My DVD player is so forgetful

I could go on and on about the advantages DVDs have over their predecessor, the VHS videotape. But how many of you have ever heard anyone tell you a disadvantage? Please allow me to be the first.

Over the weekend I was watching a movie on DVD late at night. After several head-bobs I realized I wasn’t going to make it through the remainder of the movie without falling asleep. So I stopped the movie, powered off all of the equipment and went to bed.

The next day, when I was ready to watch the rest of the movie, I powered everything back on only to find out that the DVD player didn’t remember where I was in the movie. Instead it displayed the main menu as if I had just inserted the DVD for the first time.

wait… now where was I?

I couldn’t believe it. I actually had to go to the scene selection on the menu and go scene by scene to figure out approximately where I left off in the movie. I wasn’t exactly thrilled by this.

Do you see where I am going with this? You never had to do this with a VHS videotape. With videotape, the video always just picked up exactly where you left off.

Now I know what some of you not-so-noobies are thinking. They make DVD players that can remember where you stopped in a movie by saving the DVD’s position to memory on the DVD player. I know this because I have one such DVD player. In fact the DVD player can remember up to the last five DVDs I was watching. Unfortunately I wasn’t watching this DVD on that player.

And even so, I present this challenge. What happens when the power goes out while watching a movie? Your memory-capable DVD player won’t do you any good there. Or what if I want to stop the movie, eject the DVD and finish watching the movie in another room on another DVD player?

viva la videotape!

So the next time you hear someone spouting off about how superior DVDs are to videotape, just tell them that Mr. Noobie may think otherwise.