What DVD trends are ticking you off lately? (1 Viewer)

[Casey Trowbridg]

Well, you're not alone, I do this also, so I guess I'm weird as well.

I agree with the slip cover and box cover being the same, in terms of the art work, seriously what's the point of the slip cover if it has exactly the same picture as what's on the package itself? Just something else we could do without.

Putting a trailor on a DVD, even though the product in the trailor is really hard to connect to the DVD itself. A trailor for Bill Cosby: Himself, appears on the In Living Color Season 2 DVD. Oh, and if you are going to do this don't advertise it as a special feature, its really not all that special to me.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

Nonsense- If I watch a French movie for example with English subtitles, and the movie happens to have its own onscreen text, I can certainly live with seeing that along with the English translation on top of it. Taking out the original text from the film prints punishes those who want to see the film in its native language, and I won't knowingly buy discs that do that.
A perfect example of why subtitles should not be taken off of the prints was in the third Austin Powers movie- thankfully they left the DVD as-is, but if you've seen the movie you'll know why it would have been ruined if they'd been replaced with player-generated subs!
I agree about the studio intro replacements- I don't buy many United Artists titles because they replaced the old openings with the new one. I'm glad Paramount leaves the old ones on their movies, I know they're not "A Gulf+Western Company" anymore, but they were when the film came out!
Added- new trend I hate is non-shrinkwrapped slipcovers!! Most stores stick their price tags on them plus they tend to get banged up on the shelves after a while, so instead of buying at the place that has it at the lowest price I have to seek out a place that doesn't use price tags or order online.
Add to that the "exclusive" bonus discs, mostly from Best Buy- that seems REALLY unfair to the other retailers, plus it makes me run out and get ones that have them quickly before they're gone (but of course, that's probably what they want me to do).

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I agree with you there, I don't know how I managed to forget that one in my original post. I don't mind player generated subs on foreign films, but the player subs that replace short subtitled scenes or titles really bug me. Compare the excellent Criterion "Traffic" to the barebones disc - the Criterion has all of the burned-in subs, the barebones is player generated.

Also, put me on the list of people who sometimes listen to DVD commentaries late at night. I usually just set the TV on sleep, but I still agree that menus should not use annoying 30 second clips repeated over and over.

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Now, as far as my Star Wars comments go... allow me to clarify what I meant.

A restoration, as I'm lead to understand the term, involves returning a film to its original state. At the end of the restoration, it should be possible to make new prints that resemble, as closely as possible, the film's original release, or in certain cases, a director's cut.

I believe I was correct in stating that Star Wars has not been restored, for the following reasons:

a) The intent was not to return the film to its 1977 release version. "Restore" implies that you are taking something and putting it back to being the way it was. Right, wrong or indifferent, the version of Star Wars out now is not the version that premiered in 1977, and no attempt was made to put the film back that way.

b) New film elements have not been created. New preservation elements have not been created. There are no new film prints of this version. As far as its been reported, the actual negatives were not touched for this release.

For the DVD, which does look great, digital files were manipulated to remove dirt, dust, scratches, etc. Special effects were redone, new material was inserted, some material was removed. It's a new version of the film, and it's a version prepared especially for this DVD release. That doesn't mean that it's been restored.

For example, the North By Northwest DVD looks great. But North By Northwest was not restored. The actual film elements are in bad shape, with the yellow layer basically gone. I would consider the DVD to be "cleaned-up" as it does look fantastic at home, but there was nothing done in the film realm to return North By Northwest to its former glory.

On the other hand, I would consider Vertigo, Spartacus, and Lawrence Of Arabia, to name a few, to be films that have actually been restored. Over the years, footage from those films had been lost or deleted, the film elements were battered, and before the restoration work was done, it was not possible to theatrically screen any of those films as they were originally intended. The restoration involved a massive search to find all of the best material that could be used to put back whatever had been cut, and to present the film with the best possible picture and audio, while remaining true to what the filmmakers wanted to accomplish. You can now see prints of those films in theaters, and preservation elements have been made so future generations can enjoy the films. That, to me, is a restoration.

Why do I object to the misuse of these terms? Because I want to know exactly what it is I'm getting when I buy a DVD. It's starting to seem that every time a catalog title is issued that it's labeled as "Restored", when in fact, the DVD just presents the film as its always been, or when work has been done to make the film look a certain way on DVD, but work has not been done on the film itself.

I'm not anti-digital. Digital technology can be enormously beneficial to film restoration, doing things that photochemical processes might not be able to do. Sometimes digital is the way to go, sometimes it's not. If, at the end of a digital restoration, new film elements are created that are intended to replicate the original release as closely as possible, I'd consider that a restoration. Scanning a battered film onto a computer, giving it a face-lift, and then putting it on DVD is not a restoration if it's not possible to present the film as originally presented - and to me, part of that includes being able to screen the film theatrically, on film.

OK, I'm gonna get off my soapbox and return to sitting in the corner with a dunce cap on. Hopefully, no one was bored to death. I'd feel really bad if someone died from reading my posts.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Josh, you are soooo correct. Restored paintings are another example. The restorers try to make it look like it did when it was first finished by the artist.

Glenn

 

[Paul D G]

I won't bother to repeat common or longstanding gripes other than to agree with useless slipcases (I used to hold on to these, now I just toss them in the recycle bin) and non-timecoded features. Drives me nuts.

One I have not seen mentioned yet is lengthy featurettes without any chapter points. For example, I was watching one of the Dawn of the Dead docu's and had to stop it in the middle. Didn't get back to it for a day or two and my wife had since put another disc in. Now I have to FAST FORWARD and try and find the point I stopped. And with this gripe, it actually becomes a bigger pain the deeper into the feature you were when you stopped!

Just stick a chapter stop in every 5 or 10 mins. I don't need it cleanly divided up!

-paul