers. The biggest complaint was that virtually all of them could not hold a great deal of DVDs, not more than 35-40 in fact, making them virtually useless. Another problem with them is that they lacked any sense of style or material for that matter. It seems that the manufacturers were trying to keep costs down by making them as flimsy and material free as possible, with one particular rack being composed of nothing more than wires!

While my quest to see if DVD racks had started arriving in the market was sucessful, it was disappointing to see that no effort had gone into making decent racks and that seemed to stem from the manufacturer’s attempt to provide as cheap a rack as possible to the market (most racks were below $60). I therefore decided to take my “rack quest” to another country to see if they had a better idea of how to build a good rack. The obvious choice was the USA, where their huge DVD market was bound to have a much larger availability of multimedia racks.

Construction Details

The Boltz Difference

It wasn’t long before I came across the racks built by Boltz-USA (www.boltz.com). The thing that struck me when I saw these, is the quality of their construction. They were made out of pure steel and looked VERY heavy duty indeed, a welcome change from the “sneeze and it’ll break” Australian designs. To top if off as well, they seemed to have a far bigger capacity, with the higher end models capable of holding as many as 252 DVDs a piece.

Bring it on

It didn’t take long to convince me that this had to be IT, the most suitable DVD rack I could find. Luckily the company did ship outside the USA and via Fed Ex so I knew I’d have it on my door step before too long. Sure enough within 24hrs I had received an email from Boltz alerting me that the rack had been shipped via Federal Express and supplying me with the tracking number of the package. Within a couple of days Fed Ex tracking was showing that the package had arrived in Sydney so I presumed I would have it within a day or two. Unfortunately thanks to the intervening weekend and our always vigilant customs service, the package sat for 3 days in Sydney before making its way down to Melbourne. It is unfortunate that it takes longer to deliver a package within Australia than to ship it from the USA to Australia via Honolulu!

Boy that’s heavy...

The first thing that struck me when I took delivery of the package was how heavy it was. The long but slim cardboard pack it was in looked innocent enough...until you picked it up! The shear weight of it surprised me but at the same time reinforced my beliefs that this was heavy duty quality. Opening the package revealed a number of parts all nicely organised.

• 2x Steel walls of the rack
• 13x Steel rods which serve as the stand for the DVDs (only 12 of the 13 are required-the other is a spare)
• 3x Bags full of nuts and bolts (nickel plated) with even a spanner thrown in as well!

And of course an instruction booklet which unfortunately was only one page long.

Let the games begin

Constructing furniture is not one of my favourite past times, with the pleasure of seeing the finished product the only thing that keeps me going most of the time. Believe me when I tell you that you don’t want to be around me when I am putting together a difficult piece of furniture. Something will crack and it’ll be either the furniture or a human skull!

Luckily though this rack was a BREEZE to put together. The instructions, I have to admit, were a little on the thin side especially on how to attach the stabilising feet although I suspect that this is because the unit used to ship without the stabilisers and these have only started being included in the package recently. Worry not though because instructions for the stabilising feet assembly are found on their website.There are only 4 steps to perform really:

• Attaching the rods that the DVDs sit on to one of the side plates.
• Putting the separators through that separate the DVDs.
• Attaching the other side plate.
• Attaching the stabilising feet.

Now came the fun part. Stacking the rack with DVDs. As the discs were stacked on and sat beautifully I quickly realised there would be a problem….I would run out of room! Soon enough the rack was filled to capacity yet there were still plenty of discs lying on the floor. This sort of problem is a common one I am sure and that is why Boltz have created ‘expansion kits’ to the rack, so that you may increase the capacity to 232 DVDs at a cheaper price than buying a new rack. Once you fill that up as well, then wack on another expansion kit and then another one and another one. The only limit is how many you can fit in your house!