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

[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.