I got 24 Series 5 on DVD for Christmas (It’s been out for a while, and I could have watched it on TV but I prefer the watch it in a few days 24-binge while I’m still on Christmas break).
I’m coming up to halfway through the series and the same thing’s bothering me that’s bothered me with the previous box-sets.
If you’re watching it all in one go, several episodes at a time, you dont really need to see the “Previously on twenty-four…” bit. Because it’s just happened.
So why isn’t there a chapter placed at the “The following takes place between the hours of…” bit? Seems like the logical place to me. Otherwise you have to fastforward and usually end up going too far, then having to carefully go back, but go too far…
Anyone else got lame DVD annoyances? I didn’t think this was pit-worthy, just wanted to see if anyone else shared my (mild) problem with this media!
Also…no matter how many times I’ve tried unsuccessfully, why do I still try and fast-forward through the copyright warning notices, fully aware that it’ll make it pass no faster?
I hate DVDs that make it impossible to get to the main menu until all the disclaimers have played. I think the one about the commentaries being the opinion of the person and not the opinion of whoever produced the DVD is especially stupid. Particularly when I’m forced to wait for the same screen to run its course in French. “We better put that in there Sam in case some Frenchman gets pissed off at us and tries to sue us when he hears the film’s director say he didn’t like that take!”
As a minor note, “Previously on…” doesn’t necessarily mean from the immediately previous episode. You could see scenes from ten episodes back that have some relevance to the episode you’re about to see. More conventional continuing TV shows like e.r. sometimes start with “Previously” bits that are several years old, if they serve to give a quick reintroduction to a guest character that appeared way back and will do so again presently.
My biggest peeve regarding DVDs (aside from issues like skips and such) is actor commentary tracks. They’re uniformly useless, with the actor trying to be “on” for the audience instead of just talking about the damn movie. Much better to have the director, writer (possibly the editor or the DP if it’s an action or otherwise visual-intense film) talking about the creative process of making the film, rather than anecdotes about who got drunk at the cast party.
When they don’t bookend the opening credits in chapters, or at least put a chapter immediately following the opening credits and intro stuff. If I’m watching a tv series on DVD I don’t want to spend 5 minutes on the opening song and credits. I love these guys, just let me see the show!
I also hate the “no menus before reading the same FBI warning you’ve seen all your life.”
A-friggin’-men to everything you said here. (Except I think you need to blame Canada for the French thing.) Does anybody, anybody at all in the whole world, care that the views expressed in the interviews and commentary are solely those of the individuals providing them?
I’ve been watching the Ken Burns Civil War PBS series. I’m watching in bits and pieces, not paying particular attention to the length of the segments.
So they finish a section and the credits roll. I put in the second disk. Pretty soon I’m thinking “Weren’t there two Bull Runs?” Watch the second disk, credits roll, and “What happened at Vicksburg? Emancipation Proclamation? How did I miss that?” Credits roll.
I’m on the third disk before I realize that there are two major segments on each disk, with credits after each of them. I’d only been watching the first segment, thinking that credits roll = end of disk.
So now I have to watch the damn thing all over again, to put the missing segments in order in my head.
My fault though, not the fault of the producers.
My only real complaint is how episodes are listed in the menu. Sometimes they’re in a vertical list, sometimes side by side, and unless you have a booklet to look at, you don’t know the order of the episodes. Do I scroll up and down or back and forth? If you’re going to put them side by side, give them a number.
I won’t even start on what they did with American Gothic, where you have to skip back and forth between disks to watch in order.
Could be worse. I thought y’all were talking about this rare phenomenon: back when the DVD format was in its relative infancy, I bought a box set of an anime series I rather liked. The owners of the series had hired what was basically a no-name company to do the set; I think the DVD set was the first they’d ever done, and boy did it show. Lots of annoying little problems.
One that bothered me was the placement of the chapter stops. They were just a bit off, as though the software they’d used to put the DVD together ran just a bit behind and shifted things by a few seconds. The start of each chapter was about two or three seconds after the spot where it would make sense. Say a scene would pull out and fade to black. That’d be the obvious place for a new chapter, right? But the chapter stop was never there. Instead, it went like this: pull out and fade to black, new scene begins, dialog starts, THEN chapter stop. So, any time you tried to skip ahead, you ended up in the middle of dialogue, and you’d have to back up just a few seconds. It was maddening.
My biggest complaint about TV show DVDs is when they don’t make the opening credits a self-contained “chapter”. I was watching Monk Season 1 on my computer. I’d watch the opening scene of an episode, and then when the opening credits started I would hit the button to skip to the next chapter. It was only when I watched them again on my TV with my roommate that I discovered that the opening credits and the second scene of each episode were parts of the same “chapter”! In other words, I missed key details in almost every episode when I watched them the first time. When Monk would explain how he solved the case at the end of the episode, he kept referring to things that I simply did not recall happening.
Isn’t that just typical? Blame Canada for everything!
What I hate is when not only do you have to sit through the anti-piracy warnings without being able to get to the menu, but when you THEN also have to sit through a series of “sneak peaks”! Fine if they put them on for anyone who might be interested as a menu option, but to force them on a captive audience is damned annoying.
A-men. And enough with the frickin’ ads. I’m pretty sure one of my husband’s recently purchased DVDs had a car ad on it at the beginning. Obtrusive advertising is one of my major peeves in life.
Why is not having chapters a good thing? If you don’t want to skip around in the movie, the chapter stops aren’t going to keep you from watching the whole way through. What happens when your disk gets a scratch on it and hangs up whenever it gets to 1:22:17. Are you saying you’re much happier fast forwarding through more than an hour of movie you’ve already watched than using the chapter stops as stepping stones to (hopefully) get passed the scratch?
Or what about when you’re watching Mulholland Drive and, in the middle of the extended lesbian sex scene, you wonder to yourself “Hey, what did Naomi Watts just say? I’ll fast forward a few seconds and try to hear her again. Oh shit! I hit the chapter button instead of the rewind button! I guess I’ll just start over…”
Northern Exposure does this, too. There’s the little opening scene, the credits and then the next scene all in one chapter. You have to fast forward through the credits rather then “next”-ing through them.
The first few seasons of MAS*H had the credits as the first chapter and the actual episode started at chapter two. Then around season 4 they changed it so the episode began in the middle of the first chapter. Rat finks. I merrily skipped my way past the beginning of more than a few episodes before I realized the mistake.
I’d given up on skipping through 24 episodes with the chapters, but I tried again two episodes ago, and there’s a chapter placed at the “The following takes place between…”. It seems that most of the later episodes have one there too.
I’d like to think it’s because of my starting this thread, but my logic must be flawed there somehow…
The porn produced by Treasure Island Media, annoyingly, won’t allow you to skip past any of the “all the actors in these films are over 18” disclaimers which (given the kind of men that appear in those DVDs) really is totally unnecessary. And if you watch past the end of the last chapter you’re suddenly in copyright warning hell which no amount of mashing of the ‘menu’ button can save you from.
But, on the flip side, the bookmarks are just where you’d like them to be in each scene.
My first post here…you’re not alone in having that problem with #1 of “Monk.” I have #1 of “Matt Houston” (1982-83), and the title sequence and first scenes are linked in the same chapter. I would sometimes skip over the title sequence to start the episode, and the next chapter after does not have any creative credits; only then did I realize that the part with the creative credits (which includes the first scene[s]) was linked to the title sequence in the same chapter! Oh, how p.o.'ed I was!
