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Consumer Friendly (or Disney Hostile) DVD Players?
solli asks: "After 13 years of relatively faithful service my Mitsubishi(!) VCR has finally kicked the bucket, and I am now thinking of moving on to DVDs. One of the only things preventing me from buying a DVD is the fact that some media companies like to make you watch FBI warnings, trailers, and ads before allowing you to view the actual movie (like Disney's Tarzan). Of course, there is such a large demand for region free players and other specialized needs that niche markets have developed to fill that demand. However, I have seen nothing about players that give you the freedom to navigate through the disk the way you want to, instead of how the content producer wants you to. What DVD players exist that let the viewer take full advantage of the nonlinear properties of the DVD media? Can any of the available players ignore the directives embedded on-disk to disable certain controls at particular times?"
... buy Japanese.
Their cars and consumer electronics are far superior to anything that Americans or Europeans come up with. It's high-time they got our respect; let's forget December 7th, as we have September 11th to dwell on now.
-
26 year-old Web developer from Seattle. And yes, chicks do dig *nix
5.
On the way to work, windows rolled up, I enjoy the fresh stink of a fried egg and beer and peanut butter on toast blast of methane from my aging asshole. You'd enjoy it too if you were me and that is one of the mysteries of life. The fact that the same fart coming from my intestines in a closed up cab of a 1989 Chevy truck would make you throw up your breakfast as it made me greet the day with pleasure. THAT, motherfucker, is as profound as the invention of the wheel.
Ok fine, so you may have to have up to 5 minutes of time to spend on something else. You still shouldn't have your time scheduled that tightly. Spend that time chatting with friends, or reading a longer article, or making a sandwich.
The fast-paced society that people have bought into these days is overwhelming. Why do people have such a problem with relaxing and waiting a few minutes.
-Brent
Hahaa! You lose! MY Mitsubishi is 13 years old and *still* works! My dad's stronger than yours too!
> As technically-minded people, we should never back
> an inferior technology purely for political
> reasons.
Like avoiding genocide? Would you build a
website in COBOL.NET if it would avert a century
like the last one in which 170 million human beings
were killed by their own government? I'm reducing
your statement to absurdity in hopes that you will
realize that a balance of technical and political
considerations is required.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
I just read most of the replies and such and I've come to the conclusion that this has to be the most pathetic topic on Slashdot at least for the day, maybe even for the past few days.
What we're saying here is that "My VCR broke, and I'd like to use a technology that is better in most every aspect by a degree of at least 5 fold, I don't want to be forced to ignore a legal notice." Maybe the answer for you is to use a Tivo instead. So you can't buy movies for it, well if you think of it, when you buy a movie, you're buying a copy of the intellectual property of someone else, if they chose to protect it with a 12 second message, then let them. If you don't agree with their right to display a disclaimer or a message of this type, then don't buy the disc. You have a choice after all.
Of course, the think the main reason I chose to rant today is that I feel that often times Slashdot reaches new levels of low. It's more than a little bit scary that we're reading a technology column which has contributers that haven't even made the leap to DVD yet. How can we expect to consider a person like this tech savy. I would figure that his question was more suitable for a DVD newbie news group or mailing list. Hell, DVD isn't anything special anymore, it's old technology, in fact, I built a machine as a DVD player about 5 years ago and had about 20 discs 2 weeks later. I have also purchased about 300+ movies from these horrible thieves who insist on reminding me that I own the disc, not what's on it. But, I'll tell you this, I still like the movies and I still enjoy watching them.
If Slashdot were a printed journal, as in printed on dead trees, I would have started a class action suite over this one article just because I would feel that Slashdot was intentionally trying to destroy the environment by cutting down additional trees in order print this crap.
On a last note, Slashdot, please consider hiring someone who has an education in journalism. Maybe you can pay someone to actually write articles worth reading instead of depending on scraping the bottom of the barrel for garbage like this. It's truly pathetic that you would actually charge for this service. Maybe you should consider just shutting the site down. It would be in the best interest of many. Apparently there are far too many people who can't seem to make a purchasing decision for something as simple as a DVD player without asking for the feedback from 300 people who give no help anyway.