Sloppy's Journal: It's as scratched as hell, and I can't take it any more!!

Rented "Network," probably the best movie I've brought home.

DVD rentals suck. They're always scratched, and the DVD player has a fit over it. How can I possibly spend another dime on this shit and keep my self-respect?

Well, that's it, then. I give up.

A modified quote from another movie: the more you clench your fist, the more customers will slip through your fingers. This is why piracy -- no more fragile media, no more DRM -- is the best way. It's not even about ripping them off -- it's about not getting ripped off. Fuck it. I really tried. I give up.

I've seen the movie; I know how it ends. Doesn't matter; this bullshit spoiled it. I was trying to show it to a friend.

Get a cheap DVD player

[notanatheist]

It is because of rentals and old DVDs that I have 2 DVD players. My nice unit upscales and looks beautiful but is very picky so I bought a Philips DVP-642 from Wal-wart for $50 and it barely cares what you throw in there.

Re:

[nizo]

The sad thing is that if you ripped the DVD before watching it, you wouldn't have this problem :-|

I do recommend the phlips DVD players that can play divx btw; they work great (though they will eventually break). Though for $60 a few years of being able to play divx and region free is worth it.

Re:

[Sloppy]

The sad thing is that if you ripped the DVD before watching it, you wouldn't have this problem

Exactly. When I rip, I don't care if errors and retries cause it to be read slower than realtime, because I'm time-shifting anyway. But this time, I wanted to just put the disc into a consumer electronics appliance and watch it. Couldn't. This is my reward for paying. If I had just pirated it from somewhere, I wouldn't have had any hassles.

Haven't had this problem

[ces]

At least with Netflix and Blockbuster. Though with BB it seems to vary a lot from store to store.

Re:

[sweetooth]

I have seen a very large number of horribly scratched discs from Netflix. It's gotten so bad that I've started marking the discs before I return them. On more than one occasion I've had to return two copies of the same disc as unplayable only to get the first disc back the third time. I'm about ready to just ditch the rental services all together. The problem is two fold. The first part is that people don't give a damn about the discs because they are rentals and so the discs are poorly treated to begin wit