The difference being, when you go to the theater you're seeing trailers you probably haven't seen before, for new movies. On this DVD, it will be the same five minutes of trailers 10 years from now that it is today.

I don't mind the trailers, as long as I can either Chapter skip or FF through them.

The ones that I hate are the "Coming This (season/month/year)!" ones. Disney is notorious for these.

My kids will be watching a Disney release from a few years ago, and when they see the trailer, they'll sometime's say "That's not coming soon, we've already got that one!" and giggle at the stupidity of it all. If my 6 year old boys think it's stupid, than there's something wrong there.

So what's the verdict. Buy or Pass?

on the miyazaki films, you can skip the trailers... and then when you start the movie, you get john lassiter... i've taught my kid to say "yucky man" everytime we see his gratuitous introduction.

luckily, i can skip them...

in this case, i'm not buying it (mainly b/c i have the older version).

Personally, I don't think it's as bad as people are making it out to be. Just plan it into your setup. If you normally get something to eat or drink before putting in the movie, put in the movie first. Then, when you're back from getting food & drink, the main menu is on.

what you do is go to the chapter selection button, and go to chapter 1 and you should be right at the movie.

I've had no problem skipping those trailers. This is a classic movie, still funny to this day, and it looks great on DVD. I'd highly reccomend it, especially for those in college of course.

This is one of the reasons it took me so long to get a DVD player in the first place. The format is designed so they can control your viewing experience. If they wanted to, they could disable just about every button available, including the fast forward button, meaning you would be forced to sit through these trailers no matter what. They don't even have to include a chapter selection.

If I was in the middle of a movie, and there was some kind of power outage, or even if I wanted to turn the DVD player off and continue watching at another time... With all these controls, theoretically, I could have to watch through all the trailers AGAIN, before I can resume my movie.

And the no insert thing.. It's just a sign of things to come. It would be different if they never included inserts way back in the beginning.. But now, ,no insert on a DVD feels the same as buying a CD with no insert. Naked.

W-w-w-w-w-w-hat?

Are you saying I'm on drugs? Eh? Well? Are you? Huh? Me? Intense? Come on! Put em up! Them's fightin' words! Let's go! Pant-pant-pant...

Oooo -- I feel a downer coming .... coffee .... ummmmm .... black elixir of life .... must.get.to.espresso.machine ....

I found it strange that the "Meaning of Life" dvd trailer said it was the first time the movie was available on dvd.

I have 2 copies, 1 purchased at Walmart, that say otherwise.

Heh.

Or, you can start the disc, wait for the very first screen and press Stop. Then press Play again. On most machines, this will skip all of the 'boot up' screens (FBI, trailer, etc.) and dump you right into the film.

This is definitely a pain in the ass... and Universal deserves to be raked over the coals for it... but to skip the purchase entirely? Because of a trailer at the start? That doesn't seem to make any sense to me. If something like that is a deal-breaker for you, I can't imagine you liked the film much to begin with.

I sent Universal on this topic and the replied with the following workaround.

"Thank you for contacting us. First eject the disc from your player and reinsert it. Then press the "stop" button during the "Warning" screen. Press "play" and it will take you directly to the start of the film."

Seems silly, but nice to know that it can be skipped.

Anyone seen the extras? How long are they? How's the picture on the new release?

The new transfer looks good, not great. But I'm happy with it. The extras? Aside from the fine "Yearbook" documentary that was on the last Collector's Edition, I thought the new extras suck. The "Where Are They Now?" featurette isn't particularly funny (except for maybe Otter and Dean & Mrs. Wormer) and feels kind of half-assed throughout. The trivia track is extremely sporadic with huge gaps between pretty uninteresting factoids. For instance, when they show Donald Sutherland as Jennings during the pot smoking scene, the factoid reads: "Keifer Sutherland's father." Yawn.

They should have called this the "Flounder Edition." That sums up what Universal is doing with their DVDs.

What I don't understand is why DVD player manufacturers don't program their machines to allow the user total control of skipping chapters and jumping to the top menu (perhaps even doing so automatically at start up).

I have to agree that Universal went half-ass on this one. Surely there was more that could be done with the extras...especially a commentary of some sort.

Seems like this and Scarface, which they are both heavily advertising, are getting half-ass treatment with the special features on their new DVD's.

While I haven't tried this yet, I just read a report on another BB that they disabled the resume function on the disc. Has anyone tried this, and if so, does resume work? Sometimes I do get distracted, and use the resume feature to get right back to where I was.

If this is true, I think Universal really dropped the ball hardcore on a release that could've been quite good.

Maybe we should send them so many emails letting them know of our displeasure, so they'll update the disc with the proper features and exchange them for us. Between the mandatory previews and (if it's true) no resume on the disc...as far as I'm concerned, it's defective. Universal should do the right thing and give us a proper release.

I think I'll return my copy since I have the original. Doesn't sound like it's worth the upgrade.

Just read the review of it at dvd.ign.com: http://dvd.ign.com/articles/435/435805p1.html
What the hell? Who is running this site now? This is downright one of the worst reviews I've read...as well as you have to be braindead to rate this movie a 5 out of 10.

True, but it was interesting to find out that Otter was originally written for Chevy Chase, which is really evident now when I watch Tim Matheson's performance. I can imagine that Landis's direction was "act like Chevy". But I'm glad that Chevy didn't do the part otherwise it would have been promoted as his movie. It would have been interesting to see Dan Ackroyd as D-Day, though, but we would have missed out on Bruce McGill rendition of the William Tell Overture.
Not that the factiods were that lame, except for the "Keifer's Dad" one, but they didn't cover much. I kept expecting them to explain why there was a Tennessee state flag in the hearing scene.
But, all in all, the DVD is worth the $10 I paid for it.

Wow, apparently that reviewer thinks that tame is the opposite of funny. I guess if you aren't drinking cum or stuffing instruments into orafices, you're wasting your time.

[I enjoyed the original American Pie, but that comment makes absolutely no sense. You can be 'tame' or even 'quaint' and still be very, very funny. And that's exactly what Animal House is.]

I find that this is being done all the time. The recent Who Framed Roger Rabbit Vista Series dvd release featured the wording "FIRST TIME ON DVD!" next to it in many store catalogs...... Why lie? I guess they are trying to shove these earlier releases under the carpet?

The radio commercials for "Animal House" also make the claim that this is the first time "Animal House" has been on DVD. I guess they "forgot" about the previous two releases.

I'd seriously buy a new player if I could find one that ignored the commands that disabled buttons on the remote.

This reminds me of Die Another Day. Literally *nothing* would work. No chapter forward, no fast forward, not even the freakin' stop button was allowed.

The only button that worked was *power off*. Unfortunately, when the power came back on, it resumed right back where it was.

Just amazing. Not only will I will never ever buy a Bond film on dvd because of this, I will never ever rent one, or see it in the theatre.