I've come across a few DVD's recently where you can't switch during the movie, especially to the director's commentary, but have to go back to main menu and then select the option and then return to the movie.

Why in the world do they do that?

i noticed that i couldn't switch the audio from DTS to the regular 5.1 audio on leon, the professional when i watched it over the weekend without going back to the menu. the DTS version wouldn't play on my tv for some reason.

Sometimes seamless branching will not allow an audio switch on the fly.

When the disc is authored they can disable pretty much every function of your DVD player if they choose. It's probably the stupidest part about DVDs and it's pissed me off since the first disc that I came across it on. I'd rather push a button to switch audio tracks than navigate needlessly annoying, lengthy and convoluted menu systems.

Yep, like Pixy said... it's the authoring. I like the ability to switch audio tracks on the fly for comparisons.

I think that Universal discs are notorious for being authored so as not to allow switching audio tracks on the fly. They many not do this any longer, but I've read reviews which noted this.

Universal also does the same thing with subtitles - particularly annoying since Universal apparently doesn't believe in closed captioning, so it's subtitles or nothing. It's gotten to the point that whenever I see the Universal logo come on screen I immediately go back to the menu and make sure everything's set up right.

With the DTS tracks back in the day, there were usually warning screens that you had to click through about having the right equipment to decode the track or damage could be done. Other than that and the seamless branching issue, it's very annoying not to be able to switch audio tracks on the fly or even worse, subtitles.

I've seen this with RECENT releases. It's so stupid.

The part I really hate with this "warning" screen? The DD logo will be highlighted assuming that I made a dumb mistake and I really wanted the DD track. Arrrgh.

I have a "Portland" brand DVD player which I got for $35 at Target that ignores the audio button lock-out- it will work on any disc.

I hate how you have to watch the DTS trailer too. The worst example of this is on Schindler's List, which is a flipper. When you select the DTS track on the second side, you have to watch the trailer again, before part 2 of the movie.

I really hate it because my DVD player is having issues switching to certain tracks, one of them is the DTS piano ad, it just loops. So I can't watch those titles with DTS.