I'm a huge fan of CGI. I really love to watch CGI movies, and this leads to problems, because most CGI movies are kids' films. It can be a little embarrassing to be a single guy in his early twenties renting out DVDs from the kids' section, let alone going to see them in cinema. Luckily, my local video library know I am a media teacher, so they are used to my eccentric borrowing habits (I borrowed both Showgirls and The Chronological Donald Duck 1932-1941 last week and no one batted an eyelid). The major problem is that kids and DVDs don't mix.
Now a DVD is a pretty delicate thing when you think about it. It's not as robust as the older Video tapes which could take a pounding but still play. A DVD, being digital, works in binary. It either works, or it doesn't. This is annoying. With a worn VHS tape, you might get lousy vision, but with a worn DVD, you get no vision.
The major reason that DVDs are delicate is that they are optical - a laser is used to read the data from the disc surface. And of course, that surface is exposed to anything life can throw at it. Scratches on the surface mean the laser can't read the data properly, and when that gets bad enough the disc just will not play. Which sucks.
What sucks even more is that most damaged DVDs will work fine for about the first half, and then stop. This happened to me not ten minutes ago. I'd rented out Chicken Little (hey, I'll try anything once, and besides, it has aliens in it), sat down, eaten my dinner and invested about forty-five minutes into this DVD. Just when things get interesting, bang! The disc stops working. This seems to happen to every kids' DVD I rent out. I've never gotten beyond the first ten minutes of Robots, and I only finished Shrek 2 by skipping huge chunks (consequently, I have no idea where the cat came from). I don't ever have problems with DVDs which are not for kids, which leads me to the inescapable conclusion that kids and DVDs do not mix.
Why does it only happen to kids' DVDs? Well, I dunno for sure. I guess they have a tougher life, kids tend to be harder on things than adults - when you grow up you learn to care for things better. But, hellions though the can undoubtedly be, kids can't destory discs surely?
Unless there are a lot of them. These DVDs look a lot more worn than others, so I expect they are popular. They get rented out a lot, they get watched a lot, and this means they die quicker. Hey, all DVDs die, They're not designed to be immortal, kids DVDs just seem to go quicker because they see more use.
One last possible reason, and this one is far fetched, but according to popular legend, kids are sticky. They get sticky stuff on them, like jam, honey, mud, clag (love that word!) and then they handle a DVD. Recipe for disaster.
There may be another reason that kids' DVDs die faster, I can't be bothered thinking about it to hard. I'm grumpy, and I've got a headache, and I'll probably never see then end of Chicken Little unless I buy a copy. I should remember that every time I borrow a CGI movie from the video library, it stuffs up. But I never do. And this leads to frustration and a growing conviction that Kids and DVDs don't mix.
Kids and DVDs don't mix.