The Wiki Man

Wednesday, 20th August 2008

Rory Sutherland's fortnightly column on technology and the web

2) Choice architecture. The standard DVD remote control is covered by 37 buttons all of an equally fiddly size, 32 of which perform no useful function whatsoever.

3) Defaults. When I load a disk, it’s because I want to watch the film. From the start. In bloody English. The remote is by now somewhere under the sofa, so the last thing I need is a menu screen asking whether to ‘a) play the main feature? or b) watch 17 minutes of unreleased footage with a spoken commentary and Flemish subtitles?’ Default to a), damn it!

While we’re at it, kill that advertisement at the beginning of every DVD which suggests that piracy is no different from car theft. First, this admonition only appears on legal DVDs, so the target audience won’t see it. Second, it’s insane to claim piracy is equivalent to physical crime. ‘You wouldn’t desecrate a cemetery,’ it suggests, ‘and you wouldn’t burgle a pensioner’s flat while smearing excrement over the walls. So what makes you think Cameron Diaz doesn’t deserve a bigger yacht?’

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Richard

August 21st, 2008 12:30pm Report this comment

Good point on the security warning. Plus it is pretty hypocrticical while the movie companies insist on 'Region coding'

As a result a DVD legally bought in the USA cannot be played on a machine coded for Europe.

Can you imagine being told that you were not allowed to read the book you bought in New York once you arrived in the UK?

Well this is Sony's message.

I know there are relatively simple ways around region coding but it is an established legal pricipal that those calling for equity should have clean hands.

Sony etc have pretty grubby mitts on this one

Rory Sutherland

August 23rd, 2008 2:05am Report this comment

Even more bizarre is the information at the beginning of some DVDs that the ensuing film is not authorised for viewing on oil rigs.

Do they seriously imagine anyone on an oil rig has ever been deterred by this?

Tom

August 28th, 2008 4:02pm Report this comment

On piracy warnings, the more lunatic one is the one that tells you very forcefully that there is no point buying a pirated DVD because the quality will be crap. Sadly, the fact that they need to spend money telling us that the quality is bad signals that actually it isn't all that bad. IF it were, people would stop buyig hooky DVDs and the need for the advertising would disappear. Their ad in fact encourages you to buy knock-off DVDs.

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