DVD/Blu-ray annoyances?

[Samuel_Scott]

Right now, these are my biggest!

Eco-cases. Horrible.

No menu screens. This is a basic must IMO.

Discs that play the inferior audio track by default.

Major studios dropping the extras from non-USA releases.

[Paul_Lewis]

Eco-cases. Horrible.

I really hate these things. They always arrive with the sleeve pierced or badly damaged, no matter how well packaged they are.

[Davy_Lee]

Video and Audio:

1. Start-up trailers and advertisements - To my knowledge, Lions Gate US blu-rays are the worst when it comes to this.

2. Incorrect o.a.r. - Lion of the Desert UK and US blu-rays.

3. Un-remastered video transfer on a bd release.

4. Overuse of DNR - Predator U.H.E.

5. Lossy audio when lossless is possible - Black Rain, Grindhouse.

6. Slow loading time on blu-rays - Grindhouse, T2 Judgement Day.

7. Blu-rays that do not include extras previously found on dvds - Kingdom of Heaven and many other catalog titles.

8. Marketing ploys on blu-ray extra features - Best Buy, Wal-mart, Target and other retailer exclusives.

9. Bonus disc of a bd release is a dvd.

10. New defective discs - skipping and pixelation.

11. Inclusion of insubstantial amount of extras on a separate dvd for a bd release.

12. Flipper dvds - Warner US still has this for the Wizard of Oz 75th A.E. extra feature disc!

13. Forced subtitles, usually French, on dvds.

14. No subtitles on discs.

15. New dvds that rot only after several viewings and despite being properly kept in their cases.


Packaging and Cover:

1. Poorly designed - Photoshop or not - covers.

2. Rating logos - German and Australian dvds and blu-rays for that matter.

3. Incorrect or unspecified tech specs on back cover!

4. Bonus disc of a bd release kept inside a paper sleeve.

5. Stacked blu-rays inside a bd case.

6. Loose discs inside new and sealed dvds/blu-rays.

7. Wrinkled plastic layer of bd case.

8. For English-speaking collectors, translated titles on dvd or bd covers - "Im Geheimdienst Ihrer Majestät", "Stirb Langsam", "Der Weisse Hai"?

9. For steelbook collectors - paint chips, dents, dings and scratches on new steelbooks.

10. Stickers on slip covers or blu-ray cases that are difficult to peel off.

11. New dvd cases with broken hub.



There are still other points I haven't listed, but these are more than enough to annoy you.

[Noor_Razzak]

DNR is a major pain as are breaking up extras as retailer exclusives, this is a trend that annoys me the most these days.

[Eric_Cotenas]

The same company not carrying over their DVD extras to the Blu-ray edition (i.e. MGM's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK).

[Samuel_Scott]

Universal's Blu-ray menu screens. For the love of god, these annoy the hell out of me.

[Markus_Lang]

Universal's Blu-ray menu screens. For the love of god, these annoy the hell out of me.

I hate those noisy animated menus (Universal and Studio Canal) which have film clips playing from the feature, sometimes revealing important plot points.

[Jyri_Lehtinen]

My top10 annoyances, more or less all have been said already but I'll revisit anyway.

1. DNR overkill.
- Too many fantastic films have been ruined by overuse of DNR, especially for grain removal, and this practice won't end because majority of people just love how their favourite films now look "crispy clean" even if the characters look like wax figures and the transfer itself looks oddly fake and unnatural. Grain is part of the filmed image in lots of films, adds to the overall feel and has often been intentionally added in so why should it be removed completely?

2. BD's lossless audio available only in 1 specific release/region.
- In most cases lossless audio seems to be available only in the US releases which isn't a real problem but if the releases are otherwise identical to all the European releases, getting the releases I want from across the pond just to get the best audio, does become annoying every once in a while.

3. Obvious upscaled DVD transfers on BD.
- No reason to update to BD in these cases.. and there are lots and lots of these out there, Optimum's UK BD (and some other Euro releases with the same transfer) of "Escape from New York" instantly came to mind as for being one of the worst of these I've owned in recent days, if only briefly - luckily in this case MGM thought otherwise and released a proper transfer on the US BD.

4. Essentially barebones BDs when DVDs are filled with extras.
- I don't absolutely necessary need all extras to be HD (would be nice of course) but at least the old extras could be transferred to BD discs instead so no need of using lame DVD bonus discs. Having complete extras on a single release would be so much more convenient than holding on to our old DVDs to keep the best extras. Having multiple copies of every film I have is something I do try to avoid. If I upgrade a title to BD, I usually get rid of the DVD if the BD has the same extras.

5. Universal's stupid menus.
- At least have some sort of effort maaannn..., a static tree menu would suffice with a poster image on the background, perhaps a score cue played over it but no damned beeps and bleeps with every choice you make - AAAAGH! I'd prefer a simple menu much rather than one with altering clips of the film. More intricately designed menus are of course a plus but common sense is still welcomed for the menus to remain user-friendly.

6. No main menus.
- A somewhat continuity to the above; it's annoying when the film starts right after the disc is inserted and you need to set up audio and subs by shuffling through them in the remote/player menu instead. For selecting subs that can be annoying when some releases have like 20+ languages to choose from.

7. Eco-cases.
- As said, these are horrible and should be left for the tree huggers to cherish. These are the sole reason I always have a selection of spare non-eco amarays at home to replace these with.

8. Forced subtitles.
- luckily this is not as much an annoyance in the BD era than it was in the DVD era when especially Dutch, French, German and Japanese discs more than often had forced subs while most if not all BDs I've come across from those regions, have optional subs. German doesn't annoy me as much as I can read and speak it but the others I still mind when watching DVDs.

9. Excessive amount of startup trailers and other promo commercials.
- Several German releases are very "good" at this and the worst I've had so far, is nearly 20 mins of startup trailers before I've got to the main menu. Luckily they're usually skippable (and dubbed in German releases) but still annoying.

10. Huge ratings tags on covers.
- I'm quite pleased to have noticed the Germans must have also noticed how silly their huge FSK rating tags really are and over the past 4-5 years most German releases (at least for the ones I have) seem to have the tags either as easily peelable stickers for digipaks/digibooks/steelbooks or reversable covers for keepcases, without the tags on the optional cover.

There's still way too many annoyances in the home video market when only a fraction of DVD/BD releases come out as perfect as they could be.

[Eric_Cotenas]

My top10 annoyances, more or less all have been said already but I'll revisit anyway.
4. Essentially barebones BDs when DVDs are filled with extras.
- I don't absolutely necessary need all extras to be HD (would be nice of course) but at least the old extras could be transferred to BD discs instead so no need of using lame DVD bonus discs. Having complete extras on a single release would be so much more convenient than holding on to our old DVDs to keep the best extras. Having multiple copies of every film I have is something I do try to avoid. If I upgrade a title to BD, I usually get rid of the DVD if the BD has the same extras.

Not as bad if the DVD with the bonuses is included, but the aforementioned MGM ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is a combo and the DVD is apparently the same as their original barebones disc rather than their special edition two-disc (they could have at least put the commentaries from disc one on the BD and just threw in disc 2).

[Jyri_Lehtinen]

Indeed. Tho I haven't even checked the DVD disc of the EFNY combo yet so wasn't paying much attention to that. I still do have the old SE DVD .
A much better transfer was a key element for me getting the US blu. John Carpenter is one of my fav directors (of his peak directing era 70s-early 90s that is) so from him I can easily have multiple copies of each film. Heck, I have like 5 different copies of the original Halloween.

[Jim_Mcdonaugh]

The worst 3 things about Blu are: including only Theatrical Cut, cutting the movie itself for some ridicules rating decrease. Why? It's pathetic and nasty as hell.
Then, oh yeah, no HD audio on ANY release... WTF?! Another reason why millions still watch/buy DVDs.

And I personally don't care about bad packaging and shitty menus. Never liked DVD menus anyway, see no point in having any.

[Adrian_Busby]

If ever there was an advantage video had over DVDs and BRs it was the ability to fast forward through what feels like hours of start-up trailers, company logos and multiple advisory notices!!! I just to watch the bloody film!

[Jim_Mcdonaugh]

If ever there was an advantage video had over DVDs and BRs it was the ability to fast forward through what feels like hours of start-up trailers, company logos and multiple advisory notices!!! I just to watch the bloody film!

That SCAN button always worked for me! Always got right to the movie.

[Samuel_Scott]

Not having lossless audio on HD releases. Watched The Blues Brothers again earlier, and the transfer is pretty damn good considering it's a catalogue title from DNR kings Universal. But wait, a musical with plenty of action and the best audio track we get is a standard half bitrate DTS track. If we get a re-release with lossless audio, I'll pre-order it immediately.

[Eric_Cotenas]

Not having lossless audio on HD releases. Watched The Blues Brothers again earlier, and the transfer is pretty damn good considering it's a catalogue title from DNR kings Universal. But wait, a musical with plenty of action and the best audio track we get is a standard half bitrate DTS track. If we get a re-release with lossless audio, I'll pre-order it immediately.

I hate it when the original mix is given the lossy encode while the 5.1 or 7.1 is lossless. Sure, as we've discussed on other threads, the studio remixes are usually conservative and respectful, but the original mix is also deserving of respect.

[Jim_Mcdonaugh]

Not having lossless audio on HD releases.

That sucks, no doubt, but the most people don't have hardware to produce such sound anyway. Let's face it, like 99% of people in the world have a shit-y tv and thats it.
I don't know a lot of people with even 5.1 system, not even talking about some decent 7.1 setup.

[Alister_Manson]

My biggest peeve is interlaced Blu Ray tranfers. Especially when the back cover claims 1080p and it's actually 1080i 50hz. The Aussie BD of Killing Them Softly is a glaring example, and it also has the incorrect AR so it's a double-whammy of bulls**t.

[Samuel_Scott]

Why do so many French releases have forced subtitles? Just started watching Sofia Coppola's Somewhere (French FNAC Exclusive release - specs soon), and French subtitles on the English audio.

Also, I hate my own stupidity. Bought the German release of Lily Sometimes starring Ludivine Sagnier and Diane Kruger without even thining it might not be English friendly. Doh! Not English friendly...

[Jari_Kovalainen]

Why do so many French releases have forced subtitles?

Yeah, that is weird that they still do it. I know that French people want to "protect" their language and all that, but forced subs in 2014 is just ridiculous.

[Jyri_Lehtinen]

That is annoying indeed. Even the Dutch and Germans who used to have forced subs on nearly every dvd, rarely have forced subs in their releases these days. Some do but for the amount I've come across recently, they are in the minority.