DVDs on computer

One of my pet peeves about playing DVDs on my computer is the fact that so many of them require a proprietary player. I understand that the studios are just protecting their investment from piracy but does this actually keep people from copying the movies.

My problem with proprietary players is the fact that most of them are just play and stop buttons. The floating control display that cannot be minimized or moved off screen is annoying. Some even try to stretch my nice widescreen DVDs to fit my non-widescreen monitor. Arg!

Some of you are probably wondering why I’m watching DVDs on my computer rather than my television. I watch the movie for the first time on my TV and re-watch the key scenes at my computer. The benefit of watching the movies via computer is the ease of writing up the review and watching the film in tandem.

So I end up having a bunch of crappy players installed on my computer, none of which I use more than once or twice. I’d like to see some standardization on the part of the distribution companies, at least. Come on, guys, get your gear squared away!