Will Disney Pixar do a recall on STD Ratatouille?? (1 Viewer)

[widescreenforever]

Have had time lately to investigate the menu and extras of Disney Pixar's Ratatouille (upc 786936727173) this past week, and have discovered an infuriating problem with the menu and its audio setting. The movie itself defaults to Dolby surround 2.0 and you have to manually navigate thru the menu settings to Languages and then click on the top audio setting of 5.1 where the second line down (Dolby surround 2.0) is highlighted with a flag for navigational purposes. I Believe this is an authoring problem (actual computer presetup done back late last summer) when the disc ID was put together.

The Bluray edition does not have this authoring problem.

Will Disney Pixar do a recall and give us a new reissued disc?? Step up to the plate like MCA Universal and Warner's has done in the past and admit there is a mistake with this DVD and it is to be re authored and re distributed... ??

Could enough of us (3.86 million units for first week sales) get a petition going?

 

[Shawn.F]

I think you could probably just call Buena Vista Home Video's Customer Service (1-800-723-4763) and see if they can help you out. Their customer service is one of the best I have dealt with to date.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

Is the problem simply that the disc defaults to 2.0 and one must manually select 5.1 in the setup menu? While this is fairly rare these days many early dvd releases defaulted to the 2.0 thrack and did require manual selection in the setup menu to get 5.1 rather than 2.0 sound so it's not unheard of.

 

[widescreenforever]

99% of titles always default to the best audio,, and the Best audio in this case is actually 6.1 or 5.1 ES.. Can't see why they would want to hide this audio within the menu for you to find and activate., and as well you can't change the audio on the fly thru the remote, you must manually go to menu and then navigate thru the icons to the right department in order to open this up.. Most if not not all couldn't be bothered.. If the sound is there on the TV monitor that's good enough.., But for for me.. This isn't good enough.

There has been recalls in the past for 'little' things.. i.e. like the wrong dolby surround for the 1978 Superman movie.. ( remember that big uproar?).. Warners came thru like troopers and rectified the problem with a massive mail in replacement program.

 

[mike kaminski]

This is such a minor problem that I seriously doubt theres any hope of a recall. Its not like the 5.1 soundtrack is missing, you just have to push a button to select it. It might even be intentional design, since the default of 2.0 is not in itself an authoring problem, just inconsistent with how most contemporary DVD are designed.

 

[TravisR]

Exactly. There's no hope for a recall nearly six months after release (especially when there isn't a real problem).

 

[Lee Bombard]

If i remember correctly all of the Pixar DVD titles have done this...

 

[Patrick.C]

Cars definitely has this same issue.

 

[Eric Huffstutler]

I am with the others here. Normally, especially in early DVD days, DTS was an "option" and were even sold as a different DVD discs because not all players and/or televisions could handle this sound option. Whatever was the original sound default - 2.0 or 5.1 then change it if you like. What's the big deal with choosing options before playing. That is why they have AUDIO menus!

Eric

 

[DaveMcS]

+1

 

[Lord Dalek]

For a second there, I thought you had contracted an actual STD just from watching Ratatouille.

 

[GlennH]

Yes, it's an annoyance, but not an issue requiring a recall. More troublesome to me is the part about not being able to change the soundtrack on the fly with the "Audio" button. I hate when they carelessly author discs to not make use of the convenience features that the format provides. Of course, forced trailers are even worse than that.

 

[Barry_B_B]

I gave up trusting the automatic selection long ago and have just made it a habit of going into the menu for 6.1 or 5.1 where available; I'd rather not have any surprises when the movie is rolling

 

[Malcolm Cleugh]

Was more serious with the UK release of Phantom of the Opera (film musical version) from EiV.
This defaulted to DTS so if you did not have a DTS decoder it played the film with no sound. Must have had lots of faulty returns as remember EiV never recalled or corrected this and just provided stickers to retailers to attach to the front of the plastic case asking you to switch audio if you wanted DD. New pressings had warning added.
They even reused the same "faulty" master in the boxset with CD soundtrack which came out a year or so later.

 

[PaulDA]

I suspect that Disney DVDs (SD DVDs anyway) get used in more non-HT situations than any others and so a 2.0 default setting is not so surprising.

I always check as I try to select 2.0 when available for the living room setup (DVD player to TV--still the OVERWHELMINGLY dominant setup for most people, BTW) and 5.1 in the HT.

FWIW, a lot of my HD DVDs that have Tru-HD soundtracks default to DD+, so I always check there as well.

I doubt this constitutes a "recall worthy" issue.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

It's not a defect - it's a choice. Not even remotely a "recallable" issue...

 

[widescreenforever]

well if it is a choice,, it is a pretty poor choice , and I still say it was a mistake, and, true, it doesn't warrant a recall, - but perhaps the one person who would be in charge of this dept will take heed for future releases and pay more attention to proper authoring of audio defaults., just as all the other studios do for their ' fine DVD home products ' ... .

 

[mike kaminski]

Even if it was a mistake, you can't expect a company to spend thousands and thousands of dollars and set up an entire new pressing just because the odd person is too lazy to press a button in the automatically-loading menu. Is getting a petition really less work than that?

But it might be worth to write to them and ask that they use 5.1 defaults in the future. I have a feeling, as others have stated, that the Disney disks do this because they are family-targeted.

 

[Craig Beam]

A mistake is an error. Is there something in the DVD spec that requires a DVD to default to 5.1? Hint: the answer starts with an "n." This is NOT a mistake. Disney Pixar consistently puts out stellar product, for which they should be applauded.

Christ, push the "audio" button on your remote if you're too lazy to actually go into the audio options menu.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

I've long been in the habit of checking what the audio options are in the setup menu before starting a movie--usually it's easier than trying to decipher the audio options printed on the back of the case.