6
Comments
Comments
When technology ‘improvements’ go bad
Pondered by Nat
quite a long while ago…
Does anyone else find that watching a movie these days is a torturous process?
I understand why people illegally download movies, I am yet to hire a DVD that isn’t so badly scratched you spend half your time trying to clean it and miss half the movie anyway because it jumps scenes and bungs out every couple of minutes.
It is a sad day when people are crying out for video tapes to come back.
It feels like we are missing a good solution here!
(FYI, just watched ‘Enron (well half of it anyway) – great movie for getting a little idea of how/why all our financial institutions are going under!)
Hello, my name is Natalie, I have a business called 
September 29th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
I’ve never had that kind of problem with rental DVDs. Possibly your player is not in terribly good adjustment.
DVDs are certainly a thousand times better than VHS in a rental situation.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:38 am
I’ll agree with the fact that scratched dvds are lame,,, although vhs is only good for movies from the 80′s. It’s as if the VHS quality almost makes them more classic.
Still, I would rather be required to take a flash drive to the movie rental store and have the download only be good for three days, you never have to return it..!!!! ;-)
September 30th, 2008 at 7:21 am
Randy: then why bother going to the store? The NZ iTunes store recently started renting and selling movies and I tried one — the 1970′s SF classic “Logan’s Run”, which I had somehow managed to miss seeing. It’s not hugely cheap ($4.99 to “rent”, $9.99 to buy) but it’s certainly convenient. I was able to start watching within a minute of pressing the “buy” button. The quality was even pretty good. Certainly much better than VHS. Screenshot:
http://hoult.org/bruce/logan.png
As far as the price goes … my local DVD rental place charges less to rent, but doesn’t have much of a selection. If I had to drive from Johnsonville down to Aro St to find an obscure movie that would cost about $4 in petrol. On the flip side, downloading a 1.25 GB movie on my cable modem costs about $1.87.
Bargain bin DVDs don’t usually go lower than $9.99 though, and you can’t set out with the intention of finding a particular movie.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:04 am
ha ha! Have you people SEEN ‘Be Kind Rewind” EVERYONE is going back to VHS!!!
Nah, I wouldn’t, but it does seem that there are more problem with DVD’s than videos… And given that when you hire one,you want to go home and watch it and then often aren’t even able to do that, the whole concept gets a big thumbs down. (And I have tried many DVD players)
Maybe I will start to do the download thing.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:54 am
We are a little lucky that we have the option to use Bigpond movies. Good quality, great service. There is a bit of a premium but probably worth it. Surely there has to be someone taking care of this market in NZ?
September 30th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Logan’s Run is a classic! There’s talk of a remake. If you wish to avoid Aro then the Video Cave in tawa is just as good if not better for random titles. Plus it’s all on one level, staff tend to be better and not once in the 15 years I remember going to them have I ever been charged a late fee. They give you and extra day, then call and then just say to get it back in. Wonderment!