Why is it so hard to watch a movie?
With all the improvement in home theater tech, we face both an increase, and a decrease in control over our media.
Let’s go chronologically.
VHS: The first real movie watching technology for home use. Albeit clunky, slow, and prone to errors, the cassette tape finally put us in control instead of the projectionist. We could fast forward and rewind to our hearts delight. Though rewinding the tapes when we were done was a pain, we never knew anything different. Until the DVD.
Got to save those VCR heads.
DVD: They were more compact, durable, had a cleaner picture and you could instantly jump to anywhere in the movie. But the main feature I promoted to my parents about the new DVD format was that you never had to rewind them. It had zero backwards compatibility but the DVD player freed you from the linear nature of the VHS. But something always nagged at me. Those FBI Warning. An endless stream of different legalese threatening warnings, even in foreign languages. No one has ever read one of these, ever. Why couldn’t I fast forward through them? Okay, I get it. I can’t copy this movie, I’ve seen this on every movie I’ve ever watched. Can I just get on with it? This minor annoyance was emphasized by the fact that I, having legally purchased a movie, lack control over its playback in my own home.
Blu Ray: Winner of the HD wars, the Blu Ray format adds a few improvements and more than a few problems. Besides the better quality video and audio, this format brings the ability to resume a movie you’d ejected and later come back to. (though this functionality is often broken by the disc authoring). Another big change with Blu Ray players is the fact that they can be connected to the internet. And in my opinion, nothing ruins consumer electronics faster than connecting something to the internet that SHOULDN’T BE CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET. Now your movie can have updated commercials and realtime weather integrated into your menu. As long as you’re willing to register a login with every separate movie studio, you can access special features off the net. Provided their servers are working.
I might be the minority when it comes to being annoyed with my Blu Ray player doing things behing my back, telling movie studios things about me and installing things without my permission. But what everyone can agree on is that firmware updates suck. Connection to the internet has become a crutch for companies to push constant firmware updates to equipment. This might be to fix bugs but it’s often used to update your player just so it will play new movies. It only takes one instance of gathering friends together to watch a new release, only to find that your player can’t play the movie because it needs to be updated. One time, and you’ll hate the very idea of firmware updates.
If you're lucky, your player tells you when it needs to update.