I love the Random Play feature on my 5-disc carousel CD player. What I'd like is a 5 disc DVD player that has a similar random play feature. Options should include no-repeat and programable track memory (so that I don't have to see FBI warning track on every disc). Another good option would be to change tracks every 5 minutes even if the track isn't finished, and have the machine remember where it was when it changed so that it can pick up in the same place later (in effect, creating new tracks).
The visual juxtapostions would be surprising. Put in 5 random discs (such as World's Funniest Home Videos 9, Swordsman II, Best of NFL Films, Delicatessen, and The Abominable Dr. Phibes) or 5 themed discs (such as John Wayne in five different armies, Hammer movies, movies about food). Breath life into the hundreds of crappy movies that are being put out on DVD while the classics languish. Fun for parties, too.-- Bartlebooth, Feb 09 2002 This is a funny idea. One thing that could possibly improve it is to include scene boundary detection so that when the player randomly jumps it does so at the actual existing edit points: at the end of the outgoing scene cutting to the beginning of the randomly selected inbound scene. Basically randomly re-editing whatever it is you're watching but keeping the individual scenes intact.-- bristolz, Feb 09 2002 I thought this was how Pulp Fiction was made...-- StarChaser, Feb 09 2002 If one could, lets say, purchase a TiVo and reprogram the playback mechanism, then one might be able to do this with any recorded video content, including TiVo's cache of live television. That would be totally sweet. By the way, you could transition on MPEG-2 I-Frames which are commonly on scene transitions or camera angle changes. Oh, and because TiVo uses a harddrive, you wouldn't have to wait for the slowness of the DVD changer's disc mechanism. It would be an instant change from one program to another, plus you'd have 100 hours+ of content to choose from...-- slacy, Feb 11 2002 I can already achieve hours of crap with my sky digital remote and a twitchy thumb.-- g4zz, Feb 11 2002 random, halfbakery