How Did We Live Without Car DVD Players?

People like to pine for “the good old days”. They tell stories about the way things used to be, romanticizing bygone eras and trumpeting the superiority of earlier times. Sometimes, they have a point. Some things have not improved over the years. In other cases, the “good old days” were not that great. If you are not convinced, just think about what long car trips with kids were like before the advent of car DVD player.

Today, we can keep our little backseat passengers entertained and relatively quiet by providing them with access to their favorite movies or cartoons. While some may criticize a reliance on videos to create good behavior, anyone who remembers the “good old days” will undoubtedly feel differently.

Before car DVD players, you could count on a few things happening during every long family car trip. The kids would ask, “How much longer?” or “Are we there yet?” at least a few thousands times. Those twice-a-minute queries were supplemented with complaints about the trip’s length and other assorted whines.

Before car DVD players, parents were left with only a handful of ways to encourage tolerable backseat behavior. They could try to strike up an inevitably doomed game of license plate bingo. They could try to engage the children in an “I Spy” match. When those techniques failed, they could threaten to pull the car over and to administer some form of discipline–an unimaginably ineffective threat.

Oh, we cannot forget the fighting. “She’s on my side!” “He’s crowding me!” “She touched me!” “He’s making faces!” The griping would come with shoves, scratches and even the occasional punch. The backseat was a sibling war zone before car DVD players.

Today, we do not need to deal with the agonies of yesteryear. We have a quick fix. We can slide that little silver disk into place, hit play, and enjoy the peace and quiet as we wind our way through the highways and by-ways on our journeys.

In addition, we can do it on the cheap. One of the other benefits of progress is the rapid decline in electronics prices. Car DVD players feature technology that was unimaginable only a few years ago. Today, we can pick one up at any electronics retailer on the cheap. Some portable players suitable for automobile use actually sell for fewer than one hundred dollars. That is a small price to pay for their convenience and value.

How did we live without car DVD? Uncomfortable. It may cut against our tendency to be nostalgic, but sometimes the “good old days” were not all that good and technological innovation makes today the best of times.

If you are still making do without a car DVD, it is time to catch up with the rest of us. Car DVD players are great addition to any vehicle.