Animated Menus, I can't stand them but when they preview clips they are unbelievable! (1 Viewer)

[Jerry AZ]

Just don't make me wait too long, and don't spoil ANYTHING... I swear some people in the movie industry just don't understand anything about movies.. to include a spoiler in the DVD menu or on the cover of the damn movie is such a braindead move...

I guess they all figure that everyone has already gone to see their masterpiece in the theaters.

 

[Dave Mack]

Keep the menus, fine . Just ALLOW us to skip them and not pop up that damn Ghostbuster, no-no icon.
D

 

[Jeff]

Sorry if this has been mentioned already but with many DVD's, once the disc starts up, press stop and then press play. The movie will start right away.

Jeff

 

[Philip Hamm]

The >>| button usually skips animated menus. I freaking hate them when they're drawn out and spoil the film. I like some of them, the aforementioned Holy Grail menu is great.

 

[Cliff B]

MaxY; hey friend, you should take a chill pill. I don't think anybody here is trying to take this to a personal level so why are you taking it that way? We're all friends here, right?
BTW: I really dig animated menus. As long as they don't give anything away, I'm totally into them. If I don't feel like watching them, I use that time to get some refreshments before the movie starts.
Simple, huh?

 

[Matthew Todd]

I thought I'd just throw this out for anyone who might like to know: If you are using an HTPC, there is a software player (Theatertek) that will let you program the disc to start up where you like -- skip the menus)

Matt

 

[MaxY]

Cliff,

It is not that I am against people that prefer animated menus. As I said before you are free to have a preferance.

The thing that gets to me is when people act like the people that are not in to these overblown menus should go back to laser or VHS. The above post actually said exactly that.

Yes many animated menus can be halted through various ways. It often depends on who made the disc and who did the menu.

Somtimes hitting the menu button works, sometimes the chapeter forward or fast can buttons work, sometimes the stop button works. Often time none of these work and then there is the Van Ling tid bit that Ron Shared with us in a debate about this on Home Theater Talk and that is on TPM if you push 1 during the animation it will skip to menu section.

It is too much. If a DVD is going to have these overblown menus there needs to be a way of skipping them and it should be the same way from disc to disc.

I am sick and tired of putting in a movie I have never seen before and learning too much from the menu.

Now I don't mind a tastefully done menu with some animation as long as it is not overly loud, doesn't spoil anything, and allows instant control access with out substantial delays between screens when navigating the menu. New Line does some very nice menus that meet those requirements.

The worst abomination of a Menu is The Abyss SE. Everything is so freaking slow and overly drawn out.

Max

Max

 

[Philip Hamm]

The real key is does the menu serve the content. On the Monty Python and the Holy Grail SE disc, there is funny Terry Gilliam style animation for the menu. It is funny and serves the content of the disc. On many discs, the animated menu does nothing but prove that the DVD producer can create really neato menus. Just about any early Van Ling qualifies (but he's getting better - the TPM menus are fantastic).
Animation isn't the only problem; the T2 menus are fantastically terrible, particularly if you want to actually watch the documentary. It is split into a million little 20 second bytes that are all accessed by a main menu. You spend more time selecting and clicking than actually watching content. That's a major problem. Many Disney menus are terrible also.
The DVD producers are in many cases more interested in making a new DVD player owner say "Gee Whiz!" than they are interested in truly serving the content.

 

[John P Grosskopf]

Sorry if this has been mentioned already but with many DVD's, once the disc starts up, press stop and then press play. The movie will start right away.

With a lot of discs this is not the case, and also some players do allow the skipping and others do not, meaning firmware has a play in this as well.

My Toshiba will let me skip the intros on some discs that my Daewoo will not.

On all of my players, region 0 and region 3 discs from Universe Laser will not allow me to skip the copyright warning that cycles through several languages perfor it will aloow the menu or movie to play. If you hit stop and play again before the warning is completed, it starts over on every one of my players! The only way to get past it is to let it go through all the way. This can take over a minute with some discs.

Also, some firmwares do really quirky things. The KLH low-end player I bought for my nephews to watch Disney flicks allows you to cycle through multi-angle content that I can't with my higher-end players. For example, when I pop in Phantom Menace, during the opening crawl the angle icon appears (which cannot be diabled by the way) I can hit the angle key to switch to a Spanish version of the crawl. On my Toshiba I couldn't do this if I wanted to, even if I have the icon set to come on automatically (which it doesn't on this title). Disney discs with multiple languages do the same with the KLH, as do some discs from Ancho Bay which use different angles to play a widescreen or P&S versions of films that share the same DD soundtrack.