A poke in the eye

A while ago I joined the liberal elite and bought a Blu-ray player. It’s wonderful. Thanks to Neflix, I get a steady stream of Blu-ray movies sent to my house. This makes me very happy.

But.

You know what’s not wonderful?

In all the techno whiz-bangery of the Blu-ray spec, for some reason a little checkbox was thrown in, where a Blu-ray producer can specify whether it’s ALLOWED for the player to resume a movie where it was left off.

So okay, the committee meeting was running late, everybody was tired, they decided what the heck, let’s put it in the spec. What kind of nutjob would actually want to not allow the player to resume a movie? Why in the name of all that is holy would ANYBODY. EVER. WANT. THAT.

Turns out, movie studios want that. Pretty much every Blu-ray disc that’s winged its way to Casa Core Dump has not allowed me TO RESUME THE F**ING MOVIE.

Why? Dear Lord why? What could you possibly gain from not allowing me to watch a bit of a movie, decide I’m tired and need to go to bed, then come back the next day to finish the movie, but OH NO YOU WON’T.

I’ve tried. Lord knows I’ve tried during the times I’ve spent trying to remember exactly where I left off the movie and scanning the chapters to get to that point again, I’ve tried so hard to find a reason WHY THIS IS A GOOD THING FOR ANYBODY.

And I can’t.

A bunch of people at movie studios have apparently decided that a really great way to not make me download movies online is to make it EXTRA F**ING INCONVENIENT for me to watch their product I’ve paid money for.

If anybody out there knows WHY anybody in their right mind would think it’s a great idea to make their product less useful, I’m all ears.

Jeez.