Pressdog.com

And We All Wanted DVD Because ....?

By Bill Zahren
(Posted 04/24/03)

After living with a DVD player for a couple months, I’m starting to wonder what I was thinking.

No. Wait. I remember. I was thinking that my VCR just wasn’t getting the job done. Low quality. Yesterday’s technology. I was thinking that I had to get me a new DVD player to experience the Next Level in home entertainment.

All I know is my DVD player and I had a big fight last night, and I never brawled with my VCR. I was a little off because Super High Tech DVD did something a VCR has never done to me -- refused to play. With a VCR, you put the tape in, you push play and you see the movie.

Apparently that’s too simple because DVD players have added about 12 more steps of fun to the process.

With DVD players, you put the disc in, push play, watch a screen that says "loading" for awhile, then see the FBI warning which you CANNOT fast-forward through even though you’ve seen it a billion times before. Then you get to the disc menu and can finally play the movie -- maybe.

But what got my new honey (DVD) and I fighting last night was her serious issues with viewus interuptus. That is, interrupted viewing, which is what we suburban fathers-of-two-or-more experience all the time. Our video viewing is always being interrupted by large-breed dog crap-scooping chores, lawn and house maintenance duties or sundry child care and rearing obligations.

So we minivan fathers watch part of a movie, then get interrupted, then come back to watch a few minutes more, then get interrupted again and so on. And often we have to take the disc out of the player mid-movie so the kids can watch their Lilo and Stitch disc for the 243rd time.

Works like a charm when you have a DVD player. To return to viewing, just put the disc back in, wait for it to load, try in vain to fast-forward through the FBI warning, go to "scene selections," find the one nearest to where you stopped, then fast-forward or rewind until you get to (approximately) where you left off. Just DO NOT PUSH STOP or you have to start over, wait for it to load ... Where’s the problem? Much better than just jamming the videotape in and hitting play.

But DVD does make up for this inconvenience with valuable "bonus material" on each disc consisting of basically everything producers can think to add, including their personal home videos. Of course if you happen to get interrupted while watching the bonus material, you have to put the disc back in, wait for it to load, sit through the FBI warning, click on bonus material, find what you want, unless you chose the wrong thing by mistake, then you have to go back to the start, wait for it to load, sit through the FBI warning, click on bonus material ... .

On top of all this user hostility is the whole issue of disc damage. VHS tapes have a great design that automatically protects the tape when the cassette is not in player.

DVDs are basically scratch magnets. Especially kids’ DVDs. I’m afraid the DVDs will suffer the same fate as all the kids' computer software CDs that have been scratched to death in my house. Because kids never put CDs back in their cases. Just toss them on the desk like coasters.

Just the other day I had to stop watching a rental DVD movie because some huge palm print on the disc freaked out the player. It took me about three minutes of emphatic button pushing to get the player to unfreak and puke out the disc.

Of course after every time I stopped the DVD player to clean the disc, I had to put it back in, wait for it to load, sit through the FBI warning ....

Hey, let’s not forget the superior quality of DVDs. Not that I would know since I’m watching them on a $250 26-inch Zenith. But I hear the quality jump between VHS and DVD will just blow me away, once I get that $3,000 plasma screen. Sorry kids, no college fund for you but look at the bright DVD-enabled colors on the plasma screen!

The main redeeming quality about DVD so far is in the boxed set arena. My 13 episodes of the PBS Sherlock Holmes series (yes, I am a freak for owning the Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett) take up five skinny discs compared to seven or more fat tapes.

Of course I have to store the discs in a vault to avoid scratches. And if I get interrupted while watching one of the shows, I have to put the disc back in, wait for it to load, sit through the FBI warning ....

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