Operation is currently prohibited by disc.

Excuse me? How many products do you know that tell you, “Sorry. You can’t use me that way.”

It’s annoying. You have to sit through a bunch of crap on a DVD before the disc will decide it’s time to allow you access to the menu. “I now deem you worthy. You have done my bidding. You may access the menu at will.” Gee, thanks. That’s very gracious of you, especially since I own your ass!

At last! The menu! I’ve heard about you. You are the gatekeeper to the actual content on the DVD that I originally wanted. Not all that other stuff I was forced to watch against my will. “Oh great menu! I will now select Play Movie and just maybe you’ll let me finally watch. Thank you, oh thank you!”

A few minutes into the movie, though, suddenly – a problem emerges! The screen scrambles, glitches a couple times, freezes for a few seconds more … and then … POOF!!!! The DVD is suddenly playing the beginning of the movie again.

What the?!?!?

Yep. Your rental DVD has a booger on it left by the previous customer. Now you have no choice. You have to haul your carcass from your seat, eject that sucker, and pray to the DVD gods while you wipe down the playing surface and hope – please God – that the cleaning will make the DVD work.

And then…

You have to re-insert the DVD back into the player.

You guessed it! The DVD will not automatically return to the previous viewing location. And any attempt to use the remote control results in “Operation is currently prohibited by disc.”

“Oh God, no. Oh God! Ayeeeiiiiiiieeeeeeee!”

According to Wikipedia this is called “user operation prohibition”:

The user operation prohibition (abbreviated UOP) is a form of use restriction used on video DVD discs. Most DVD players prohibit the viewer from performing a large majority of actions during sections of a DVD that are protected or restricted by this feature, and will display the no symbol or a message to that effect if any of these actions are attempted. It is used mainly for copyright notices or warnings, such as an FBI warning in the United States, and “protected” (i.e., “unskippable”) commercials.

I call it living hell on earth. And I paid money for all this shit? The television, the DVD player, and the disc itself.

From now on I think I’ll spend my time doing something more enjoyable – and cheaper – like burning out my eyeballs with a blowtorch.