Budget Universal discs: No Menus? (1 Viewer)

[ChristopherDAC]

I've got LDs with no FBI warning at all!
Though I also have some with an FBI warning and the Japanese equivalent...

 

[JeremySt]

My favorite kind of menu.... any of the 2nd discs to the Lord of The Rings EE trilogy. You pop it in and immediatly you get a black screen with white text, listing all the playback options. Perfect. Big animated menus suck.

Ive had experience with some DVD players that have hidden navigation modes in their setup menus. Enabeling them will allow most discs to jump straight to to Title 1, Chapter 1. I like that feature. I wish more players had this.

 

[Anthony Neilson]

Eric, I'm with you all the way. I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek in my earlier post but I totally agree with you that it's the start of a slippery slope.

A company drops a menu on a budget title for one reason only ; to increase their profit margin. Companies exist SOLELY to make profit, folks ! They're not trying to make your DVD viewing more streamlined. If nobody complains about it, you can bet that sooner or later they'll start to drop them from their non-budget releases too. That's what they did with inserts ; they were booklets to begin with, remember ? Then they became single sheet chapter listings. Now they're all but gone.

No big loss, ok - and menus won't be a loss to some of you either. Then the stills sections will go, then the trailers. Then the commentaries, then the documentaries.
The adverts will increase, though, and the trailers for other movies. You won't have a menu, remember, so they'll be no chance of navigating past them.

Special editions as such will be sold at a high price "for the connossieur" or for those willing to take the plunge into Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. And once the "connossieurs" have started crossing over, what'll be the point in remastering films or selling them in their OAR ?

Here's the simple rule : if a company can increase its profit margin, THEN IT WILL. At the moment you don't care about what they're taking away. You may indulge your film-snobbishness and feel morally superior that, for you, "only the film matters" (thereby implying that it doesn't matter to the likes of me and Eric) but when they start to take away the things YOU love about DVD, it'll be too late. Some cheapjack company will be making all the profits and the rival studios will have sacked all these "film buffs" in their departments who've been increasing their overheads.

You think it can't happen ? You're naive. It's started. That's what this thread is about.

 

[John Hodson]

And I'm sincerely sorry for harking back to the point (and honestly I do appreciate it's menus we are talking about - or rather the lack of them) for which I received slapped legs way back, but the other 'cheapjack' qualities that Anthony fears are already a feature of the 'Studio Selections' series which this thread is focusing on - films presented not in OAR, but open-matte, or, horror, p&s...

 

[FrancisP]

I so agree with you. Standing up for extras is not whining.
If one company is able to do it then it spreads. Today ist Universal then it is someone else. Eventually quality companies like Warner follow suit.

It's sad that there are companies out there like Anchor Bay and Image Entertainment that can produce quality products but have no library of films. On the other hand, you have Universal that has a huge library, but is interested in only
the almighty buck rather than putting a quality product.
Compare the treatment the Xena series got at Anchor Bay vs the treatment Night Gallery got at Universal. The Xena series was well worth the price while Night Gallery was overpriced like most of Universal's product.

For example, I got Colossus: The Forbin Project off a movie channel. The Universal release gave me the same fullscreen
version that I had. No extras mean nothing I didn't have
so I passed on buying it. On the other hand, I bought Battlestar Galactica because of the extras. If they are willing to put extra effort into it, I am willing to pay extra.

 

[Terry H]

Well said. The next step, which has already happened in Canada, is unskippable product commercials. Yes, commercials on dvd. Brought to you by Universal Studios/Alliance Atlantis Video. You gotta love Universal. They're always looking for new ways to stick it to you.