Tech Blog

[#1]

I consider myself a fairly tech savvy guy, and have been for most of my life. I'm a fair hand with a soldering iron, can read resistance bands if required, and have hardware modded my original Xbox to be a way-too-cool media centre, but that's another story.

As I've said, I usually understand tech. Except for the times when I don't. Like this evening. But I don't think it's entirely my fault.

It's a holiday, let's watch a movie
A long weekend ends, so it seemed the perfect night to crack my spanky-new Blu-Ray copy of Monsters VS Aliens -- a movie I thoroughly enjoyed at the cinema in 3D.

Sadly, It didn't happen. Instead, my evening was spent trying to get the video to play smoothly on my one year old Sony Vaio laptop. This same laptop has played other blu-ray movies perfectly, including piping them out the Vaio's HDMI port to my entertainment system. In the past, everything worked fine. Tonight, no.

After hooking up the laptop to the entertainment centre and loading the disc, the playback software informed me that I 'should' download the latest 'keys' (hello DRM) to ensure all features would work. Of course, the software didn't tell me that before downloading the keys, I'd have to register my email, name, postal code, first born's name, etc.

Ok, fine, not a big deal to hand over some personal information to a nameless company to release the keys which unlock the movie I'd already paid for. Fine. Done.

Make the popcorn 'cause the movie's about to start.
And it did...right up to the opening scene after the first menu. Then the video started freezing, and the audio dropped out. Hmmm. Everything was the same. I'd not changed one setting since we'd played the last movie a few months back.

"Have you looked for an update to the player software," my lovely wife pipes in from the couch.

Doh. 10 minutes later, I had the one-month-old update to the blu-ray player software installed.
Now, let's watch that video...

Nope, no change, still freezing and stuttering.

What else had changed? Well, since the video worked flawlessly a couple of months ago, lots could have changed.

• Microsoft patches happen weekly, so there's at least 8 updates that could have modified settings without me knowing
• I've installed new anti-virus software
• I've updated a number of utility and productivity programs
• I waxed the cat

Frankly, it could be anything! And it'll likely take me a week of searching the interwebs to find a number of partial solutions that may or may not work.

After a bit of thought, it may be best to simply make a new boot partition that contains the original Vaio disc image, and use it only for Blu-Ray playback. I can easily make other partitions for Windows 7 and use that for my main work.

But aside from the lost time and extra work, here's why I'm frustrated.
This shouldn't be rocket science. I can watch any number of DVDs or videos downloaded from the internet via YouTube, why is it so hard for me to play a purchased Blu-Ray disc on my computer -- a computer made by the company that invented Blu-Ray?

Or maybe I'm just being unreasonable for expecting technology to 'just work'. And it's not isolated to this situation...you should see what I thought about the first few version if iTunes I worked with...oi! But back to the topic of tech-frustration. What do you think? Am I dumb or do you have a 'pet peeve' with tech, design, etc?

[#2]

Man that's just crazy talk! A Sony VIAO playing a Blu-ray without issue. And people wonder why we download ripped versions of movie that actually play on a machine!

[#3]

Sigh. I know. I want turnkey working tech. Not turkey wonky tech.

[#4]

Eeek! 

[#5]

What a sad...and ironically hilarious story!

Technology is great.....when it works......sometimes........

[#6]

I noes. It's sad. Some days tech should work like an appliance -- others it shoud be challenging, interesting, something to discover, peeling back the layers to reveal its secrets. But not when you want to watch a freakin' movie. sigh.

[#7]

Update: Last night I reinstalled Vista to the factory-delivered state.

This weekend I'll be pruning the drive, eliminating the 'trial-ware' and other things I don't need for a bare-bones Viao Vista install.

I'll also disable networking -- I want an appliance, not a computer.

Then I'll shrink the Vista partition to about 40GB.

My intent is to use this partition ONLY for media.

Once that's stable, I'll install Windows 7 (pre-release) on one partition, and the soon-to-be released Ubuntu on another.

And I'll report back as to how it works afterward

[#8]

LOL!  You like to have fun!

[#9]

Well, I guess I do

But I'm also thinking that maybe Sony tried to put too much into this box. Lots of tools are great on a Swiss Army Knife, not necessairly in a computer.

This seems to be the best way to get it to do what I want. Virgin partition for the media stuff, work partitions for me to play with.

[#10]

Don't feel bad.  My computer is working just fine, and my phone is working just fine, but I'm feeling a huge urge to reload some sort of software.  Anyone got a computer needing reformatting?    Can't Windows 7 come out any sooner???

[#11]

Yo Brad!  You forgot to do the hokey-pokey HD. 

Gadgetgreg