What irritates you about DVDs? (1 Viewer)

[John Alderson]

Well, in addition to what's already been stated, here's something that absolutely befuddles me:

Movies that start playing if you leave it idle on the menu screen for a few minutes. Warner Bros. has been doing this lately. Check The Goonies, The Perfect Storm and Harry Potter.

Why would I want the movie to start playing if I haven't done anything for a few minutes (VERY few minutes, I'm talking here). I don't like coming back into the room to see the film 5 minutes over already. (Note: This is a different issue from movies that start playing automatically as soon as you put it in, which is something else that bugs me.)

 

[Dan Rudolph]

Release with no subtitles. My hearing's fine, but my furnace is very loud and I can barely hear the movie about half the time when watching in winter. Closed captioning is an okay substitute, but looks like crap compared to genuine subtitles and some titles don't even have that. Related peeve is companies that don't subtitle special features. Or include a subtitle track for all languages on the release.

 

[Kevin M]

Well, they do create new interpositives for most of their DVD transfers.

For the most part so do Fox & Universal (as well as applying the same digital clean-up that Paramount uses for all their DVD titles) yet they are somehow able to keep their prices reasonable even with their SE sets.
Paramount has used the same pricing model since the golden days of Laserdisc and they don't seem to want to adjust for DVD as every other Studio has...at least not as quickly, they have been slowly changing their pricing policy since the middle of this year. Not fast enough if you ask me.

 

[David Von Pein]

...security tags / wrapping ... it sometimes take ten, twenty minutes to open a package I bought! Often this "procedure" requires the delicate hands of a surgeon and the patience of a...well...something patient. Needless to say I possess neither.

I know the feeling here.
How about .... "Requiring the patience of all the DVD-less Star Wars [IV --> VI] fans around the globe."
)

 

[David Von Pein]

One bothersome item on DVD (for me, being color blind):
Not being able to tell which menu item is highlighted, due to very subtle hue differences in the highlighted area.
This is especially difficult when you've got just TWO choices on screen. Which one is the highlighted item; and which isn't?
A dilemma for we color-challenged DVD owners.
Who else has this difficulty? (I'm talking mainly about subtle shadings of different colors. Not necessarily bright, bold blues, reds, or yellows, which are discernable to even me.)

 

[Dave H]

What bugs me by FAR the most about DVDs are the motion menus. I hate having to wait several seconds for the "motion" to finish up doing whatever before I have actual access to select or jump to a scene.

 

[Vic_T]

Special Features with "mysterious" non descriptive titles. For instance, you click on a feature for "Non Descriptive Title" you don't know if you are getting a 2 minute preview or a 90 minute documentary. My wife is more irritated at this than I am, since I usually look into the discs we buy. But, she is right. There is no reason why you should have to research a disc to enjoy it. The Men In Black 2 disc is pretty bad at this. My wife enjoyed the movie, but was so frustrated at the confusing Special Feature menus that she gave up very quickly and no longer wishes to watch them. The titles themselves don't have to be changed, but they can have decriptive foot notes. "Title: a feature length documentary on the making up the film", the description in smaller letters under the title, of course.

And then, my addition, is longer documentaries without chaper stops. Very annoying.

 

[rbirk]

The two thing that bugs me most are:

Lack of English Subtitles (CC is not enough as many diaply devices do not support it).

Slow menus. Just take the Canadian extended version of Brotherhood of the Wolves as an example. It feels like minutes before you can select anything. Fed warnings etc also count here and is very annoying.

Ron

 

[Todd Robertson]

man, I can live with about 99% of the gripes here. what I cant deal with is sloppy manfacturing and phantom quality control teams. what good is any feature if the dvd is just gonna die in 5 years or less anyway? those with small collections may not notice or care about the problem, but those with larger investments will see it happen more often. no way to back them up for personal use is a huge downer.

 

[Todd Robertson]

man, I can live with about 99% of the gripes here. what I cant deal with is sloppy manfacturing and phantom quality control teams. what good is any feature if the dvd is just gonna die in 5 years or less anyway? those with small collections may not notice or care about the problem, but those with larger investments will see it happen more often. no way to back them up for personal use is a huge downer.

 

[Lanny_B]

I also wanted to add about DVD-Rom features:

Anything that I have to watch through a specific program (like InterActual or PCFriendly) bugs me, and usually bugs my computer. I'd love the extra stuff if it was just stuck on there in standard formats: .doc, .pdf, .jpg, .tif

I like using my own browser, image-viewer, and DVD player programs.

 

[Travis_W]

I guess all I have to say is what everyone else has already said but maybe I'll have something new.

1. The complete flooding of the market with seperate widescreen and full screen (Foolscreen is more like it) editions. I only bought my player for widescreen (not extras like some people) playability and now I have to sit by and watch the mainstream people make the studios pump out two different versions of every movie! At least we still get widescreen but Paramount is starting to offer seperate versions with all their titles this year, Warner already does it, Universal already does it. Fox and New Line are actually starting of author DVD 18 discs again just to have both versions available.
2. Animated Menus. It's great when you can hit next and they'll stop but when you hit the extras you get another animation.
3. FBI Warning Logo
4. Auto Trailers
5. Useless Supplements like HBO Making of crap and interactive games
6. No Star Wars (sorry, couldn't resist)

 

[ChrisKe]

I would really like to know why DVD authors don't make more use of the Pan and Scan on the fly for the great unwashed... Does this feature cause problems?

Also, for those not liking the unskippable warnings, trailers etc etc: At least some players can be modified to remove the user prohibition flag. This mod doesn't seem to be all that common but it can be done.

My (Australian) Sony has been modified for manual region set (for those pesky RCE disks) and both user prohibition and macrovision off - nice player as well.

 

[Louis C]

What bugs me by FAR the most about DVDs are the motion menus. I hate having to wait several seconds for the "motion" to finish up doing whatever before I have actual access to select or jump to a scene.

I think the industry will catch on to this irritation. I noticed on Ice Age the menu selections are active while most of the menu animation is playing.

 

[Rob Lutter]

The only quibble I have is when Japanese animation DVDs default to the english track w/o subtitles. It is a bitch for every disc of a series to reselect these features each time you want to watch 1 episode.

Long menus are fine as long as they are skippable (you can press 'next chapter' and go directly to the menu).

I also wish that DVDs had some sort of plastic cartridge to keep dirty fingers off of them (I believe preliminary shots of blue-ray HD-DVD had this, and I thought it was a GREAT idea)... I am always worried that someone is going to ruin one of my discs in making that LONG trip from the case to the player.

 

[Sanjay Gupta]

The No. 1 irritant about the DVD technology has got to be the disabling of player controls. This something that ought to be illegal, actually I would not be surprised if this actually was illegal. Some company should make a player that does nto allow this, I would be the first to buy such a player.

Sanjay

 

[He@ther]

1. Snapper cases are one of my biggest pet peeves. Stupid B...

2. DVDs that have absolutely NO special features. Matilda is the only one I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are others.

3. I also don't like it when DVDs don't have a Spanish language track. Not that I have an ounce of Hispanic blood in me or anything, but I'm in Spanish at school, so I find it quite entertaining to watch DVDs in Spanish with the English subtitles turned on, hehe. :: is a geek ::

 

[David Rogers]

* Any forced play material that's pre-menu. Discs should pop immediately to the menu, where a play option should be a single click to make it play the movie in your desired format (widescreen).

Disney always sucks about this, they believe their consumers worship The Mouse and adore any chance to see every possible thing they want to plug before very reluctantly letting you watch the content you paid for on the disc. Monsters Inc has I believe seven clicks (next button on remote) to skip the ads for I forget which crap they're plugging that I'll never buy, then you click next again to cancel the menu animation, then you click play and wait some more, and finally you can click "widescreen" to make the !@^@$#&%!@#$%!#% f!@$%@1ing movie play! It is literally 30secs each time, waiting on the disc and clicking, waiting and clicking, to watch the !^@#$^%!$5 movie. /rude Disney

* Animated menus that make you stand there waiting before you can click to make it play.

Star Wars discs are the good and bad of irritating menus. They're gorgeous menus, and have three options so they change as you watch it over time. But they take *FOR F1%!@#$ EVER* to load up, then longer to work through. It's *faster* to push play and then hammer Next on the remote to find a scene in the middle or end of the movie than it is to use the "helpfully provided" chapter stop menu. /rude Ling

* Discs that play anything *other* than the movie when you click "play movie".

Universal has been really really bad about this. Fast and the Furious has like four clips that run between "play" and "the movie", including a HABO announcement. It's unbelievable. Quick tip for folks; use the chapter stop menu to start playing the film from Chapter 1 to avoid this crap. /rude Universal

Honestly, I'm really quite easy to please. Disc with excellent transfer and DD sound. Extras as available. Movie should play from one click on menu, menu should load right up without delay.

For that, I'll pay US$20 and tell everyone how great you are. I tell everyone I can get my hands on how much I hate Disney's dvd practices. Word of Mouth is the best weapon I have, so I use it.

 

[David Rogers]

hiccup

 

[Charlie Essmeier]

1. Menus - I just want to hit "Play" and watch the film. If I have to have extras, put them on another disc so I don't have to "choose" to watch the film.
1a. Impossible to navigate menus- "Memento" comes to mind.
2. Commercials
3. Trailers for other films
4. DVDs are too small. I was OK with 12" media, and 12" media would have allowed HD discs years ago.
5. Lousy packaging. Instead of the hodgepodge of packaging we now have, I'd prefer a "cover", a la laserdisc, or a simple jewel case. There's no reason why a DVD package should be any larger than a CD package.
6. Sound that isn't as good as laserdisc sound was.
7. Discs that hang and lock up at the layer change.
8. DVD won't do HD. They should have done that from day one, which should have coincided with the introduction of HDTV.
9. Some discs still won't play in some players.
10. The return of pan and scan laser media, which should have been dead for good ten years ago.
11. That %#*)@%$ security tape that's underneath the shrink wrap.
12. Anamorphic discs with non-anamorphic supplementary content.

That's just off the top of my head. There's more.

Charlie