I saw five movies last week. That must make me a decent customer of film producers. In previous weeks I’ve also been to the cinema to see Star Wars and I intend to go to see The Fantastic 4, Batman Begins and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when they come out. So I like films, but not in the Rory Donnegan knowing esoteric quotes from film noir way. Of the five films I saw last week one was “Mr and Mrs Smith” in the cinema, “Blade II” and “Hidalgo” on DVD and “Team America: World Police” and “Starsky and Hutch” on pirated DVD.
I enjoyed “Mr and Mrs Smith”, thought “Team America” was hilarous and was plesently surprised that “Starsky & Hutch” wasn’t crap. However the quality of the “Blade II” and “Hidaldo” DVDs was extremely poor. Given that
- it costs £3 to rent a DVD,
- the movie companies keep pushing for laws that I don’t like, and
- it’s illegal for me to view a DVD that I’ve rented or bought (due to said laws: the EUCD a.k.a. the European DMCA).
I wonder why I should ever bother renting a DVD ever again. If it’s just as illegal for me to watch a good quality pirated DVD as it is to watch a poor quality legal DVD I should just choose the cheaper option.
The thing that really pisses me off is that the manufacturers must have gone out of their way to make the legal DVDs bad quality. The pirated DVDs I had came from a friend who downloaded images from the ‘net and burned them using consumer grade blanks and a consumer grade DVD burner. Why were the legal DVDs skipping frames when the illegal ones were of perfect quality? Do the legal DVDs have some copy restriction technology that foobared my viewing experience?
Media companies really annoy me. Why can’t I get the media I want to watch in a format that I want to use? If they don’t give me what I want why should I purchase their product? Especially since I can download a better quality product for cheaper! I must be late to this party as everyone else seems to have figured this out years ago.
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