Alan Smithee

20th anniversary question: Parental lock was one of the big features promoted when DVD came out. Some ads claimed that it could edit every movie to each rating standard, but of course no discs ever did that.

Most discs just locked out the entire disc and required you to enter a 4-digit passcode to play it, but I'm wondering if anyone ever actually USED that feature?

For fun I sometimes check if discs are locked- it was actually done so inconsistently that anyone who did use the lock-out feature must have been frustrated. Warner and Paramount never had parental lock on their discs at all, neither did most of the smaller companies aside from the porn labels, some of which advertised "Parental Lock" as a feature on the cover of their discs just to look "responsible". Universal was the oddest of the major labels, as they seem to have locked ALL of their discs at the highest possible level, 8, which is the name as X or NC-17- even their G-rated movies have the parental lock enabled at level 8!

Universal, Fox and Disney had (don't know if they still do) special screens that displayed when the parental lock was set too, others just let the player display whatever message it had pre-programmed into it.

But those who depended entirely on the parental lock to keep their kids from watching bad stuff would ultimately have them locked out from some G-rated movies but some porn titles free and clear.

orangerunner

I completely forgot about the Parental-Lock feature as i never used it.

There are still some features on DVD players that you don't seem to see on current Blu-ray or DVD players such as the "zoom" or DVDs that utilize the "angle" feature.

The angle feature was used on a few songs in a Metallica concert DVD that allowed you to watch from four different angles and seamlessly switch cameras.

Die Hard DVD also had a few scenes in the extras section that allowed the user to edit on-the-fly using this feature.

It would have been interesting to have an entire film use this feature allowing the user to edit the different angles while watching.

Alan Smithee

The Angle button is part of the standard and can't be gotten rid of, but recent players have made it more difficult to access- some have an "options" menu you have to bring up onscreen to select it. My Oppo BDP-203 is set up like this, but thankfully the older remote still has the Angle button on it and it works, so I just use that remote with it. That player does have a zoom function.

rw2516

I think this has something to do with HDMI, not sure. All BD I have/had state in the instructions that the player is only capable of sending a 16x9 picture. There are two settings: the player zooms 4x3 to 16x9 or adds side bars to 4x3.
Also noticed that the screen options for the tvs are entirely different between the HDMI and other inputs.

Can't you just lock the tray so it won't open to keep kids from watching stuff?

I've never had kids. How do you guys keep them out of your DVD, BD, CD, comic, etc collections? Locked cases or rooms?

Back in the vinyl days I wouldn't even let my wife play my albums. I did let her drive my car

TomOpus

1. Never used it.
2. Should have included a poll.