A little over two weeks ago, I received a season two Castle DVD review set from Keith. After pulling a Balki Bartokomous, sacrificing my cat, and burning celebratory incense, I popped the Fillion-faced circle into my player, lounged in my one person couch, popped up my feet, and pressed play. The pink DVD player whirred, the optics glared, and the blue screen flickered, but nothing happened. I tried it again, remotely hitting power on, power off, and play to no avail. For the final time, I hurled my programmer’s girth out of the couch, lurched over to the entertainment center and tried it all manually: pressing the on button, then the off button; pulling the DVD player out, and then pushing it back in. Once again, nothing.
Luckily, I had my second DVD player on hand, purchased 7-8 years ago. Why did I have two DVD players? Well, despite its newer status, the pink princess couldn’t recognize half the DVD formats the old standby could. So, I maintained the pretty one for special occasions and the older one for everything else.
As I popped the pixilated Fillion into the second DVD player, which had recently become temperamental, I cheered when it obediently swallowed and hit fast forward to pass through the promos. That’s when it threw a full-on temper tantrum, faded to black and refused to play/rewind/whatever. Despite pressing power, stop, and eject, nothing happened. I imagined the family McDuffee berating me for accidentally destroying the disks and envisioned Ivey wringing his hands for willingly allowing me to review the DVD set in his stead. Luckily, after crying, promising to let it watch 15 marathon episodes of iCarly, and flagellating myself, it opened.
As you might guess, I finally realized I needed another player. So, after logging onto Amazon, selecting the cheapest yet prettiest DVD player and hitting send, I magically received a brand new DVD player. It now resides on my entertainment center (seated atop DVD player 1, which is seated atop DVD player 2) and can now play the Castle DVD sets of yore.
But, forget Castle, this is my question to you: Do I really need 3 DVD players?
As I’ve refused to pay more than 30-40 for DVD player technology, I wonder if I invested in something costlier I might not encounter such a tech-hoarding conundrum. Considering I’ve spent around 90-100 dollars in the past eight years on DVD players, I could’ve just outright spent that on a decent player. My other reason for owning so many hinges on fear. If #1 doesn’t work then #2 will play, and if #2 doesn’t play, then maybe #3 will scan. However, if I purchased a powerhouse DVD player, that recognized various DVD formats (old, new, burned) maybe I could I eventually downgrade to two or — *gasp* — one?
Does anyone else have this problem, or am I the only luddite-hoarder in the group?
Clacked by An Nicholson 
on Oct 09, 2010 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
in this case, maybe…since all of them are very basic ones… but? who knows…
in my own case – no – all of mine are different
DVD player #0 bit the dust years ago – it hung on through grad school but no longer…
DVD player #1 is actually a DVD recorder with a hard drive (so you can edit out commercials) – originally it had a tv guide function that made it work like a DVR or TiVo but that broke a long time ago too (or my cable just stopped cooperating with it) but it works really well for the rest of stuff (Plus it has this nice skip 30 seconds button I love)
DVD player #2 is a DVD recorder with a VHS slot – so can copy old VHS to DVD and have a VCR of sorts when needed (bought when my last VCR died) – so it obviously can’t replace #1 because it doesn’t have a hard drive, and #1 can’t replace it because it doesn’t have VHS
and DVD player #3 is a upconverting one I got for christmas last year. It does make a difference in quality and I wasn’t going to hold out for blueray and have to replace dvds so I thought this was the best option…
*POST AUTHOR*
Hmm, I like your DVD #1 and 2 players (I had contemplated versions similar to them), but my cheapness (described above), prevented me from doing so . . .
DVD Player? What’s that?
I own a XBox 360 and a PS3. DVD-RAM + BluRay, both of them able to play DVDs, I own two Laptops with DVD-ROMs in them but honestly I can’t remember the last time I actually played one of my 500 DVDs because I ripped them all and copied them to a single 2TB Harddisc so I will never ever EVER have to flip discs again when I feel the need to watch a single Season of ANYTHING in a row. My “Friends” DVDs are from the UK and they use 5 discs double sided for ONE season. That’s putting in and flipping a disc every TWO episodes. Insanity I tell you.
Oh and a small afterthought: you shouldn’t stack electronics. They need ventilation and it might very well be that you simply overheated them by stacking them in the past and now they simply gave up.
*POST AUTHOR*
Sebastian, when a person says they’ve purchased inexpensive electronics, accidentally mistreated them, and don’t understand why they won’t work anymore, they don’t want you to use logic to describe why it happens. Just nod your head and back out of the room slowly.
A pink DVD player?
Seriously??
I’m never letting you call dibs again.
*POST AUTHOR*
Hangs head in shame while watching the ‘Castle’ bonus DVD . . .
You don’t need three DVD players. Just one, and hookup the external drives. Get them from Best Buy!
*POST AUTHOR*
Hmm, I could go for the first half, except the reason I like my tech simple ;)
-The 1st DVD player I got was in 2001. It doesn’t play DVD-Rs and now doesn’t work unless you unplug it then plug it back in. But it still works perfectly fine beyond that, but its currently sitting in my mom’s house for her to use.
-#2 was my old Xbox which broke somehow and would of been $200 to repair so it was dumped and my Gamecube didn’t play DVDs so…
-#3 Was a cheap $40 one, played DVD-Rs, and lasted like a year and a half. It did the exact same thing your pink DVD player did.
-So #4 is my 360. So until I get the red ring of death it will be my DVD player for my TV. But then again my TV broke while moving so my 360 isn’t doing me any good right now so…
-#5 My laptop is now my DVD player. Also I hooked a cable cord into it and now its my TV and DVR too.
My parents bought a VHS player in 1987 and it still works. Why have I in less time had 2 devices die on me and one require you to climb behind the TV to get it to work?
*POST AUTHOR*
That’s my thinking exactly. Since 1984 my mother has had the exact same VHS player. I know times have changed and appliance companies are slowly adhering to planned obsolescence. Even so, I’d rather waste some of that DVD player money on licorice, orange glow sticks, and old school manga.
My first DVD was a Creative drive that cost £400 back in 1997 and played DVDs via my PC before the real players came out in the UK & I spent £30 a pop on each DVD I got imported from the USA for the first year or so until HMV/Virgin started stocking them.
My first proper DVD player was a cheap & cheerful (but awesomely hackable) multiregion from ASDA (Walmart)
They went years ago & I’ve had a fair few since, but then went completely Xbox for a good few years as that (when hacked) played everything I could throw at it.
Now I’m in a ridiculous situation where I have 4 (yes, FOUR) methods of playing DVDs, 2 of which play Blu-Ray for the following reasons:
PS3/Xbox 360 – unhackable to region free but great for streaming media
3d blu-ray player – came with my 3d TV
basic DVD player – the only way I can play my imported DVDs