blog@cliffdweller

Last night I watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on DVD. I found it in the bargain bins a couple of weeks ago at Costco and this was my first chance to sit down and devote 2 hours and 25 minutes of my life to checking it out.

At least that was my plan. It actually took an extra 15 minutes, no lie to open the packaging surrounding the DVD.

Let's itemize, shall we?

It came in a 2 pack with another classic 1960s kids movie: Doctor Dolittle, with Rex Harrison. Doctor Dolittle is a DVD jewel box, shrinkwrapped, then enclosed in a cardboard sleeve with shiny metallic gold printed all over it. CCBB was just a DVD jewel box, shrink wrapped.

Now here's where it got fun. The were taped together. Yes. Together. With Tape. Never mind the gold cardboard print job that a collector might want to keep in tact. Tapedy tape tape rrrrripp.

and then there's the little strip across the top of the CCBB dvd. You've seen it on every DVD you've bought in the last few years. It has the name printed on it, and it folds over the edges. Presumedly it's to keep illegal copies from happening, or to keep the DVD from falling out of the packaging (never mind that it was 2 layers of shrink wrapped goodness deep).

That little strip on CCBB fell apart in at least 30 pieces while I tried to remove it. In the end, my fingernails damaged the plastic sleeve on the jewel box.

So why do the folks in Hollywood make it so hard and wasteful to watch a simple dvd? It's not like they can claim anti-piracy. There'd be no money in it for theft, the package of 2 only cost $8 anyway.

Do you think they actually test marketed any of these innovations or do you think anyone else even notices?

Put me down for Netflix and iTunes. I doubt I'll buy any more physical DVDs. it's just too much work to get them open.