Dislike of Technology

I think there is no rhyme or reason with dvd's as to whether or not they will play. The only DVD player I've had that will play absolutely any DVD is my multi-region player.

__________________
I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

They make things cheaply now.. They want them to break, so people keep buying more and more..

I also notice DVDs have a better chance playing on a laptop or computer.. Sometimes its the codec you need. As for the DVD player, each one have their own glitches and quirks.

Yes, Captain Steel made the same point. I no longer have a disk drive, but, when I did, my PC played movies that my DVD player rejected.

Thanks to the last several replies about digital media - I was beginning to think it was just me!

Speaking of technology - how does the multi-quote button work on this site? I still don't know how to quote more than one poster at a time.

Click on the little wheel at the far right of EACH post to which you want to reply. THEN, click Multi-Quote for EACH such post. Keep doing that for EVERY post to which you wish to reply. When you are done, THEN click on Post Reply below. (Sometimes you need to click it a couple of times.) Then you will see that all the quoted posts are displayed in the reply box.

Thanks! I had no idea how to do that!

Yesterday I read an article about autonomous cars and it crossed my mind that they will make some movie scenarios less fun. I mean car racing or chasing a villain in completely safe self-driving cars, come on now. Having said that, less road accidents in the real world would be great, no question.

Right. Bullitt wouldn't be the same, that's for sure.

Sounds like a good thing! (I personally hate car chases in movies - probably because they became so cliched and gratuitous!)

Me too! I could add shoot-outs, also... Everyone knows the lead isn't going to die in the first scene, so it's deja vu.

You are not going to change your opinion on tech now, do you? That would ruin the entire thread

LOL! Great post!

I'm just wondering how many "bugs" will have to be worked out of the automated vehicle system and how many decades it will take to fully integrate it into developed societies.

It seems like "bugs" dealing with multi-ton vehicles speeding through populated streets might initially cost more lives than they ultimately save.

I'm also sad to learn that CD's & DVD's seem to have a kind of shelf life. It defeats the point of having built a "collection." Who wants to share a favorite movie on DVD with someone who's never seen it before only to have the DVD halt before the end because it's become spontaneously defective or reached its undeterminable date of expiration.

It's understood that anything can go haywire and nothing lasts forever, but it's sad that previous forms of media (like LP's or even music or movies on tape) last longer than much newer and more expensive technology.

What makes you think DVDs are degrading? I see no reason why any of my DVDs would be spontaneously degrading unless I stood on them or something.

Well that's why I asked earlier if other people have experienced DVD's just ceasing to function over time (without any damage to them) - and people responded that they have experienced this with both CD's and DVD's unless I read those responses wrong.

Question: Is there still free virus protection for personal computers (and if so is it any good?)
Mcafee charged me $97.00 this year for virus protection (after a 3 month free period when I bought the computer last year).

And I know nothing about Smart Phones... but if they access the Internet, do they require some sort of virus protection???

And... I can never remember, but why don't Apple Mac computers need virus protection if they also access the Internet?

When I had a PC, IIRC I had free protection with Norton Antivirus courtesy of Comcast. I had my PC 3 years or so & had at least one virus every year. Personally, this is something I would never pay for.

I don't know why Apple products don't get viruses, but they don't. Never had a virus with my iPad & don't expect to.

I'm dismayed to find that they no longer make counter top microwave ovens with dials.

Two dials were so simple - one for "high, med., low" and one for time.

I had a blind neighbor who was able to figure out how to use his microwave (which is how he did most his cooking) in a matter of minutes just by feeling the pointer on the time dial, turning it to the right and figuring out how the position coincided with the second and minutes. He wouldn't have been able to use a digital microwave that wasn't specifically designed for the blind.

I had a discussion about this with a young sales girl at Best Buy. She agreed with my point about blind people (and pointed out that they make microwaves with braille numbers - but they didn't carry any). But after I said elderly people are overwhelmed by digital command boards because they feel like they have to be a computer programmer just to warm up a cup of coffee, and how the dials were so much simpler - she said, "Well, if they don't know how to use it, they could just access the directions on their phone!"

I'm convinced that my family are mutants who have the power to make technology dysfunctional.

For instance - my mom's TV. It's an HD TV that I got for my parents after their last TV set blew (this new one is their first flat screen).
And I went and got the HD cable box from the cable company. And used the HDMI cable to hook them together - yet any time there is a dark scene or shadows in the background, it's grainy looking and you can see obvious pixelization.

Now, I used to watch Walking Dead (which has a lot of dark scenes) on my old TV in HD (through a different cable company) and there was none of this distortion. Unlike my old cable company, my mom's doesn't have separate channels just for HD TV - but in the description it has "HD" right up there with the show's info.

I went so far as to look up solutions and found all the dpi and picture ratio stuff in the settings that are supposed to solve these problems - I tried them all, but none of them provide an HD picture (although the highest setting says it's the maximum resolution for HD and HD TV sets).

I also experimented by seeing what the picture looked like by changing the signal source (from HDMI to TV) and it was a pixelated mess using "TV", so the HDMI setting is obviously better, but NOT providing an actual HD picture. Anyone have similar problems?
So what's next, call the cable company?

Call tthe TV manufacturer. Sounds like you got a bad set.

__________________
Letterboxd