Some DVD Complaints

Cafe Society
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I didn’t want to put this in the Pit because this post contains no swearing or character assassination, just some consumer complaints about DVDs.

Studio Doubledipping–I am getting tired of studios releasing so-so DVDs, then a few months or a year later, putting out a new remastered version so packed with bells and whistles that one must buy it. Take Lord of the Rings, released in August. It has some extras that are really just cheesy marketing material, but because the movie is so great, people have snapped it up. (Luckily, I got mine as a birthday present, so I spent no shekels.) In November, a mere 3 months after the inital release, New Line is putting out two newer, bigger, better versions; naturally, I’m going to get the Extended Version because it has all new extras and 30 more minutes of footage. Why couldn’t the studio have done this in the first place? The same thing goes for Starship Troopers. Amadeus, Unforgiven and Black Hawk Down.

Grease was just released yesterday, so I bought it, despite it having no extras, just because I’m a big fan of the music. And now I discover that a bells-and-whistles version of Grease is being readied for a 2004 launch. Why couldn’t they do that in the first place? Why are studios so greedy that they have to reach into my wallet twice?

Fullscreen. I HATE fullscreen, pan-and-scan butchery of films on DVD. The whole point of DVD is to recreate the cinematic experience in the home–5.1 sound through the home theater system, twice the resolution of VHS, extra features. DVD is the fastest adopted home entertainment vehicle since TV itself, and with its mass acceptance by the public comes a golden opportunity to educate the Great Unwashed about the virtues of widescreen formatting.

Widescreen presents a movie the way its director intended, but pan-and-scan slashes off at least 1/3 of the picture. By putting out these hacked up versions, the studios are accomodating the ignorant people who complain about widescreen, “Why come they’s them black bars on the top and bottom of the picture box?” not comprehending that that is the way the movie was meant to be seen.

If this keeps up, the ignorant masses’ demand for pan-and-scan will persuade studios to abandon widescreen releases of many films, and I will be one perturbed li’l Gobear. :mad:

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Lord of the Rings I didn’t mind for two reasons. First, the initial release is pretty far from a bare bones release. In fact, about the only special feature missing that I would want on it is the commentary. The next release doesn’t have the same version of the movie and doesn’t have the three hour long specials that are in the original. So if someone wants to buy that version they’re not getting ripped off.

Second, the upcoming release was announced at about the same time as the initial release. It wasn’t hidden until after the movie was released on DVD. So since I’ve seen the specials on the DVD and don’t mind not having the theatrical version I’m waiting until the later release.

Starship Troopers, FWIW, was one of the first DVD releases so that’s why it was revisitted.

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That really sucks!

I was gonna pick this one up, but I guess I will wait till '04. :o

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I’ll forgive Amadeus, and starship Troopers as they were early releases, and the new versions are special directors editions which the originasls were not But I agree that double dipping has become the marketing norm.

I try to avoid it by looking only for the version I will be satisfied with. I avoided buying any Star Trek DVDs until a special edition came out and that is what is happening now.

My pet Peeve though are the non special extras that seem to be advertised on the back. I’m sorry Cast Bios are not really an extra that gets me tingling, I can go to IMDB.com if I want a list, but if there is going to be a cast list then have the entire main cast not just two or three!!

Don’t get me started on Pan and Scan! I had a huge argument with one person who complained about the fact so many DVD’s have Widescreen only versions. “Moron!” I said, “Why would you buy the Ciniphile’s entertainment unit if you don’t want to see teh best possible home version of a movie? Get thee back to your VCR!”

Here is a solution though, drop the pan and scan and if you need a second version just make it open mat! Willy Wonka turned out to be ok as an Open Mat version.

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Well, all of Kubrick’s films are only available on DVD as Open Matte (Kubrick preferred it to widescreen), but I still don’t approve.

And yeah, the fake features piss me off, too. The Evita DVD mentions Chapter Search as a feature. What a load! The shabby treatment of the movie has kept me from buying Evita (and several other movies). I didn’t buy Pulp Fiction until the new 2-disc version came out.

Here’s a list of my DVDs

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Well, yeah, they are greedy. From a business perspective, DVD’s are not a repeat purchase.

Disney hated DVD at first. With tapes, parents often bought several copies of a movie over their kids’ childhoods. Disney was assured you were gonna buy two or three copies of the Lion King as little Jimmy wore them out or the VCR chewed them up. Not so with DVD. DVD is pretty damn permanent, and even scratches can be repaired(or in the case of my Sony player, played anyway), so the only way they can get you to buy the movie again is to add features. All the studios feel this way. And after the SE, you can expect the Superbit edition, then the 6.1 edition, then the HD-DVD edition, and so on as tech progresses. I guess its just up to the consumer just how many times they wanna see Gladiator.

And Gobear, don’t blame the studios directly for fullscreen. Blame Walmart and Ballbuster, who despite sales figures of widescreen versus fullscreen releases, still order massive amounts of fullscreen. These companies think they know what the consumer wants, when the average joe doesn’t notice ‘dem black bars’ on 70% of current titles. Walmart has told studios they will not carry any of their titles if they aren’t supplied with a certain percentage of fullscreen on major releases. Ballbuster has also tried to use their rental monopoly to strongarm the studios into rental pricing on new releases (this is where a movie cannot be bought cheaply for three months or so after its release, but it can be rented at Ballbuster. They had this type of agreement for years on VHS.)

The problem is that Walmart listens to complaints over anything else. Even if widescreen LOTR outsold fullscreen 2 to1, if enough Joe Sixpacks call in about ‘dem black bars’ Walmart feels the public wants fullscreen.

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SEs take time to make. You might want to wait the few extra months, but I don’t. IMO, owning the movie earlier is much better than waiting for some special features that I might watch once or not at all.

Then again, some people do like special features. If you’re one of those, just pretend that the barebones version of the disc doesn’t exist, and wait for the SE. That’s exactly what it’d be like if they “did it in the first place.” The SE isn’t going to magically come out sooner just because a barebones version was never released.

Dual releases are the best compromise between those two viewpoints. Also, they allow the studio extra cash from suckers who don’t stay up to date on DVD news but want all the special features. :smiley:

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Honestly, I don’t mind the bare-bones versions.

The thing that gets me about DVDs is how, ever since they came out, suddenly everyone is this huge expert on filmmaking. I appreciate that there’s folks out there who are interested in filmmaking - I’m not one of them. There are very few directors who I want to hear talk about their work - in fact, I’d pay most of them to shut up about it. I’ve never sat through a director’s commentary in my life and can’t imagine the movie for which I would.

I like deleted scenes, so that’s cool, but I don’t need the Platinum Extreme Ultimate Blue-Ribbon edition of everything. Unfortunately, if you want to own Rushmore, sucks to be you if you want a bare-bones version.

So I don’t mind the bare-bones versions as long as they’re up front that a nicer version is coming out for those who want it. Me, I’ll save me some cash and get the cheaper version, since it’s got everything I want on it.

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I don’t agree with this silly widescreen snobbery. People have a right to see the film in any format they feel comfortable with regardless of how “it was meant to be seen”. The market supplies according to their tastes.

With many of the newer movies widescreen is so small (ie almost 50% of the TV screen is blacked out) that you can barely make out what’s going on. It’s a legitimate tradeoff to enlarge the picture at the cost of losing some of the side. Besides some people just don’t like the black bars.

Often I will do my improvise own full-screen on a widescreen DVD by zooming in. But usually if a full-screen version is efficient than this. Ideally a DVD should have both full-screen and widescreen.

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There are at least three reasons for fullscreen. In almost all cases, if given one choice, I’d buy fullscreen. When DVDs come with both fullsceen and the “normal” aspect I watch both, depending on my mood.

There are advantages to fullscreen:

  1. The resolution of most people’s TV is so bad that it’s impossible to see details that the viewer really needs to see – such as facial expressions on people standing at a slight distance. With fullscreen, at least you can see a significant glance most of the time.

  2. Depending on how magnificient your local movie screens are – and how close you like sitting to the screen – you aren’t looking at the whole screen at once, anyhow. For such people fullscreen is more like a “real” movie experience.

  3. Some folks are more sensitive to detail than others. For example, I bought my monitor and video card because they were high resolution at high quality. It’s agony for me to look at something fuzzy or pixelated. Many DVDs with the “normal” theatrical aspect look awful to me.

My peeve about DVDs is when they’re too cheap to shell out $5000 and get an interview / commentary from somebody (anybody!) connected with the film. Or provide additional video/audio material whatsoever. Many movies have accompanying soundtracks. Particularly with oldies whose soundtrack never sold well, there’s little reason not to include it.

I haven’t enjoyed the “director’s cut” idea much. It seems mostly to be an excuse to put weak material back in the movie. (There are exceptional cases, such as Das Boot.) Then one’s stuck – with a movie there may be no time to watch twice – with figuring out whether the “director’s cut” is liable to be better than the other. I just got a movie and spent 15 minutes figuring out which version to watch first. Afterwards, I thought the movie was dated, and wished I’d watched something else. And that I had my 15 minutes back.

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For some reason I mistyped my last paragraphy. It should be " I improvise my own full screen" and “usually a full-screen version is more efficient than this”

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“My peeve about DVDs is when they’re too cheap to shell out $5000 and get an interview / commentary from somebody (anybody!) connected with the film”
I agree that all DVD’s should have a commentary track. It is one of those wonderful things that DVD technology allows you to do and which add so much to the film if done properly.

OTOH a poorly done commentary is useless. I especially hate the ones where the commentator just sits there and maybe makes a brief comment once every few minutes. I also dislike commentators who concentrate on biographical gossip rather than the film itself. (unless it’s a second commentary track supplementing the main one)

I also think that if you can’t get someone connected with the film who is articulate and interesting, it’s best to get a critic/film scholar who is, rather some bore who worked on the film.

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And a lot of people will put ketchup on filet mignon, too, but that doesn’t make it right. If your TV is giving you too small a picture, you need to get your owner’s manual and do some tweaking.

Again, get out your owner’s manual. Your DVD remote should have a control option to let you change the display aspect you see on your monitor.

The people who prefer fullscreen are probably the same people who prefer dubbed versions of foreign-language films, and there’s just no hope for them.

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The widescreen/fullscreen thing can blow up just as big as a religion or SUV fight, so I won’t go there. I am for widescreen, and don’t think my position is ‘silly’ or ‘snobbish’. My problem comes when there are no widescreen releases in favor of fullscreen, which it feels like thats the direction we’re heading some days. I don’t care if a movie comes out in both formats, as long as they continue to come out in BOTH formats.

I will say, though, that whenever the powers that be get off their butts and standardize an HDTV format all new TV’s will probably be 16x9. Then people will complain about the bars on the SIDES of their screens from all the previous fullscreen releases. Oh, the irony.

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“The people who prefer fullscreen are probably the same people who prefer dubbed versions of foreign-language films, and there’s just no hope for them”
I think it’s rather pathetic that your DVD viewing preferences are apperently a major point of pride for you. For the record I prefer subs to dubs but don’t make a hue and cry about those who prefer otherwise.

And no there is nothing I can do with the TV settings to change the size of the picture.

“Your DVD remote should have a control option to let you change the display aspect you see on your monitor.”
Like I said I can zoom in and improvise my own full-screen view. It’s better done if the DVD itself has a full-screen feature.

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I never said it was a point of pride…sheesh. To use my previous example, I don’t make eating steak without ketchup a point if pride either–it’s the way one eats steak. But I do think that people who put ketchup on steak are, shall we say, unsophisticated. My problem is that the people who prefer fullscreen are going to drive widescreen off the market, and that will make me very annoyed.

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“I am for widescreen, and don’t think my position is ‘silly’ or ‘snobbish’.”
I didn’t mean that a preference for widescreen was inherently silly or snobbish but was merely referring to those who heap abuse on those who prefer otherwise.
Incidentally I don’t necessarily prefer fullscreen. It depends on the kind of movie and how large the widescreen picture is on my TV .Ideally you want to have both formats.

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Personally, I find the bells and whistles a waste of my time. I want to see the movie, and don’t have time in my life to sit through stupid games and trailers. And I doubt there are a dozen films where I’d give a rat’s fart about the director’s commentary (Welles, Hitchcock, Chaplin, the Marx Brothers*, and Keaton are dead, so that cuts the number down dramatically). When you hear Roger Christian talking about his direction of “Battlefield Earth,” you learn that not many directors have anything important to say.

The movie is what’s important. I haven’t bothered to sit through more than five minutes of any commentary – it’s irrelevant, trivial, and unenlightening.

So fool them – get the first release and forget about the second. You have the movie; what else do you need?

*If the Marx Brothers did a commentary, it’d be well worth it, for Harpo’s comments alone.

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“But I do think that people who put ketchup on steak are, shall we say, unsophisticated.”
OK and I think that people who make a hue and cry about their arbitrary preferences are unsophisticated.

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It’s not an arbitrary preference. I compared my Pulp FictionVHS pan-and-scan to my widescreen DVD. The difference in the compostion was night and day. In the p&s version, I hear Samule Jackson talking but I see Travolta. The camera pan through Jackrabbit Slim’s is truncated, and most of the background is eliminated.

People may prefer pan& scan, but they are not getting a better picture, or a just-as-good picture; they are getting an inferior picture.