the wand of power

In our house, the remote is known by all and sundry as The Wand of Power, and when Fabio is in residence, we all know the WoP is his and his alone.

Sadly, he isn't home often enough to have mastered the 400+ tiny tiny buttons, so watching a DVD with him is ...... an interesting experience.

You see, I like to watch the WHOLE DVD. This includes the Pegasus galloping through the clouds and the Dolby Digital ad and any previews and the opening credits.
To me, the movie-crew have spent time and money putting the opening credits in as part of the movie (if they're any good at their job) and so these few seconds set the scene for the film to come.

Fabio is not of the same mind. He wants to get to the action. NOW. And he doesn't want to waste 30 or 40 seconds watching all that gibber, so he hits SKIPx120 or NEXT....

....but his thumb can easily cover half a dozen buttons or more, and so we might suddenly find ourselves watching the Australasian Lawn Bowls Championship on ABC1, or have the sound muted, or lose the picture all together and be only listening to the movie which is now broadcasting in Spanish.

It takes a minute or two of fumbling and cursing before we get the movie back. But the credits! and the skipping! and now we zoom to the third scene of the movie and he hits BACKx120, and we are now watching the opening credits again, and so on.

It takes a while. But at least we don't have to suffer through those darn opening credits!

What he needs is the MAN version of the DVD -- which has no credits, no previews, no special extras, and which is voice-activated to pause instantly when he says "BEER" and start again when he pops the top.