... and everyone thought I was nuts for boycotting "Cast Away" because of the use of the font Sand in the menus...

Just go and get your drink and your popcorn while the previews are running.

Exactly. Go spend $100 for a DVD burner and learn how to make a backup that only has the movie on it. You don't have to deal with trailers, menus, FBI warnings or any of that crap. It's very handy and it keeps your collection in excellent condition for those of you that care about that.

I was on the fence about whether or not to buy this disc. The unskippable trailers decided it for me. I have scratched it off my list.

That salty dude has way too much energy with those buttons.

I blame White Trash for forced trailers and no inserts!

You have all heard that you can't get something for nothing.

How do you thing the studio subsidized a promotion like the $3 Kraft/Hulk DVD?

What make it unfortunate is that everyone who pays full price must now bear the burden of unskipable previews for the few individuals who got the $3 deal.

I can understand those making this DVD a blind buy. However, the ones I really feel sorry for is the ones who saw the movie and are still compelled to buy the DVD.

Oh and what a burden it was. Took me about 20 seconds to fastforward the previews and watch the movie. I feel so robbed by Universal its ridiculous.

I mean seriously, trailers are in front of movies, were in front of VHS... it just seems ridiculous to make a few trailers a reason to not buy the dvd. Are they annoying? Sure... but its not some great injustice to consumerism. I can understand being upset, and taking a couple minutes to draft a letter of complaint if it matters to you. Little things can go a long way... but this just seems so trivial.

You just don't understand!

it didn' take me that long to fast forward through the previews either. just because there are forced trailers in front of the movie.. doesn;t mean that you must boycott the dvd.. its not going to work.

JACOB

Disney received complaints about the trailers and made it easier to skip them. It won't hurt to send off an email to Universal and complain. Considering how out of touch they are they probably don't realize it bugs anybody.

I don't know about anyone else, but I didn't have any forced trailers on my Hulk DVD. I played it last night, saw the Universal logo come up and was ready to hit fast-forward, but no trailers came up. Anyone else experience this?

Good for you. I am glad that your dvd player fast forwards quickly. Unfortunately, my dvd player, and many other's do not have fast forward features that are able to skip the previews that quickly. As I said earlier, I have to hold down fast forward for a little over a minute on my player. On Playstation 2 which has a VERY slow fast forward speed I would believe it if someone told me they had to fast forward for maybe a minute and a half to get past the trailers.... There should always be a choice, particularly in this day and age. I refuse to accept your argument that it just doesn't matter. Perhaps if enough people complain they will at the very least just re-enable the menu button again during the trailers. I am perfectly fine with that.

And i refuse to accept your argument that 1 to 2 minutes of time before a movie is that serious of an issue. I don't see how this day and age matters as well. I can be stopped in traffic for a minute starring at the same billboard. That doesn't mean i'm going to write a letter complaining that the billboard didn't appeal to me.

Dude, just because you didn't like the movie doesn't mean you can just belittle those who did like it.

I never said I didn't like it. I just can't bring myself to purchase a copy.

I said this day and age because we are past the abomination of a format which was pan and scan VHS. You specifically mentioned having trailers in front of VHS movies, which is why I brought that up. When you see films in the theatre, you don't see the same trailers every time. Even if you see the same film twice, chances are you will see different trailers. With these dvd's with unskippable trailers you will see the same garbage non-anamorphic trailers that you do now ten years from now. I'm glad you enjoy them but I do not. What if it were 45 minutes of unskippable trailers? Would you still be fine fast forwarding through them? How about if the fast forward function were disabled and 10 minutes of trailers were included on the DVD of one of your favorite films? Would you still just say "Oh what a burden it was. All I had to do was sit still and not move for 10 minutes and the trailers were over. Just like mommy makes me do when I misbehave!"

Universal could very easily disable the fast-forward function in the future if nobody writes letters expressing their disappointment in Universal's decision to have forced trailers at the start of their DVD's. Would you be perfectly fine with that? Can you honestly say that you would rather have these forced trailers at the beginning of the DVD than nothing? If not, then why mock us for finding e-mail adresses and phone numbers to take 30 seconds and let Universal know that we don't appreciate their decision?

Great, it doesn't bother you. You're obviously a better person than me.

anyone have the intro button on the remote.. its the last button on my cyberhome dvd player. I click that and then hit title on it.. then I can skip the trailers.

JACOB

I have an old Sony that will obediently go to the main menu whenever I push the menu button twice. It's nice.

I don't care *so* much about the forced previews, but if it was a title I'd be playing a lot it could get really annoying to have to skip past them EACH TIME, like on the Lion King disc. Shudder.

So I'm with you. They're a pain. I spent my ten minutes writing a snail mail letter to UHV, and hope that enough people do so that they get the message that this isn't something that people like.

Yes... let's not bother ol' Universal with this. Let's just...accept this. Let's...just trust them to...know what's best for us. After all, I'm sure they...know things we don't...know. And I've even...heard that they have...evidence of weapons of mass destruction...

(frankly, my copy goes back tommorrow.)

Here is what I wrote to them. I hope it helps them get the message!
----- Original Message -----
From: =================
To: universalstudios&[email protected]
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 7:21 PM
Subject: Hulk DVD and forced trailers


To whom it may concern:

This letter is to inform you that inspite of how much I enjoyed the movie, I cannot and will not bring myself to buy the current version of the movie Hulk on DVD due to the fact that the DVD has trailers for movie that come up as soon as you put the DVD in that cannot be skipped by hitting the "MENU" or skip chapter buttons. I find this sort of advertisement on DVDs to be unacceptable and will not support such product with my hard earned money.

If you cannot understand why this would be such an issue for a consumer to make them not buy a DVD they otherwise would have purchased, imagine if you were watching TV and commercials came on, however the network devised a method to make your remote control inoperative during the commercial breaks, so you could not turn to other channels to see what was on. Imagine your outrage at the networks for forcing you to either watch the commercials or making your private entertainment time at home terribly incovenient. That outrage is shared by me and many others (I assure you there are many others. For every one of us who write you, there are many more who just leave the DVD on the shelf. Don't believe me? Visit some DVD message boards in your spare time and see what I am talking about, and wake up to reality of consumer reaction to this type of product) and it's things like this that you put on the DVDs that will make consumers less likely to buy product from you in the future. I know I will never buy one of your DVDs blind, knowing you may put forced trailers on them, and will research the title first. And in the interim time, if I find something else from another studio to buy, you're just out my money.

I would also like to add that it's things like this that insult your audience. You either assume we will just accept this because that's the way trailers were on VHS tapes, or you just assume we won't be exposed to those movies other wise. I guarantee you that consumers do not want their DVD products to be like VHS tapes, especially in terms of having forced trailers at the beginning. I also promise you that if the movie you present is enjoyable and the viewer likes what they see, they will check out the bonus features, popular on all DVDs that have them, and will, in their own time and at their own free will, will take a look at any trailers you put in the bonus section of the DVD.

I hope you reconsider your stance on forced trailers on DVDs, and I hope you reissue Hulk without the forced trailers. You're losing money by not doing so, I assure you.

No new ideas please. Who knows what can be done with the future digital TV and all the meta-data comming across the streams.

I sent a similar email. I didn't buy the Hulk because I didn't like the movie, but I don't want this to become a trend. A few years ago emailing Disney eventually helped to get them to make their previews easier to skip. Hopefully Universal will get the message as well.

Same here. Went right into the movie. Nice.

When I watched mine, a trailer came up. I think it was for 2 Fast, 2 Furious. Fortunately, my DVD player fast-forwards at up to 64x, so it was just a blur.

Rob

re lion king, on my player, all I had to do was hit the "next" button once to go straight to the main menu. (skipping the 1.5 min of cgi animation.)