First Time Watching a DVD on a Computer…

I still remember the first time I watched a DVD movie on a computer. It sucked.

I had recently gotten a Mac Powerbook G3 (the Blackbird model which was a great machine!) that featured a hardware MPEG2 decoder card to specifically enable smooth DVD playback. This was back in 1998 I think, and I don’t recall having a DVD set top box at the time.

So I was pretty interested in checking out this superior DVD technology. I stuck the disc in the Powerbook, and the DVD player app started. Cool! Then I saw the image on the small 13-in screen. Hey, this ain’t right! I’m used to watching a movie on a bigger screen. The movie started playing and after like five minutes, I was getting uncomfortable sitting there looking at a 13-in screen AND listening to audio from tiny speakers. This is not how it’s supposed to be. Yeah, I could now watch DVDs, but overall, what a sucky experience.

Let’s fast forward to today. My sucky DVD-watching experience is pretty much the same today. Laptops have bigger screens and better audio (headphones are a good alternative), and there’s video-enabled iPods with even smaller screens, but the watching experience isn’t any better. I think Apple and Steve Jobs understand this problem, and I’m hoping the September 12 Special Events will fix this and change the game.

Technorati Tags: Apple