by Jyri_Lehtinen » 30 Dec 2013 19:26
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.
Work occasionally keeps me off the grid but I'll be around sooner or later.
- Jyri aka GrimReaper - the Walking Discography