I personally hate it when DVD authors make ‘games’ to open up special features, or (like the Simpsons Season 2 DVDs) make you jump through hoops just to get to the menu. Just show me a damn list of the content, please…that’s why we HAVE menus on DVDs, so we don’t need to go through the crap we had to on VHS.
I also get irritated at endlessly repeating menu music…play through the loop once, then stop…if I haven’t pressed an option yet, it means I put the disc in and went to make popcorn…I don’t need to hear the menu theme 14 times!
Hehe, depends on the show! Also, I like to have TV shows on as background when I do housework or exercise. It’s annoying to stop those things when an episode ends, especially if you’re in the middle of an exercise, or your hands are covered in soap. We don’t have cable, so that’s not an option.
Ummmmm… me? Even if I only have around an hour, that’s enough for three episodes of a half-hour show. It’s far more enjoyable to press one “play all” button - even if I don’t end up watching them all - than going back to the menu (which might be animated and “slow”) and pressing 24 buttons to do the same thing.
Honestly, the “play all” feature is not difficult to add… All TV sets should have them.
The Boondock Saints DVD has a big spoiler in the menu sequence:
The menu shows a reporting talking about the largest manhunt in Boston’s history for three men that call themselves the Saints. This isn’t really a spoiler as they do run as a three-man crew almost from the beginning. But the picture behind the reporter shows Murphy, Connor and Il Duce. Il Duce is introduced as a villain in the movie and he isn’t revealed to be working with the boys until the very end of the movie. So if you are paying attention to the menu you already know that the badass guy in the hat is working with them even though the movie wants you to believe otherwise at first.
Some Disney DVDs have a “feature” similar to the “Play All” mentioned above called FastPlay. According to their marketing FastPlay allows you to watch the whole film and special fetaures without touching the remote. In practice it means you have to actively choose to avoid the ten minutes of advertisements prior to the film.
If you mean “Easter Eggs,” I’m with you 100%. Many of the DVDs I watch are from Netflix and I don’t have time to try to figure out if there are any “hidden extras” on a movie I want to send back the next day.
Not anymore. The FBI recently changed the wording of its warning (it is now headlined “FBI Anti-Piracy Warning”) and it cannot be skipped on Fox DVDs. However, you can still skip the Interpol warning, Fox logo, and other such stuff.
I’m not even really talking about Easter Eggs, since those are not listed as special features. I’m talking about things like the first Harry Potter DVD, where you have to go through hell and back in order to view the deleted scenes.
But seriously, WTF? I buy DVDs… I never really took to renting them. So if I already own a copy of the movie I don’t need to make illegal copies of it. Pirates who wish to do so aren’t going to be discouraged by an FBI notice that they can’t skip. I would imagine the tools they use for making DVD rips can remove the warning anyhow. Why do studios want to punish the people who have aquired the movie through legal means?
Man do I hate all the extra shmoo-shmoo on the menus. I don’t want animations just to switch menus, I don’t want a long leadup, I just want to put in the DVD, get the menu, monkey with the features, and go. And ughh, the ones with the same fifteen seconds of music and/or dialogue looping …
What I really wish more DVDs did is closed-caption the commentary tracks. Shrek did this, as I recall, but I don’t see it much of anywhere else. Apparently the hearing-impaired aren’t entitled to the commentary?
My Shaolin Soccer DVD has both the cut theatrical, and the full version on the CD. However, to see the full version you have to watch for this stupid little icon to appear on the screen (which lasts for only a few seconds) then hit select on the remote, and the scene gets inserted into the flow of the movie. Otherwise, the DVD skips the scene completely.
My Aviator bonus disks have French subtitles locked on for some bizarre reason. My wife is hard of hearing and needs subtitles, but it won’t display English even when selected.
The DvD of UHF works pretty much the same way. I borrowed a friends copy of it and watched the movie then I decided to watch the deleted scenes… Nope. You have to watch the movie and wait for a little icon to pop up. I just watched the movie, I don’t want to watch it again.
That’s mine, for commentary tracks. On Some, they don’t let you choose it with just a button press while you’re playing, so you have to go through their stupid menu. I assume it’s so they can force you to see the stupid disclaimer that says that “the opinions are the commentators own and please don’t sue us.”
The only good thing about having the deleted scenes work like that is that you can clearly see how they fit in the rest of the film. What I’d like is for the movie to play uncut, but to have a little icon to pop up at the beginning and end of the deleted scene, so you can tell what wasn’t originally shown.