Forcing DVDs to skip the garbage... (1 Viewer)

Hi All-

So my wife starts going off on DVDs the other day. We rent a movie, and its forcing us to watch a bunch of crummy trailers we didnt care about. Wont let me go to the menu, or skip the stuff. The evil X shows me the DVD wont allow it! And so my Wife starts tearing into the DVDs and how VHS is so much better because the VCR doesnt protest when you wanna fast forward...

And it got me to thinking. The "forced marketing" techniques that the DVD houses use now, they have to be undermineable. Is there any way to get ones DVD player "unlocked" so that it always obeys your commands, regardless of the back end menu coding on the DVD itself?

Not sure if this is the best forum for this topic- if not mods, throw the topic where it needs to be or let me know where it should be, and I shall repost accordingly.

Very interested to hear everyones thoughts on this. I figure we get enough commercialism crammed down our throats on every other possible venue, my HT setup should be pure. Idealistic, well maybe.

EricT

Did you go to block buster? I find that only some DVDs from BB are like that.

Moving this thread to HT Software, which is where all DVD discussions belong.

It might help if you identified specific titles and also your player. On my Panasonic H1000, I have yet to encounter a title where the introductory material couldn't be skipped by either the fast forward or chapter skip buttons.

M.

Related to this: is there a quality (i.e., not Apex or the like) DVD player out there that allows you to "break the rules"?

What I mean by this is that the player -- either out of the box, or programmed through a special menu, etc. -- that will never lock out buttons? I want to be able to pop in Lost In Translation (or any new Universal) and be able to press the "menu" button to skip those damned trailers (currently, you're forced to hold fast-forward). Or, some discs -- moronically -- don't allow you to change soundtracks on the fly (they force you to stop the movie and go to the audio menu). I hate that. I want to be free...

Any players like this?

There's software for software players that does this. For stand-alone players, I've heard you can load the disc, and hit Stop as soon as it loads, then press the Menu button and the Main Menu should come up.

As PaulP said, software such as DVD Region Free which runs in the background of your computer also "disables User Prohibitions," allowing you to skip all that junk.

And I understand that Windows XP Media Center at least TRIES to have a button on the remote that takes one directly to a DVD's menu. I'm not sure it works on all discs, but the button is there.

Sad but true: some DVDs actually disable the stop button until all of the FBI warning / fancy-schmacy menu animations are finished. Plus, wouldn't really help with the disabled on-the-fly-changing of audio tracks...

Friend of mine bought an Apex in the late 90s that could do what I wanted. Said he downloaded and burned a CD-R with some kind of program on it that would disable the prohibitions.

Not anymore. New discs with forced trailers disable all features but fast forward. Screw these. I'm seriously considering stopping buying dvds, there should be no forced trailers on purchased discs.

As Will pointed out, DVD Region Free is a great tool for software players. If you do most of your watching on a PC, definitely get this thing.

I don't know if all the Toshiba DVD players have this feature, but the SD-3900 has an "AUTO PLAY" option that skips every menu and advertisement. It takes a couple of extra seconds to load, but the first thing you'll see when putting in a DVD is the movie and the movie only!

For me, this was worth the price of the player alone (which also plays other regions and PAL too -- and does it all in a crisp progressive picture as well!).

I've encountered this a lot recently myself. I swear if I see the WWE PSA that talks about how dangerous it is and that I shouldn't try it at home one more time, I'm going to try it at home. It can not be skipped using my player, I've seen this thing like 6 times in the past 2 weeks no fast forwarding no chapter skips nothing. I'll promsie not to try it at home if they promise to let me skip the damn PSA!

Ok, I'm done venting now.

maybe our Aussie DVD players dont have this kind of issue. i have a large collection of R1 discs, and many of them purchased over the last year or so have trailers and crud at the start: but i can ALWAYS hit the MENU button to go straight to the menu. Admittedly, i often watch the trailers (like the Hellboy one at the start of Once Upon a Time In Mexico) just to see whats on these days.....

still, it'd be nice if you get a few trailers at the start, then crank straight into the film like it would if you were at the cinema....that'd be how i'd do it, but make sure this function could be circumvented for those who do not wish so......

Fast forwarding trailers shouldn't take more than 2 or 3 seconds if your DVD player has multiple FF speeds. I just hit the FF button a few times bringing the speed up to 100x and the main menu is there very quickly.

Anybody care to post some titles of such troublesome DVD's that some of us could bring to a store to try out a DVD player's skip capability / incapability before buying that player?

Video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm

"Lost in Translation" is the only one that I remember noticing.

Lost in Translation, The Hulk.

Just about every Universal release from the past 6 months has the forced trailers. They are the only major studio stuffing this stuff down the consumer's throat.

As Jeremy says above, you can fast-forward just as well with DVD as VHS. I have discs that I cannot use the "skip" or "menu" buttons, but fast-forward works just fine.

DVD Region Free also has the opyion of going straight to the movie but I never check that, because I like menus for some reason, so it's set to go to the Main Menu on load.

My current DVD player has only one fast-forward speed, and I have to hold the button down the whole time.

Anyway, this is not the point. Other things can be locked off as well. Many Universal DVDs don't let you switch soundtracks with the "Audio" button (The Mexican is one example, I'm told). Forget comparing a 2.0 to a 5.1 mix on these discs, or briefly popping into the commentary track to see what's being said about a particular scene.

Essentially: we should have power over how we view our own discs.