Rants 'n' Raves

DVD Copyright Warnings.

The advent of home movies on DVD is, without a doubt, a major step up from VHS - there can be little denying that the sound and picture quality are vastly superior, you have much more control over scanning back and forth, perfect stills, never need to rewind, not to mention that they don't wear in the same way as VHS cassettes do over time.

There is one thing that does annoy me though... One of the additional features of DVD is that the producers of the DVDs can disable the forward scan feature if the so choose (yes I know some unlocked or region-free players are immune to this tampering, but not everyone has them). This means that, when the copyright notice comes up, you cannot skip it - it just sits there on the screen long enough for you to read the entire thing.

Yes, I know they have legal rights over the content of the DVD's, but when it comes to DVDs for home sale, I don't think they should force you to sit through the copyright warning. I fully understand on rentals, when you are only likely to watch it once, that you have not seen it before, so by all means, lock it in and make you see it (very VERY few people will probably read it, but why should the DVD manufacturers care about the convenience of the people who keep them in business)

When you buy a DVD, I'd say it is reasonable to assume that you DO intend to watch it more than once... Do you need to be told every time that its copyrighted? I guess the producers of these discs feel most comfortable assuming that the people who buy thier discs are too stupid to remember this little fact.

In summary - I wish they'd stop locking out the forward seek on those DVDs that are for retail sale - rentals, fine - go for it - annoy us - but when we're buying them - OWNING them, then nope - let us make our own choices....