Long Menus-- We Don't Want Them! (1 Viewer)

[Haggai]

I don't like long, forced menus either, but I'll majorly dissent on Van Ling, I think his Star Wars menus are amazing. When the disc first loads up, you can skip the intro if you want, or let it play through. He strikes a great balance between cool design and not treading into over-kill with forced pyrotechnics.

 

[CaptDS9E]

I long for the days when DVD was still a niche item. All we wanted was studios to release dvd's, and for movies to be released. Not care about what case they came in, long menus or how crappy cover art was

capt

 

[Pat Frank]

Glad to hear so many agree!

 

[Leo Kerr]

Just because we're flaming against long menu introductions doesn't mean we're against motion menus - where the buttons are active from the first frame!

Although I just ran into, for the very first time, something that I've heard about but, thankfully, never encountered before: forced previews where only fast search is allowed.

Leo

 

[Sean Laughter]

The menu I absolutely despise is the menu for the extras disc on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhban. It's all set up like a game, with names of the castle for different areas of the disc, with no "real-world" terminology to clue you on what's actually there. Apparently there are even trailers on the disc, but I have yet to find them after fruitlessly playing through one of the quiz games, thinking that was how I was supposed to get to them. Or maybe they're buried somewhere in that completely worthless "tour of the candy shop" bit.

 

[AnthonyC]

Something on Paramount discs that I fortunately haven't seen in a while is a screen before the Menu comes up that gives you the option of watching previews or going to the main menu. While I'm glad there aren't forced trailers, how many people are actually going to go press Previews? It's just an extra button you have to press.

 

[Louis C]

Forced trailers are the most disturbing "development"

Shrek 2 anyone? GRRRRRRR

...and they know we hate it, but not enough to boycott purchase. Bastards.

 

[Bob-R]

I agree with the people who say, let the studios make all of the fancy motion menus they want, just allow us to skip it when we do not want to see it, along with the forced trailers and unusally long FBI warnings, etc. I think that's the way it should be, always.

I love fancy motion menus.

 

[Tom Brennan]

I also hate clicking on "Play Movie" and then I have to sit through studio logos and THX trailers and other junk. I clicked "Play Movie" now just play the friggin' movie! The trick is to go into the chapter selection and just pick the first chapter. It skips all that junk. Ideally though, I'd just like to put the disc in and have it start. Thankfully, my DVD player has an "Auto Play" feature. It looks for the longest title and then just plays that. No menus, no nothing. It's perfect!

 

[Tarkin The Ewok]

I don't know how your players operate, but I can just hit Stop as soon as I see anything (a warning, trailer, menu, whatever). Then, I hit Play, and the movie starts right up with no fuss. If I don't want the default version of the movie, I can hit Menu instead of Play and change what I need to change.

I still don't like menu TRANSITIONS that take a long time and are unskippable, but the technique above has saved me a lot of time and aggravation.

The THX logo is almost always skippable, and the studio logos are part of the film, so they don't bother me at all.

 

[Mark Maltais]

Motion menus are fine as long as you can hit "play movie" right away. Example of a long ass menu comes to mind...x-men!!

Everytime you select a different part of the menu ya gotta wait for the animation to be over before you get your choices! WTF is up with that...I WANT A QUICK CHOICE. Have the animation on the background as long as you can still select your choices while it's going on. I've seen menu's that are 500mb in size, then they say there is no room for DTS??? MORONS

 

[JohnAP]

I agree. The annoyance of forced trailers goes without saying, but long menus are almost as bad. I don't want to watch the same 10 second animation or clip from the movie every time I click on a certain item on the menu. Simple, fast menus should be the way to go, despite whatever cool, flashy thing the designers come up with for them.

 

[David Allen]

"Shrek 2 anyone? GRRRRRRR"

Yeah, I have no desire to go see "Madagascar" now. That "teaser" was like a frickin' featurette!! DVDs are so full of SPAM it's getting disgusting. Just charge me a couple of bucks more and leave off the ads! And while you're at it, leave out the damn coupons in the case.

Trailers always give a home video release that "dated" feeling, like watching an old VHS of a broadcast, and laughing at the commercials. That was one of the things I hated about VHS. Who would've thought that with DVD, we'd still be fast forwarding to get to the main attraction.

After they give you their money, don't insult your customers- isn't that common sense? Give the ads to the $4.88 Walmart buyers, and leave them off for the rest of us who will gladly pay $15 or more.

 

[Michael Martin]

Simply pressing "play" isn't always a viable solution if you want to choose a different set up option (audio, subtitles, etc.) that what is default. And some DVD's don't accept audio set up changes done on the fly.

We shouldn't have to work to watch the movie as we want to.

As cool as motion menus are, they're simply annoying after the first time. I recently watched the newest version of The Time Machine at a friend's house, and was appalled by how long I had to wait to get from menu screen to menu screen.

 

[Brett_B]

There are 2 DVDs that I own that annoy the hell out of me when I try to go to the main menu when first loading the disc. They are Harry Potter: The Sorcerer's Stone & Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets. Now THOSE are some longa@@ menus.

I just did a little "check" on this and it takes 42 seconds for HP: SS from the time the first graphic comes up until I can finally choose an option. It took 51 seconds for COS.

 

[MarkHastings]

Agreed. Just allow me to get to the movie.

And why do they need all of these warnings? The warnings about commentaries are awful (especially when you have to see them in English and THEN in French ). I mean, once is ok, but EVERY time I watch the movie? COME ON!

It sucks that there are so many "sue-happy" people out there that they have to ruin our DVD viewing enjoyment by all these 'upfront' disclaimers.

Why can't they figure out a way to put all this stuff on a sheet of paper and insert it into every DVD case? Then, those of us who could care less about suing the studio, could just chuck it and be done with it.

END OF FREAKIN' STORY!

 

[Dave_P.]

Yep, I hate long menus too. (plus no we're starting to get the commentary disclaimers in multiple languauges as well ) I love it when I throw Beetlejuice in my player and the movie starts playing right off the bat. Ah, fond memories.

 

[ElevSkyMovie]

I made backups of all our children's dvds, not just because they tend to get scratched up (they do) but because of the forced trailers and long menus.

Now, when we travel, I can just put in one of the dvds I copied and press play. The movie starts right up and I can head down the highway and think about other things.

I've been tempted to copy some of my dvds for the same reasons, but most of mine are long enough that they would have to be split onto 2 discs. It's not that hard, but it is more of a pain than making a copy of a movie that will fit on one dvdr.

 

[Mark Maltais]

Yeah I forgot about those kids things. The lion king is horrible for that..ya gotta listen to timone (is it timone??) yap for like 5 *&^#ing minutes before even getting to the menu THEN you still have to select your options. When driving down the highway I have to stop the car just to load that thing up so my daughter can watch it!! WTF!!!

 

[Marko Berg]

I'm somewhere between Steve Christou and the rest of the people in this thread: I enjoy beautifully done long menus, but I would like the option to skip them if I want to.

My proposed solution to get the best of both worlds: Ideally all new HD format titles would conform to a standard where a user could specify in the player's setup menu that motion menus and/or menu transitions should be shown every time, only the first time a disc is inserted (disc's unique ID is not stored in the player's memory yet), or never. If the user chooses to bypass motion menus or transitions, or both, only a static menu is shown.

My current DVD player remembers the last few dozen discs it has played and upon inserting a disc, if it detects I did not finish watching the movie, asks me if I want to return to the exact spot where I pressed Stop the last time the disc was played. I'm sure every HD disc is going to carry a unique ID like CDs and current DVDs do, so this should be easy to implement. Just make sure HD players contain enough memory to allow the disc-specific setting to be retained no matter how many titles the user might own, and the problem is solved.