The Things We Keep: Musing on the EZ-D

It's hard for a die-hard couch potato to dislike a product that has "EZ" in the title, as is the case with the EZ-D. The concept is simple. An EZ-D of your favorite Buena Vista Home Entertainment title (Frida, the Recruit, 25th Hour, and the Hot Chick, to name a few) is available for around $6. You take it home, play it, and unlike those pesky video or DVD rentals, there's no need to worry about returning it, or worse, racking up those annoying late fees because, voil`a! The EZ-D, like Blade Runner's Roy Batty, knows when it's "time to die."

Hermetically sealed like a hunk of bacon, each EZ-D has 48 hours of play time once you break the seal. The "beauty" of the product, according to Lori MacPherson, vice-president of Brand Marketing for BVHE, is that you, the viewer, determine when those 48 hours begin. Could be the day you buy the product, could be the next day, could be next month. Well, there is one catch. The EZ-D has an unopened shelf life of one year, after which, like Batty and his rebel replicant friends, it will expire.

Sounds reasonable. So, why is there this lingering sense of gloom about the product? Why do I feel uneasy breaking open the short stack of vacuum-packed EZ-D I've been given to review? Am I a closet Luddite? To find out, I conducted an unscientific survey of my friends, starting with my good friend JoAnne. She's a film lover and currently in the final throes of writing her dissertation, which means she spends a lot of time at home, chained to her computer. The going rate to see a movie during rush hour in the Bay Area is $10, a strain on JoAnne's student budget. She's no stranger at the video/DVD rental store, so when I told her the EZ-D concept I thought she'd be intrigued.

"I don't like it," she said flatly.

"Why?"

"I don't know. I just don't like it."

Friends closer to home had a similar reaction, the most provocative being "eeew."

"Eeew?"

"What a waste."

"You can recycle them. There's an address on the package where to send it, like your used toner cartridges."

"So, they're made into new EZ-Ds?"

"No. They get recycled into polycarbonate to make small electronics or park benches or something."

"Eeew."

My friends are people of few words. I began to deeply ponder these reactions. But first, it was time to test the product. First, the good news: The image was particularly crystal clear and the sound was crisp, in spite of my puny PowerBook speakers. Another plus was that there were no annoying ads or trailers to fast-forward through. When the DVD launches, it immediately starts at the opening credits. The downside for true film fans is that there are no outtakes or interviews with the director or behind-the-scene shorts that come with DVDs bought for keeps or rented. Even so, the price is right, and though only eight titles were initially released, more are on the way. You don't have to go to a special store to find them. They are sold in high-traffic areas like HEB, Walgreens, and 7-Eleven. So what's the problem? I'm not sure, but I think it has to do with ideas about the things that we keep.

Although Signs isn't a film I particularly liked, the idea that it was going to "die" (i.e., become unreadable) made me sad. Renting a film is one thing. I view and return it knowing it's there for me to access again. It might be scratched or mishandled by less considerate viewers, so if I really like a film or TV series, I'll purchase it. That way, I can re-experience the film over and over again, fast-forwarding or rewinding, reliving those great movie moments. It's the electronic version of dog-earring the page in a favorite book. If I opened my favorite book to a passage I marked and found it "unreadable," I'm sure I would burst into tears. As dorky as it sounds, I mourn the passing of the Signs EZ-D. OK, at first I thought it would be cool if it went up in smoke Mission: Impossible style, but imagine the smell!