Considerations for the Worst DVD of All Time—THX 1138?
The DVD release of THX 1138 has caused me to ponder what could qualify as the worst DVD of all time; our brand-new copy has frozen at two different points within little over a half-hour into the movie, after which it quits out to copyright warnings (the usual annoying FBI and Interpol crap that movie fans have to suffer through on a regular basis) then the special features menu. We successfully fast-forwarded through the first offending location after resuming the movie after the first incident, but the second location—near the beginning of the tenth chapter—crapped out three times in a row before we decided to declare the DVD defective and put it away permanently (and yes, we checked the surface of the disc for debris, but found none of significance).
There are many DVDs that look overcompressed (for example, there seem to be a lot of sudden grain population increases in dark background scenes in Stargate SG-1) or force you to watch the afore-mentioned copyright warnings before the movie EVERY SINGLE TIME you put the disc in your DVD player and there was even one DVD that forced us to watch the previews before allowing us to get to the movie (the menu button was disabled, but we were at least able to fast-forward through the intrusive advertising), but luckily, that one was only rented (we do not usually rent anything, but we had a gift card). And don’t even get me started about those Dic cartoon DVDs that came in Cheerios boxes; I was sick of the Heathcliff theme song before we even got to the first cartoon!
Without even considering the quality of content, there are a lot of ways to make a poor DVD, but lax quality control may be the surest way because it can ruin even good content. I don’t mean that it can just distract the viewer for a short while now and then or otherwise detract from the enjoyment of content (as the graininess does in Stargate SG-1); it can bring the content to a halt or damage it to such an extent that stopping the DVD is preferable to watching the abomination that remains.
In addition to THX 1138, two DVDs stand out in my mind for their absurdly low quality: the tenth DVD in the “Farscape: The Complete Season One” boxed set (the second episode and the video in the extras section were both severely garbled on our copy before it was replaced) and the 1998 television production of Moby Dick (the audio for an an entire scene—17, if memory serves—was out of synch with the video). Which is the worst of all time, though? Is there anything else I might be forgetting? I will have to ponder this a bit more.
Here’s hoping our defective copy of THX 1138 is a rarity and that we will be able to have it replaced with a properly working copy with less hassle than we had to endure for Kristen’s defective Farscape DVD.
(Note: This article is also posted in my journal at my personal Web site.)