Report on Watching a Movie on the Computer

This is now in reverse order. I feel like I'm at one of those many Microsoft demos that explode on stage. I watched the trailer fine, which meant I could use their proprietary (I haven't looked it up yet) vividas video player. I paid my $4.95, and then the movie would not load, even when I chose dial-up speed. What's worse, when I started over, I was asked to PAY AGAIN.


I'm sorry to say this but don't try to watch this film online. You can buy the DVD for $20, presumably only through the mail (I suppose so they can keep track of everyone that buys one). What a bomb of an experience. Powered by Vividas, indeed.

I hope The Secret web site crawls my blog. This is once again, an experiential service, like going to a new restaurant, getting a bad meal, and never going back. That's exactly how I feel, and now I have to waste a half hour calling my credit card company just to START the investigation to get my $4.95 back.

No, it wasn't me, the trailer worked time and time again on both IE6 and Forefox 2 on Windows 2000. Something happened after that, and now I've lost my enthusiasm for even seeing the film. Amazing what a bad experience can do. What follows is what I originally posted as I was starting out. This is going to end up being a waste of 90 minutes of my time.

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I am about to watch a movie that is as long as 2 hours. I'm not feeling great, gaving a headcold that's got me sneezing away. This is relevant because I wish I could go to bed and watch the movie from there. I expect the film to be vey engaging and, unless I can pause it because you are only allowed one viewing for $4.95.

So, participant observation here, researcher as subject. Gee, I almost feel like a physician injecting himself with a new medicine to see how it works out.

My expectations for this movie are high. Anyone who saw "What the Bleep Do We Know" will understand that high expectation, because I was told by a friend that this new film (documentary? they didn't know how to categorize What the Bleep because it was educational and also very entertaining while at the same time challenging the audience's brains). OK, off with me. I hope I can make it all the way through.

The things I do for my silent majority readers. By the way, to repeat, I think the lean back, lean forward phrases were quite catchy, but I have very serious doubts that they will play themselves out. I expect to lean back at my desk to watch this film. (Hey, might as well grab my nice headphones, come to think of it!)

More to come. It's about 9:30 EST.