I recently watched my first DVD from Netflix that was affected by their deal with Warner to not rent movies for four weeks. This one was “Invention of Lying”. The disc itself said “rental” on it. When I started it, there were about 15 minutes of previews that I couldn’t skip. That is, I couldn’t go directly to a menu but I was allowed to fast forward thru them.
It could have just been an interaction between my DVD player and the disc or it could be part of the new deal between Neflix and WB. Does this happen on anon-rental version of “Invention of Lying” (or one rented from other than Netflix)? Has anyone noticed this on other WB discs rented from Netflix?
hey, I’m curious about this too. I recently watched 500 Days of Summer from Netflix and I think it had some sort of “rental” notation or sticker on it and it lacked a director’s commentary even though some posters on the imdb message board had clearly heard a director’s commentary.
I can’t figure out if 500 Days was a WB movie though. Wikipedia says its distributor is Fox Searchlight.
Not a Netflix film, but we bought a previously-viewed copy of “Up” (Disney/Pixar) from the local video-rental chain, and not only can you not access a menu during the previews, you can’t access one during the film, either. The DVD also seems to lack any special features of any kind.
It makes me wonder if there are limited/compromised DVD versions produced for rental businesses in general, perhaps to strongly encourage the consumer to pay full price and buy the full-featured DVD. :dubious:
Menus not be accessible during previews isn’t new. I remember DVDs doing that for ages… at least a few years, maybe longer. You can fast forward through them but not get to the menu.
Very annoying, but I’ve learned to put the DVD in the player and THEN go get drinks/snacks/run to the bathroom/etc while it runs through all the stupid crap.
IS there a menu at all on UP? We got one from Redbox and I was annoyed at how there wasn’t a menu that I could get to. We could skip the previews, but then the movie just started and when it ended it started again!
There are a lot of kids movies that do this kind of stuff, Sesame Street seems to do this where you can’t skip the previews and it makes the kids and me mad.
I’m not fubbleskag, but what I get from that graphic is that it’s totally unfair that people who illegally pirate movies get a much better viewing experience than people who legitimately buy/rent; therefore you should boycott buying/renting until this is fixed. If it were directly advocating piracy (and I admit that that is definitely one interpretation you could get from it) I think the tag line would have been more like “Vote with your mouse” instead of “Vote with your wallet.” Just MHO, though.
Fox has been removing special features from rental versions for a little while - here’s an article from March 2009 about removal of special features from Slumdog Millionaire.
The rental version of Up was very stripped down. Originally it did not even have subtitles. There was a big to-do over it - I think Disney ended up reimbursing rental costs for people who had rented it and needed subtitles.
At the library where I work we have started receiving rental versions of movies. So far, we haven’t had any complaints from our patrons, which struck me as odd; I thought they’d be upset.
To be honest, I hadn’t even noticed the last line of text on this image until reading your post; if I had, I would have cropped it out before sharing it on this particular forum - or not shared it at all. But, I’ve missed the edit window it seems.
I’m aware of non-skippable previews existing long before this. I was trying to determine if WB is producing a special version of their discs for Netflix. The one for “Whiteout” had about 15 minutes of trailers, fast-forward allowed but no other skip. There was only “Play” and “Languages” on the main menu. No special features, no scene selection.
