Things Should Work.

Well, Casino Royale came out on DVD yesterday. Its not so much a question of whether I'll get it, but how soon I'll get it. So I was about to watch it last night and I popped it into the DVD player. Nothing happened. Weird. I took it out and put it back in. Nothing. Did I buy the blueray version somehow? No... I try the special features disc and it works. I put the feature disc back in and again, nothing. Now At this point I'm pretty sure that I got a bum disc and I'll have to go back to the store to get a new one. Which also means that I won't be watching it now and I was kinda excited cause I don't remember everything that happened when I saw it in the theatre.

But I have access to a few other DVD players, so I pop it into my computer and it starts up a little flash intro that lets me click to visit the website or play the movie or some other option I don't really care about. Huh, so the disc is readable. I try to play the movie and Media Player comes back with an error about needing enhanced drivers for the device. And my thoughts immediately jump to DRM. Have they come up with a new scheme to disenfranchise actual paying customers? Is this a new rootkit that's gonna screw my computer to bejezus and back? Will I seriously not be able to watch this movie on my home theatre because movie executives assume I'm trying to steal a movie I've already bought?

All of these seem like reasonable assumptions as I head to the next DVD device in my line of sight, the good old PS2. He's set up with his own 19" tv behind my bedroom door and hardly gets any play anymore since that playboy of a Wii moved in. Pop it in. Loading... Loading... Loading... The PS2 didn't come equipped with the best DVD software invented so I imagine if it doesn't play in the normal DVD player its not likely here. But it does! The menu comes up and I pick a scene, the little black box dives right in! Huh, who woulda thunk it?

Back to the living room, I try it in the 1st DVD player again. Maybe the disc is warmed up now or something, I dunno. Same thing, it reads for way too long and then displays all 0's on the disc clock. The play, pause, stop, FF, RW and skip buttons all result in the annoying "this operation is not currently supported" symbol on screen. I'm a little pissed off, one or two stages from whacking the crap out of the DVD player. But before I proceed to that step of the device repair manual I decide to press every button on the thing. I start with the menu button. And it goes to the menu. What? You must be kidding. The disc just doesn't have an auto-run file? I just spend the last ten minutes inspecting the bottom of the disc and cursing the MPAA because you suck at designing DVDs? I've never, ever, ever seen this before and I've seen over 240 movies.

Well, lesson learned, if your disc doesn't work, press menu. Now you know. And knowing is half... good.