Ah. Breakfast. I’ve just put some fried mushrooms, onion & eggs on toast with whole grain mustard. Best thing in the world. Got a few minutes before I have to leave for work – why not watch a bit of a movie? 10 minutes is worth it. Hell, the opening 10 minutes of lots of movies are frickin’ excellent.
I walk over to the DVD collection and have a look-see. There’s a new one. Bought it last week. Seen the movie before, of course, but not since I bought it.
I grab the disc out of the cover, jam it into my DVD player, collapse into the couch and start to eat lunch.
Couple of bytes in. Seeing a film company logo. The one before the menu.
Yeah, okay. Seen it once. We done? Great. No, wait. Shit. Another one? Okay, fine. Whatever. Menu time yet?
No, now we’ve got – wait – what the filthy clam-fuck is this? Some badly shot video footage of… what is that… Africa somewhere? Yeap, okay. Boy, those people look unhappy. Guess they’re some of the poor bastards whose lives organised religion is destroying by claiming condoms spread aids.
Hrm, yes, that’s what it is. Ooh, look a white person in clean clothes staring seriously at the camera.
Oh no – it’s not.
Damnit.
It is. An AIDS awareness ad. Shit.
Skip.
Hrm. That didn’t work. “Menu” then? No, not that either.
Crapsicle-sticks. I hate that. I just wanted to get a few minutes of this movie in before I had leave the hou-
Hey, NONE of these buttons work.
Better mash some more.
Oh, shit. That was the ‘back’ button. DAMNIT! It’s starting again!
Well, I guess I can mute it.
Ahh. That worked. When in doubt, circumvent what your DVD player is doing.
Guess I’ll eat some more breakfast…
Hrm. Half-gone now. Ahh! The menu. That’s good.
Boy, that menu takes a while to load. So many extraneous graphics. Ugh. And looping sound. What a load of god-damned bottle-sucking crap.
That’d get annoying if you left it at the menu for too long.
Can I use the menu yet? No? Still playing the opening animation?
Oh, wait. There we go.
Shit – where’s my remote? Ah, there.
Alright… let’s see… “Play Movie”. Yeap, great.
Ah, there we go.
Hrm. Studio logo again. I’ve already seen this one before the menu.
Ah! Finally. The film starts.
Production credits.
Always entertaining.
Ooh, I love these scene.
Hey – wait. Why is it dubbed in English?
Hrm. Better go back to the menu and turn that back to German with Engish subtitles. I can’t stand bad dubbing.
Hrm. Menu.
Damn. That stupid animation again.
Oh well, I’ll just have some more breakfast…
Hrm. Almost all gone.
Ah! The menu’s here.
Let me see… ‘languages’. There we go.
Set to ‘German’.
Gah. Wait – what? Why the hairy snot-salt has it taken me back to the main menu? I hadn’t turned on subtitles yet!
Oh well. ‘Menu’ button again.
Shit. More animations! What a craptastic, irritating pain in the lower spleen.
Okay, ‘languages’ again… subtitles… ‘English’… there we go.
‘Play Movie’.
Oh, fudge-sickles. It’s starting from the production logos again.
Hrm. Let me skip forward a chapter…
Shit. That’s not just past the credits! It’s past the first scene entirely! But I love that scene!
What kind of malevolent, semi-sentient dishwashing detergent put these chapter-stops in place?
Shit. Shit shit fuck fuck mother-fuck coquenballs. I’m finished bloody eating!
Oh well. Time to go to work.
Eject.
Replace on shelf.
Go to work fuming.
How’s this for a good plan, you frustrating arse-backward frag-stains…
You’re fighting an enemy called digital distribution. It’s growing every damn day, because it’s convenient. Click twice on itunes and you have the latest movie rented and playing. Hell, even the xbox does it these days. Never mind specialised set-top boxes and the like.
How’s about you accept that if your archaeic medium has any fscking chance in hell of surviving, you’ll have to at least try to pretend to care about the usability of your product.
It’s one click to watch a movie whose quality is at least on cthulhu-damned par with the shitty grainy bull-corn that comes on DVDs these days, if not better.
So why the fuck are we still buying this shit? A case to collect? To put on our wall?
Not everybody’s a hoarder like me. You’re going to have to do better if you want to survive.
But you won’t.
You’re done.
Digital media is the future. The sooner you figure this out and move on, the cleaner and more honest the break-up will be and the better chance you’ll have of remaining friends with us in the future.
4 Comments
The last time I brought a DVD was…oh shit. 2007. Heh.
P.S. How are you finding intense debate? I tried it out for wordpress but it just about doubled my loading times.
The very worst type of unskippable ad is the "Piracy is Stealing" thing you are insulted with as a result of BUYING the fricking DVD. Because piracy artists are really nice about putting that on a pirated copy, really. Or wait, NO.
Closely followed by the sixteen unskippable disney shorts you get on Disney kids DVDs.
Sorry – didn't notice this until now.
It's okay. Does the job, and isn't too slow. You get used to the whole comments chunk of the page loading a moment after the rest.
Exactly. Fills me with murderous rage. Sorry, you are punishing me for having done the right thing by actually disabling my ability to skip an ad I've seen multiple times? On the product I've PAID YOU for? Are you people morons?
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