I finally bought a DVD player, catapulting myself once again into the late 20th century. It took me a while, but with some information from Ben I finally found a model I could live with. I tried to buy a Sony, but no, sadly, it was not to be.
Devices in my home fall into exactly one of two categories. They are:
- Computers, and
- Everything else.
The critical difference between widgets that are computers and those that aren’t is the interface. The computer has a keyboard, does a bunch of complicated things, and I have to push a bunch of buttons on that keyboard in a special order to make the complicated things happen. The appliances have buttons on them that say what happens when you push them, and when you push those buttons, that thing happens.
If the the thing written on the button doesn’t happen when you push it, and happen immediately, every time, regardless of what else is going on, then that appliance is broken. Full stop. The thing is, if you’re not careful you might buy something that’s actually broken in the box it shipped in.
At some point, people who make movies decided that they should be able to control when, where and how you watch them. If you’re unlucky, you’ve already found out that Disney is in on it – on compliant players, some DVDs won’t let you fast-forward through their previews. On every player that it’s legal to sell in the U.S., you can’t copy your DVDs to VHS, or watch movies from other parts of the world. In fact, some people think you shouldn’t be allowed to fast forward at all, ever.
As far as I’m concerned this means that every DVD player made for U.S. consumers is designed and shipped broken.
If you’re in the U.S., you’re basically hosed in this regard; your legislators have been bought, and consequently no economic levers exist that will allow you to express your dismay. Competing alternatives to “my home appliance is pissing me off” are simply not allowed to exist in your market. But I’m not in the U.S., so I have a choice. And as a result, I’ve had to go with a DVD player from some pokey Korean outfit I’ve never heard of. But let me tell you what it does:
- It doesn’t respect region codes,
- It doesn’t respect Macrovision encoding,
- It doesn’t respect no-fastforward codes,
- It plays every media-on-round-shiny-thing format under the sun and, most importantly,
- When I push a button, it shuts the fuck up and does what I tell it to do.
Right away, every time.
I want devices that make my life easier and let me do more, and you want to sell me devices that do less that VCRs did twenty years ago, cost more, and are a hassle to use?
Sorry, no. None of my money for you.
To whom it may concern, if you think that a business model based on bought legislation and complacent consumers will just keep working, good luck with that. But I will do whatever I want with my home entertainment, whenever I want. I will move it, watch it, wherever and however I feel like, because once I buy it, it’s mine. I have two full-length movies on my key ring right now, and you won’t ever be able to stop that from happening. And you think I will allow you to force me to sit through crappy previews?
Two words for that: bitch, please.