We did have an issue last night with the DVD menu; we could not get it to set to Dutch subtitles correctly (required for the proper understanding by my daughter). We would set it to Dutch, but after watching the film, it turned out to be English subtitles (one time even with French sound...). The problem was a glitch in either the dvd encoding, or (more likely) my media center not interpreting the commands good enough.

My problem with it is that we had to start the movie from the start every time again after we tried changing the settings (we did that about 6 times). We would have to sit through countless seconds (seemingly ages) of stupid company logos like this one:

And then this one:

And then the warning signs for not showing this to kids under 12 (yeah, I know I know...). And then the warning about not allowing to show this in a restaurant or school)... All of these screens you cannot fast forward, skip frames or chapters. Nothing you can do except go through them until the movie starts. And yes, most DVDs allow you to change subtitle settings during the film too, and resume where you left off. This one does not.

You understand by now I was pretty frustrated. Why do these companies feel what they do to this movie (only some stupid 20th century brick & mortar logistics) is so important that they enforce people looking at their logo's for so long? Ah, and why is it required by law that DVDs show this stupid warning about licenses? I did buy the DVD, why am I warned about people not being as nice as I am?

To me it looks like an old fashioned industry, trying to hold on to the ridiculous margins of the 80's, is desperately seeking to make the lives of their last paying customers (like me) miserable. What a great business model! You sell a product, a competitor has a better product that competes with you (like free downloadable movies), so let's make our products even harder to use and compel our last customers to abandon us too. Companies like these, movies distributors, music distributors as well deserve to go bankrupt. I am now not sure I will buy the DVD of a next classic movie I want to share with my children.

This all falls in the category of companies getting in trouble that no longer provide added value to their products. The previous 400 years the economy has all been about WHO HAS THE DATA. The next 400 years will be about WHO HAS THE USER. If you can add value to someone elses product, that is where your strenght lies, that is what you can charge money for, not for the product itself. Maybe I'll write another blog about that some time. For now, I really like what great companies like New Line Cinema have done with the rich books of mister Tolkien. But all these stupid people wanting a piece of someone elses pie... their doom is self-inflicted. One blog to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them... Ha!