Yet Another Stupid Idea
Single-play DVDs will never work, at least not for the rental market. Not only because they require new players, and of course the first thing I will do is get a new DVD player so that I can watch the new rentals only once. But because they don't interact well with how people watch movies. I often fall asleep while watching a movie, how would I see the ending? How about that phone call, or little emergency right in the middle of the movie? Or when I don't have 2 hours to watch the entire movie, but I'm willing to see 30 minutes now and the rest later?
People rent because it's more flexible than going to the movies. Taking away from people the flexibility of renting without giving them any of the advantages of movie theaters is not going to fly.
Unix died in 1982
If you look at this time history of Unix, you can see how after 1982 Unix became practically impossible to support. I mean, who was going to worry about compatibility between so many different flavors of Unix. I'm glad the list is short again in 2005. Now if only the GUIs had a standard ;-)