Helpful hints for DVD producers
Before you all drive me utterly insane
1. Logos
I know this is going to come as a massive shock, but I’m not as excited nor as impressed by your shiny animated logo as you are. I’m also not particularly bothered by the logos of all 46 other companies involved in the making of the DVD.
Making me sit and watch your stupid logos shimmying around while annoying jingles play in the background and not enabling me to skip past them makes me want to set fire to your headquarters. Twice.
2. Trailers
Again, I think you’re going to be quite surprised by this, but when I’ve just paid real cash for one of your DVDs, what I actually want to see is the film or show I’ve paid for, not adverts for whatever else you’re trying to flog at the time.
What I’m significantly less happy about (and by ‘less happy’, I mean ‘about as happy as I’d be if an elephant decided to defecate on my keyboard right now’) is in not being able to skip, with a single button-press, past all of your jolly adverts and to the DVD’s main menu, you total gits.
3. Copyright notices
It may have escaped your notice, but when I’ve paid money for one of your DVDs, I’m therefore not a stinking, evil, nasty pirate scumbag. Therefore, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t insult me with patronising, unskippable, legally shaky copyright notices (“You wouldn’t steal a car!” Quite right, but copyright infringement and theft aren’t the same thing, dumbass.) when I’ve actually gone to the bother of buying your product, you dolts.
4. Animated intros
This will perhaps be the biggest revelation of all, but some people actually watch the DVDs they’ve bought more than once. And if they’ve bought a series, not only might they not want to watch an entire DVD in one go, but they might also want to later watch a particularly favourite episode. Therefore, although your 3D animator is probably very proud of their work, and you likely want to show that, yes, you care enough about a show to spend a few bucks on the menus, not letting me skip past the animated intros to menus and sub-menus is akin to repeatedly kicking me in the teeth, removing my remaining shards of teeth, nailing dentures into my gums, and then repeatedly kicking me in the dentures, just for good measure.
(South Park guys: your menus are particularly hateful—I really don’t want some unskippable 30-second out-of-context chunk of an episode to be shown prior to the menu options appearing. And the reason is because I’m just about to watch the actual episode, you complete buffoons.)
I’m in total agreement and have nothing more to add. Well said.
well you can watch the southpark ones online now 🙂
but yopu’re right ofcuz
So true… while I enjoy DVD extras, the Red Dwarf “Just the shows” releases prove a point. There are times when you just want the program/film you want to see!
I’ve not got those DVDs, but with them being from the BBC, I’ll bet they still break rule 1 and possibly rule 3. The standard Red Dwarf DVDs (which I do own) are some of the absolute worst regarding rule 4—the animated intros are hateful.