Alot of DVDs will not let you skip the FBI warner. Some players will do it anyway but others won’t. Why do the manufactures feel the need to force me to stare at the FBI warning for 30 seconds? I have already seen it 10 million times.
You’ve seen it 10 million times but the people who’ve never seen it before have never seen it before. Making you unable to skip it means that should you get busted copying DVDs in the future you can’t claim you didn’t know it was illegal (not that ignorance of the law is an excuse).
Now the really sucky thing is the trend of not allowing us to skip the previews. That’s just evil.
Thats the number one reason I have started copying the “main” movie onto another DVD right after purchase, before even watching the original.
I think the first time I noticed the preview trend was in my daughter’s DVDs.
Very nice.
Just what a three year old wants to sit through before her much anticipated Dora - previews for other movies. :mad:
Me too, it was my childrens movies that I first noticed it, but it has become more the standard now on many DVD’s. If they where giving me the DVD’s for free, with ads I can deal with that. But not when I buy a new DVD for 20$ or more. It should be AD FREE. Or at least skippable. Next we will have commercial breaks, unskippable in the DVD’s as well as CD’s.
What really irks me is that I have to have a big red, yellow, and black sticker stuck to both of my car’s visors warning me not to put a baby seat in the front seat of the car. I expect never ever ever to have a baby in the car at all, and these stupid ugly stickers are still there. And if I take them off, as I did with my last car, it leaves a sticky, gummy residue there.
I mean, sheesh, I can see putting some cardboard inserts in a new car, but really. Put your damn warnings on the baby seats, not on the cars.
But what if the person who steals your car sells it to someone who does have a little one? If those things were not there and l’tle one dies in a collision you can be sued. The manufacturer is just looking out for your best interest.
The very stupidest of these I encountered with a friend of mine. For Christmas I gave her the John Hughes Collection, consisting of Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Weird Science. The non-skippable, *can’t get to any menu and the STOP button is disabled, ads are for…
Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Weird Science.
The DVD is advertising the DVDs that I just purchased, including an ad for the movie that’s actually on the DVD that contains the ad.
The real bitch is you can’t get replacement visors from the dealer that don’t have these warnings all over them. bluethree, I’m with you on this one. I shouldn’t have to buy visor covers just so I don’t have to look at those things.
That is an excellent point and one that people should keep in mind before they bark baseless complaints.
Is there a law forcing DVD manufacturers to not be able to skip the FBI warning? It’d be a nice selling point to be able to skip anything.
It’s not a law but a licensing spec. If you want avoid being sued, you make sure the DVD players you make are made under license. A couple of the key “features” of the license are not skipping the first track and paying attention to region codes.
Now, “for testing purposes”, the manufacturers will sometimes have ways to bypass those by punching certain remote buttons (or you can even flash the firmware). There are also sometimes “mistakes” made. “Oops! How about that, we sold a million machines that skip the FBI warning. Gosh, we are so sorry!”
However, putting in ads for a “soon to be released” movie stinks. They need to think in terms of years down the road. You want to watch your DVD for the 20th time and the movies in the ads are all long forgotten. Who wants to sit thru that? Ticking off consumers never works in the long run. But you have to let them know you’re ticked.
When I bought my motorcycle, there were no less than 8 warning labels plastered all over the bike. Where’s the waiver I can sign for the “decal delete” option that says I won’t hold Suzuki responsible if my windshield is dirty? Yes, one of these labels was there to tell me to keep the windshield clean. :rolleyes: I had to spend the better part of an hour helping them “fall off”.
Would it be better to just have the warning on the cover of the DVD case, it takes ten minutes to open it anyway give us something to read while we rip and tear it open. As for the previews, they are better off, and in moments of boredom I have watched them when they are a selection on the main menu.
The Rhino DVDs have a picture of J. Edgar Hoover in one corner. While you read the FBI warnming, music plays, and sonmeone draws glasses, a moustache, and a beard on Hoover.
If you have to watch the damned warning, at least they make it entertaining.
Everybody hates the FBI warning. In “Amazon Women On The Moon” there’s a sketch called “Video Pirates”. Pirates sailing the open seas looking to steal video from passing ships. So they find one, and kill the crew and break into the cargo boxes of video masters. The head pirate guy has a look at them and exclaims, “Alright, boys, Make all the illegal copies you want!” Then he takes out a tape and puts it in the player. The FBI warning comes on. And in the greatest mocking voice you can imagine, he says “I’m soooooooooo scared!!!” and they all have a great laugh.
MY DVD player will make you whatch the fbi warning but I’ve always been able to super fast foward through the comercials. (x60) Then it automaticaly stops at the main menu.
And, of course, I always do that when that comes on the screen, much to the annoyance of my friends. 
Those of us who watch DVDs on our PCs can download some software hacks which allow us to get around the FBI warning, region coding, etc., and the warnings, etc. are becoming so annoying that I’m planning on going the whole “media PC” route some day (with some kind of big honkin’ monitor) just so I don’t have to worry about it.
On the way there. A 5GB movie compresses to mp4 at 1GB at an acceptable quality level if you do multi-pass compression. Plus you have the benefit of none of those previews, warnings, and other obligatory stuff you’re forced to look at. Strictly speaking it’s probably illegal in the United States, but as long as you don’t share you’re not hurting anyone, then you’re unlikely to be prosecuted (but I’m not your lawyer giving you advice, blah blah blah).
Oh, you don’t want to put your movies at risk, so unless you want to do backups, do a RAID array and keep an eye on your RAID status. As tempting as having 600GB of disk space is, the security of having “only” 300GB in a RAID is much nicer. And heck, that’s a whole lot of movies.
Oh, I’m not picky about deleted scenes and all those bonus crap – unless you want to do all the edits manually, the automatic rippers won’t get those for you. Since I know Han Solo shot first and the E.T. agents had guns, I don’t sweat it - YMMV.
Why would it be illegal? As long as A) You’re not selling or giving out copies of the movie, and B) you own the original from which the copies/shrunk version was made, why should they care? And what rights would they have to enforce things otherwise?
It just seems to me that if you bought it, you should be able to view it however you like, whether you’re playing the original movie on your DVD player or playing a shrunk copy on your PDA/media viewer?
Of course, even if it is technically disallowed – bugger 'em. My entertainment, my way.