Saturday, March 25, 2017

#SOL17 The Wonders of the DVD 25/31

2017 is the tenth year of the Slice of Life Story Challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers, The goal is to write and post a "slice of life" story every day during the month of March. My seventh graders are also participating in a slimmed down version of the challenge, writing 10 slices during the month.

Slice of Life: DVD Player


Charlie was the first to get a DVD player.

We were in high school, and until then we'd been content with VHS or with watching movies on TV in real time. There was no On Demand (at least not for free, I suppose there was Pay-Per-View even then), no DVR, no "cloud," no streaming services. Not even RedBox. There was still Blockbuster - you remember, right? A physical store that you went into to browse for movies?

Anyway.

Charlie's parents had gotten a DVD player, and he'd invited us all over to watch our very first movie on DVD. I wish I could remember which movie it was. But what I do remember was how awed we all were by the features.

There were menus and menus of features. You could add subtitles! You could change the language! You could do both at the same time! (Which turned out to be how we spent most of the evening: attempting to follow the movie by watching it in French with Spanish subtitles. I was taking Latin at that time, so my comprehension was rubbish either way. But if you've never tried it, you should. I found that I couldn't not read the subtitles and couldn't not listen to the voices. It's a major mind warp.)

I don't think the movie actually got watched all the way through, as we were too busy messing around with all the options and exploring the additional special features.

Tonight? Scott and I watched a movie on our Xbox via the streaming service Netflix. We didn't purchase a DVD (or Blueray now). We didn't need to leave our house, drive over to Blockbuster, or hope that the movie we wanted was still there and not already rented. We don't even have a cable subscription to worry about movies in real time or On Demand or for purchase digitally. We just sat down, flipped on the TV and Xbox, made our selection, and it started immediately. A simple function now. No longer a wonder.

(Click here to read my previous Slice of Life Challenge posts.)

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