It has come to our attention that certain visitors would like us to acknowledge the existence of a shiny circular object that allegedly plays films. We have considered the request carefully, at a meeting, with snacks, and we have decided against it. Here, for the record, is our official position of denial.
As far as this website is concerned, it is 1998, it will always be 1998, and in 1998 the format in question is a rumour at best, whispered about at trade shows, unavailable at your local video shop, and therefore not our problem. We do not report on rumours. We report on tapes.
You cannot make us acknowledge a thing we refuse to look at. We have our eyes closed. We are humming. The disc, if it exists, which it does not, has never been in this building, and if it were, we would not know, because our eyes are closed and we are humming.
We are told the disc has 'menus' you 'navigate' before the film will deign to begin. A tape starts when you press play, sometimes after a trailer for a film about a dog. This is superior. We rest our case, on a matter we are not discussing.
Apparently you can 'skip to any scene instantly'. We find this profoundly rude to the rewind button, which has served loyally for two decades and asks only for your patience and a spare forty seconds. We do not abandon our friends the moment something faster comes along. The rewind button remembers who was there first.
There is no disc. There is only tape. Should the disc write to us to complain, it will find that we do not have an email address, that the velociraptor has no thumbs, and that we would ignore it anyway. This concludes our statement on the thing that does not exist. Be kind, rewind, and speak of it no more.