I've always been a huge fan and promoter of the DVD format. I bought my first player long before the majority of consumers, back in December of 1997 when no one else I knew had one yet. Those of us who've been buying DVDs for over six years now have clearly seen changes in the market, for better and for worse, but there are still several annoying trends and/or issues which I have decided to put under the collective name of my DVD Pet Peeves.

Forced Previews - First Universal did it by forcing viewers to sit through their flashy collection of images from some of their movies, and now other studios/distributors have hopped on board by inserting previews. The worst part? The fast-forward function has been disabled during these advertisements, so we have no choice but to sit there and wait. As if watching commercials on a DVD you already purchased isn't annoying enough on its own.

Auto-Play From Menu - So it's family movie night and as usual it's going to take a few minutes before everyone can sit down at once in the living room. You decide to get ahead of the game by loading the DVD in the player and adjusting your home stereo or surround sound options to the correct settings. Then you walk out of the room to get a beverage or retrieve another wandering family member. What happens upon your return? The DVD option menu has disappeared and the movie is already playing!


Slow & Revealing Menus - You put the DVD in the player and just want to get to the main menu, either to watch the film or the DVD extras. But no... first you have to wait for the snazzy little menu intro to take place, with 3-D animations and all of that other crap that DVD producers think is just so cool. Even worse is when they decide to show you half of the movie in the process, sometimes revealing clips from scenes that not even a spoiler-heavy trailer would dare give away. And don't even get me started on overly-loud music.

Non-standard DVD Cases - Most DVD cases are the same. They have a thin layer of plastic holding the cover and back art, and both sides of the plastic case meet so they snap together nicely. Warner Brothers, on the other hand, insists on being different. Their DVD cases have that little plastic edge that swings around the corner of the cardboard front, which is nice so long as you don't have it sitting on a shelf next to any other DVDs, making it tough to pull out when it snags the movie next to it. New Line Cinema used to be guilty of this as well, but recently released About Schmidt in a regular case, so hopefully this means only the WB will be pissing me off in the future. As for those big, fold-out special edition DVD cases (like Fight Club, Magnolia and Die Another Day) - they're all right, I guess, but I'm a much bigger fan of the regular case that is capable of holding 2 discs just the same (like Minority Report and Cast Away).

Multiple Releases - Hands down the most widely celebrated pet peeve amongst consumers, I think everyone has had enough of multi-DVD releases. The option between full screen and wide-screen is great and I have no problem with it, but releasing a movie on DVD only to follow it up with a special edition DVD five months later is pretty damn annoying. A good example is the original American Pie, which has now been released in a regular edition, un-rated edition, and a special "beneath the crust" edition with additional goodies.

Hard to See Menus - This happens far more often than it ever should, but a lot of DVDs have confusing menus for the simple fact that you can't tell which option is highlighted. Instead of making that subtle change from white to off-white or red to red-orange, put a big friggin' arrow next to the damn thing so we can tell where we are.

Posted August 18, 2003 | link