I cant imagine the ecruciating pain of not seeing a movie

I know the pain of seeing the movies that have been shown domestically this past month, since I have had to sit through them more than once (and once was too much).
I simply ignore them and do work. I have been on the TPA flight this month where the movie was shown one way but not the other. I always thought that it was FA discretion, but now I know the rules. What I find interesting is that all of the flights that I have taken from EWK to IAH have shown a movie, although the flight time appears to be less than 3 hours. Thus, I suspect that it still is FA discretion. And once when we were stuck on the ground for 2 hours, they showed us two movies (I guess black marks be damned).

Finally, with the advent of cheap portable DVD players, why not just bring your own entertainment and never have to worry about what is being shown (and I agree that COvision is generally poor entertainment).