Murphy's Law Bites Again OTD

[prog]

The DVDs I got yesterday are physically unusual in that they are double-sided, allowing each box to contain a single disc with the content amount two "normal" DVDs. And this design invites a humdinger of a UI misfeature: the label on each side is not only printed in teeny-tiny eyestrain-o-vision, printed around the middle ring (where else can it go?), but the "Side A/Side B" name refers to the content on the opposite side of the disc. So "Side A" means "Insert this side up to get at Side A of the disc", but anyone who has ever seen an LP before would first think it means "Insert the disc so that this side interfaces with the DVD's laser (in other words, this side down), in order to get at Side A."

I was honestly confused by this for a while! Can I safely assume that double-sided DVDs have existed for a while but I don't see more of them because of how confusing this label business becomes?

Comments

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

What DVDs were these?

[prog.livejournal.com]

The Directors Label series of music video DVDs I've been babbling about lately.

[ts52.livejournal.com]

I have seen several DVDs that adhere to this practice. They have all been widescreen on one side and fullscreen on the other.

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

These are nothing new -- They've even had this kind of thing on those LP-sized video disks (which had been around since the early 1970s but had only started to become popular when big-screen TVs started getting more affordable -- then suddenly vanished when DVDs appeared.

I have one or two DVDs like this -- one side Widescreen, the other side Fullscreen. I personally don't care for that design but I guess it makes sense from a production point of view (you don't have to worry about the ratio of who wants widescreen vs. fullscreen).

I too was confused for a while as to what side was 'Side A' since I grew up in the day of LPs.

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

I actually would probably assume that the text saying "side a" should be up to watch side a. I remember there was confusion with 5.25" floppy disks about which side was actually read by the drive... I still don't know which one is read, actually. We're just too clever to use modern technology - if we didn't know anything about how DVDs worked, we wouldn't be confused.

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

In the early days of DVDs (five or six years ago) it was common to have two sided DVDs. It was easier to manufacture a two sided disk than a dual layer disk. Most DVDs these days are two layers, meaning that halfway through the movie the laser refocuses to read off the second layer. You will sometimes notice a pause on some DVD players at the layer transition.

But two layer DVDs are harder to manufacture, so early DVDs were "flippers." You would have to actually flip the DVD over halfway through the movie (like a record). I'm not sure, but I expect the label convention was established then. I believe LaserDiscs follow the same convention, with the label on the opposite side from the content.

These days two sided disks with one dual layer and one single layer are relatively mainstream. Two sided disks with dual layers on both sides have only appeared recently because they are significantly more difficult to manufacture.

[prog.livejournal.com]

I didn't know about dual-layered discs! Interesting.