Rant: Dirty DVDs
In another life, I almost never rented DVDs. I bought them. Unless there was a brand new release that I was really anxious to see. Then I'd end up at Blockbuster in the New Releases section.
So it wasn't until I'd been with Netflix for a little bit that I discovered the dirty truth: People who rent DVDs don't give a shit. They set them on top of their TVs out of their cases. They smudge them with fingerprints. They smear peanut butter and jelly and various unidentifiable bodily fluids on them.
And they just generally cock things up for the rest of us.
I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a movie I really want to see in the mail, get about half-way through watching it, and then suddenly the DVD player stops working and barfs, telling me the disc is unreadable.
It's usually at this point that I discover there's a gouge or groove in the disc, or that someone has attached some crust to the disc's underside that can only come off by using some industrial-strength cleaner that will probably eat right through the plastic casing of the disc itself.
Yes, as you can tell, it happened again.
Comments
I've seen that a couple of times with DVD's from the county library. One of the Harry Potter movies, in particular, had a spot that would make Apple's DVD Player quit itself every time, and the only solution was to restart the player and start playing at the start of the next chapter.
Posted by: Alphax | April 5, 2005 09:59 PM
Yes, that's the one royal pain with Netflix. They're pretty snappy with replacement discs -- they'll put one in the mail asap, but it's still a day or so, and by then you've forgotten if the blonde who's taken in the Pianist is the same one he met before, the actress or the cellist, so is this moment supposed to be poignant or just sad...
BTW, I find Netflix Freak to be pretty useful.
http://www.thelittleappfactory.com/application.php?app=Netflix%20Freak
Posted by: Enrique | April 6, 2005 11:58 AM