It’s the sound of inevitability, Mr. Anderson

So. Yeah. Wow. You bought a Blu-ray player. Because you like to watch movies in the best available format. Which is Blu-ray, at this point. And yes, movies look fantastic in Blu-ray. You get yourself a good HD TV set, couple it with a good Blu-ray player and a a nice set of speakers, and you know what? You now have yourself an immersive experience.

Indeed. Some nice, crisp movie watching is all a-waiting for you.

That is, unless you have some kind of perverted idea that you want to have the best experience possible.

Remember how you bought that Blu-ray player? And bought or rented that movie you want to watch? And how you thought you would just put that movie in your sweaty little hand, press the eject button on the Blu-ray player, then put the movie in the tray, hit the eject button again, and then you’d be watching this orgy of pixels on your screen?

Yeah, that was a great dream, wasn’t it? Pretty fantastic.

And hey, it could happen, it could happen. Let’s not be a buzzkill here.

Just because you made the mistake of hooking your Blu-ray player up to the Internet.

See, you thought you bought a better DVD player. Better as in better picture quality. NO-HO, you did NOT. You, sir, bought yourself an EXPERIENCE MACHINE. That’s right. You are about to have an EXPERIENCE, whether you want to or not.

See, your Blu-ray player, the one you bought, is actually not something as MUNDANE as a DVD player. Perish the thought. Shhhh. Get that bad thought out of your head. Shhhh. Is the bad thought gone yet?

Your Blu-ray player is a virtual reality something something. And as such, just pushing in a shiny silver disc like it’s something you’re entitled to watch only shows what a redneck you are. No siree! This baby needs to be taken on the Net! And updated!

Oh, you thought that just because you bought this thing for a week’s wages it was going to do what YOU think it should, peasant boy? Well, welcome to the cyber age.

This thing MAY do what you bought it to do, but you have to update it first. Oh, heavens, you thought a consumer product only designed to do one thing would be, you know, able to do that when you bought it? REALLY, sir, it’s time to get with the age. No, no, the product is just fine, it just needs to be brought online to spend half an hour installing updates so it can do things like “BD-LIVE” better. Really.

What’s BD-LIVE? Chuckle. Why, it’s the future, sir. It will let you interact with your movie in a whole new way.

What’s that? You just want to WATCH your movie?

I rightly don’t know what to tell you here, sir. You want to put your movie in the player and then WATCH it? Just sit there? And watch it? In high definition? Like some kind of neanderthal?

Sir. Sir. It’s like you don’t even WANT to be part of the future. It’s like you WANT to just be this kind of, uhm … PERSON who sits in front of their TV and watches it instead INTERACTING with it.

You know, a lot of people have gone through a lot of trouble … yeah, there was a LOT of overtime, so you can INTERACT with your movie. That’s right! Interact. Like answer a QUIZZ! A QUIZZ ABOUT THE MOVIE! WHILE IT’S PLAYING! And you’re acting like you don’t even give a shit, like you just want to sit there like a zombie and not even CARE!

It’s almost, and I don’t know, I’m kind of having a hard time keeping it together here, really, it’s like you just want to watch the movie FOR WHAT IT IS and not take part of THE ENHANCED FUTURE.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

Posted Sunday, 26 April, 2009 by Nic Lindh