It’s a conspiracy against the consumer! Who owns this machine? Me or the movie studios?
As I’m sure most of you have discovered, it’s possible for DVDs to override almost any button on the DVD player they’re placed in. I just got the second season of The Wire, and the first disk in the set isn’t satisfied to force you to watch a brief FBI copyright warning like some other disks. No, there’s a three-minute commercial for other HBO series that you can’t stop or fast-forward through or skip by pressing the “Menu” button. The first time you put the disk in, you **have to **watch that plug. No buttons work until it’s finished playing.
It makes no difference that I like HBO and most of the other shows they’re plugging here. And when I’m actually watching their network, they can play their promos, and I can ignore them.
But this is my legal disk and my DVD player. They don’t have the right to steal my time like this. Is this the U.S.A. or communist Russia?
So how can I undo this fiendish plot and get control back?
Note well: I am NOT talking about changing the region code, or making an illegal copy, or violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or any other copyright law.
I’ve googled around for DVD player hacks and I’ve found plenty of ways to do these things, and that’s not what I want. I want a hack that will let me control my player the way I want, not the way some pinhead studio schmuck thinks I should. Surely someone has figured this out.
I don’t know if this will work on your DVD player, but it works on mine: press the “Stop” button twice in rapid succession, then press the “Play” button.
Although I agree that a solution to the problem should be consumer-friendly, the problem you describe doesn’t happen in my household, since I re-author all DVDs thru various tools, most of them free, including DVDShrink, before viewing any. Therefore, all region codes are removed along with portions of the DVD that I don’t want, including any or all previews or supplementary features if I wish to disable them.
It’s my house, my player, my theater, my rules. I paid for it by renting or buying the DVD; I get to watch it the way I want. Screw the studios.
Honestly? Probably the movie studios. Any company that wants to make a DVD player, or who wants to add DVD movie-playing functionality to something (Sony with the PS2, or Nintendo with the Wii) has to pay big licencing fees, and is contractually required to enforce region encoding and lame disk-wants-buttons-disabled codes.
The player manufacturers know consumers hate this and usually provide an option like the “player hacks” you mention, in the form of hidden menus, holding down buttons while turning the machine on and off, etc. etc. In the U.K. which some movies never reach in region 2, region disabling is almost an advertised feature, and often done at the store for you.
Basically, look for the hack for your player, if available. The option is usually bundled with disabling regioning.
More fundamentally, I think your problem is that you “like HBO”. Unless you write them a letter and let them know that this pisses you off and you’re not going to buy anymore disks, they’re going to make it 5 minutes on the next title you buy.
The restrictions on Blu-Ray/HD players are even worse; the format enables movie makers to not only not allow their disk to play in your player if they suspect that model can be hacked, but allows them to disable it’s ability to play any of their previous releases as well, meaning that one day your player turns in to an expensive brick and won’t play any of the expensive disks you’ve already bought. Write that letter already!
The thing I hate about previews in front of a disc, be they skippable or not, is that in five years time when you want to watch it again, the things they’re promoting are long outdated and forgotten.
Anyways, all I can suggest for this problem is a different DVD player that ignores those kinds of irritating restrictions, but I am not sure if any actually exist.