Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

...you can't even play the DVD.

From Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants comes this story about Sony DVDs that don't play on Sony DVD players:

In their zeal to make their DVD movies copyproof (yeah right) they have in fact made their latest releases unplayable on some DVD players, including my Sony DVP-CX995V DVD player. I recently rented “Stranger than Fiction” (2 copies) and “The Holiday” ( please no comments on my choice of movies) both by Sony Pictures. Both load up to the splash title screen and then load no further, then after about 60 secs the player turns itself off!

Sony's answer?

We know about this problem. Its our new copy protection that’s making these discs unplayable in some players including our own, we do not intend to change the copy protection. The only correction to this problem is a firmware update to your player. The electronics division know about this and should have given you this information.

Yeah that's it. The customers who actually paid for the DVD can't play it and that's their problem.And Sony doesn't intend to change the copy protection.

Sony used to be a great consumer electronics company, but apparently is now run by idiots. I used to buy Sony products, but I don't any more. And I do not intend to change that.