Cloudy with a chance of copy protection
Don’t get the headline of this blog post wrong. The part about the copy protection is not about Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, but about the DVD of I am Legend. I could not watch the movie either on my computer or on my PlayStation 2. THANK YOU WARNER BROS. PICTURES FOR TREATING YOUR PAYING CUSTOMERS LIKE CRIMINAL SCUM!
So I watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs instead which was recommended by Tom Sidell of Gunnerkrigg Court in his Twitter feed some time ago. And I can only join in his praise. It’s a wonderfully original movie with a unique and very colorful style. The story is about a young scientist who invents a machine to produce food out of water. But the story eventually becomes much more exciting than one thinks at the start. If you’re into animated movies, you should really not miss it!
It was good, but there’s some SERIOUS Nightmare Fuel in that movie.
“Nightmare fuel”. What a terrificly descriptive phrase!
@ bill:
It’s from TVTropes (at least I saw it there first) which is basically a wiki with storytelling devices and the stories using them. Sandra and Woo has a page there, too.
Enter at your own risk, it can be addictive.
http://tvtropes.org
well you /could/ use something to remove that copy protection, but thats illegal,, >_> I think they call it Piracy…
I believe that the term “nightmare fuel” comes from tv tropes. Anyways, the movie is based off a short children’s story, however loosely.
Well no wonder you can watch I’m am legend, you were trying to whatch it on two of worst DVD players around.
PS2 is known for poor DVD playback even in the early days with un protected discs.
The Pc is never a good place to play DVDS.
Tack for example my fathers laptop it can never play any DVDs with it’s internal drive.
Sure the new Warner bros copy proctection can make problems worst but it should play fine in 99% of players.
We never had any problems here with the new movies from Warner bros so it’s mostly down to the players them selves a bit falty.
So I suggest getting a cheap$25-50 DVD player & try I am legend again.
@ Kawaiipikachu:
Um, that’s nonsense. Probably more than half of the DVD sales nowadays go to people who watch them exclusively on their PC.
I’ve seen both movies. Good stuff, though of course extremely different from each other. *now has the image of zombies trying to dodge a shower of giant meatballs and hot dogs falling from the sky stuck in my mind*
@ Kawaiipikachu:
I have no TV, I watch everything on my PC o,Ô
I hate copyprotection! It’s just useless!
People who want to crack such stuff simply do it while paying customers are left with the problems.
(Movies or games… doesn’t matter)
Isn’t that defeating the purpose???
Yes, I think the core problem is that these huge corporations got used to getting tons of money for nothing more than betting on movies.
“This will be a blockbuster, I say we give that guy a few millions so he can shoot it. Then we can sell the tickets and dvds and merchandising stuff and so on for a few hundred millions.”
But they can not keep up with changing times. Just a few decades ago creators and consumers of media could only meet using their “playgrounds”, so both parties needed them.
But with the internet’s permeation, artists (like Powree 🙂 can easily publish on the ‘net, reaching potentially billions of consumers instantly and practically free of cost. But above all, without the suppressing rules of such a big moneybag corporation.
This obviously hurts the media giants, but in the recent years they have grown lazy, so they couldn’t react quickly enough even if they wanted to. An so they started hacking and slashing around with the sword they bought from Justitia, hurting everybody in the process.
I think the future is this kind of grassroots media, where art creators support themselves partly by advertisements and largely by fan donations.
Yes, I have seen “I am legend”. I also liked it a little. Certainly, there were much better films, but this one was good too. And I’d like to support the creators with ten or so bucks.
But if I bought the DVD, only a small fraction of the cost would actually end up by those women and men who worked their hands to the bones creating this film. The huge majority would finance the next fleet of Warner yachts and limos.
And I greatly oppose travelling in yachts and limos, they are such a big gas-guzzlers…
I ran into a problem like that with my copy of “Howl’s Moving Castle” when I tried to watch it with my parents. It cheerfully played every ad, and would not let us skip them, then it died when it got to the movie.
I’d watched it on my Linux box so I had no idea there was anything wrong with it 🙂
@ Kawaiipikachu:
I, too, watch all my films on PC (we’ve never had TV, so a DVD player is out of question anyway) and I’ve never had problems with it. The problem with your father’s laptop is most probably a problem of your father’s laptop, not PCs in general – actually, laptops are much more faulty than regular computers (one of the reasons being that they have everything integral, so it’s much more difficult to change the faulty parts). I can tell. My sister’s work laptop is gradually falling apart, so to say – e.g. her CD/DVDdrive/burner stopped burning.
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs is a hilarious movie, and I didn’t even watch it in 3D or HD! The comedy carried it very well.
My laptop plays DVDs much better than my DVD player, although my DVD player is old and probably needs cleaning, but either way, no problems with the computer.
On piracy, I saw a graphic that compared what you get if you buy a movie, and what you get if you pirate it. Pirates don’t even get the “OMFG DO NOT PIRATE THIS DVD” message. They go straight to the movie. If you buy the DVD, however, it’s a few minutes before you can watch the movie. And that tamper-proof open-proof packaging is horrible!
watched both on my Desktop computer I also have the Deluxe 2 Disc edition of I am Legend and was able to watch it with no problem. Maybe you got a region 1 copy of “Legend”?
Also “Cloudy” is better!
Keep up the awesome work on Sandra and Woo!
(Please E-Mail me.)
@ Z:
I doubt that. Most successfull movies costs a fortune to film them (for example the Lord of The Rings thrilogy costed more the 100 Million Dollar) – you can’t financy that with donations (which you get AFTER the release for most times).
The music-industry may be another story.
You hit one of my buttons complaining about the security crap on movies. I HATE the stupid piracy notice on EVERY dvd or blurey. No one but legitimate owners ever sees it and you can’t ff or skip it. What exactly is the point?And while I’m ranting why are cheap dvds taped on 3 sides and new releases only 1? Personally I think if I buy a dvd, cd or bluray I should have the right to copy it to any of my media formats. I have at times downloaded music I already owned because I was too lazy to root through my collection or in another location. Unfortunately the quality is a crap-shoot sometimes good sometimes bad. Same with movie downloads. When I bought “I am Legend” it came with a digital download. Perhaps the problem is the “region code” which is a problem with many devices.
@ Lunaroki:
i am legebd is a vampire movie but ican see how u can confuse night of the living dead was inspiered by the original i am legend witch had vampires i heard its a good movie
i am surprised that no one has mentioned that cloudy with a chance of meatballs was not only a children’s story MANY years ago but that the story from the book was COMPLETELY different from the story of the movie. i was really disappointed, as someone who heard the story as a kid.
also love this comic.
Gamesman wrote:
Riiiiiight. We’ve been thinking the same with my sister.
I realize this is a bit old but I just found this post now, one product that helps with
this problem can be found here:
https://www.redfox.bz/en/anydvdhd.html
I had at one point used a trial version to rip a few DVDs I bought to my hard drive
on my main computer so I could take the DVD images to my laptop (which doesn’t
have a DVD drive) and play them on there.
Also not sure what DVD playing software you use on your computer but I’ve found
WinDVD 4 seems to work well. (Although it’s an old program.)