I’m home with my family for the holidays and thought maybe we all could go see National Treasure 2 which opened in the theater this week. It lucks like a fun movie but I mainly wanna see it because the Library of Congress is featured in it. Neither of my parents have seen the first National Treasure movie so we thought we’d rent the dvd.
So we go to one of the video rental stores in Lansing, MI but of course they don’t have it because I’m sure every family who wants to see National Treasure 2 who hasn’t seen the first one is probably having the same thought this weekend.
I guess I just ask myself. Why do we still have video rental stores?
No… Netflix isn’t the answer. The desire to have this video wasn’t planned out it was on an impluse so I don’t wanna wait the 2 days it takes to get dvd in the mail from them.
Why are we still dealing with the pains of physical media like dvds anyhow?
You could get the first National Treasure off of the Apple iTunes store but my family isn’t going to sit around my 13 inch MacBook and watch it.
I’m sure I could download it illegally from bittorrent (and probably the 2nd one too) but I’m not going to do that… it’s illegal and you’d still be watching the movie from a computer.
If we had an Apple TV, that wouldn’t help. Apple TV’s only work with fancy high def tv’s.
It’s just frustrating. There is media out there that we want to consume on a television. We’re willing to pay money to consume it but we can’t get ahold of the media in a satisfactory way for this to happen.
Someone is losing money here. How can we fix this? There needs to be a solution to this problem.
Here’s hoping that Steve Jobs will announce a better Apple TV at the Macworld Expo.
Oatmeal Stout - Justin Thorp's blog 
very good question. and I agree I would love to have a way to legally get any movie you wanted to see at that moment. like you I am willing to pay.
(jeff)isageek
“I’m sure I could download it illegally from bittorrent (and probably the 2nd one too) but I’m not going to do that… it’s illegal and you’d still be watching the movie from a computer.”
illegal != immoral
Remember, it was once legal to own slaves and it is still illegal to get a blowjob in Virginia.
And once you download it, you can burn it to DVD and play it wherever you want.
Plug the MacBook into the TV: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?productLearnMore=M9267G/A
@Joe: When you live in a community, you need to submit yourself to the law of the land otherwise you undermine your community. If you don’t like the laws, try to get them changed.
@Ross: I may have to check that out. Ideally i’d love to get a mac mini and just have it connected to the television but that’s a substantial investment.
Theres gotta be a place you can download it in .avi format and pay for it (i.e not via illegal torrent sites).
Then simply burn it to dvd (which admittingly can take a long time to convert)
Or put onto a usb if your player has a port. (So useful!!!)
p.s NT1 was way better than NT2
You could download it from a bittorrent site AND add it to your NetFlix queue, if you want to find a way to work things out ethically if not strictly legally.
Or live in an area where the cable company has on-demand services. Some of them have a lot of back catalog stuff.