There is something terribly obvious that I'm overlooking...but it is making me crazy. I bought the DVD of Pan's Labyrinth...and can't enjoy it...

...not because of the content of the movie, but because for the life of me I CANNOT find any way to turn OFF the director's commentary. On the options screen there is no <on> <off> selection showing for the commentary. No matter what I do, the commentary stays on.

Can ANYONE tell me what simple thing I'm missing? It surely would be appreciated.

Terry in Iowa

And now I have my own answer...but it is a bit bizarre, and almost certainly a programming/manufacturing flaw.

The movie defaults to Dolby 5.1 sound. My system is set up for DTS when available, so I go in and select DTS 6.1 from the sound menu. Selecting DTS ALSO sets the Director's commentary option to ON, for some reason. Going back to the sound options and choosing the default Dolby 5.1 turns the director's commentary off.

If you go to the special features menu, the first choice is for the Commentary, but there is NO on/off button to select. If you leave default Dolby 5.1 selected, no commentary. Pick DTS 6.1, there is Benecio commenting away.

Jeesh.

Terry in Iowa

Maybe your player is set to select the first English audio track as default? The only English audio track on the DVD is the audio commentary. Didn't have any problems myself. Spanish DD 5.1 is the default audio.

still sort of begs the question. I'd really like to use the DTS choice, but it seems that it is only available with del Toro talking. That isn't normal.

And I can't remember another special features menu on any other movie that offered Director Commentary as an option, but gave no way to select it on, or turn it off.

Terry

who? [Guillermo Del Toro]...

anyway had no problem watching the movie in 6.1 DTS. Faulty disc?, exchange for a new one?

OOPS is right! My disc is REALLY defective, if Benecio Del Toro is the director. I listend to the first minute of that commentary so many times that it clouded all the other sectors of my tiny mind.

Rather than take the DVD back to Best Buy and go through the refund/exchange process yet again, I'll 'muddle' through watching in 5.1. I suspect that this movie will NOT be one I want to revisit regularly, anyway.

Terry in Iowa

Chalk me up as another one with no problem watching with dts selected.

i watched it with the DTS track and english subs with no problems.

can anyone answer the second part of the question?

How do you select the commentary on or off from the special features menu?

Terry in Iowa

Not quite sure what you mean. When I hit "Enter" at the commentary option of the special features menu, the movie w/commentary starts right up. You can't turn it off at that menu. I just go to my Audio button on my remote and select another track to turn it off.

I like the thread title.

tried to watch this at my friend's place, but it didn't hold my interest. I don't understand the comparisons to LOTR that I've been reading. I think that's stretching it a bit.

When I first saw the title of the thread I thought the problem was that the movie is "SUBTITLED" as I was at my local Blockbuster the other day and there was a sign that said "Pans Labyrinth DVD is Subtitled" where the DVDs were.

Is the audio so low in the movie that people would probably want to use the subtitles option or is the language different than English at times and people are force to read subtitles throughout the movie? (I was in a hurry and didn't bother to ask the clerk.)

LB...

The audio is nice and loud for this movie, and ,you do need the subtitles which are in english as the audio is spanish ,unless you understand spanish and so then you do not need the english subtitles.

I'm having no trouble with the sound but in mine the picture freezes at the end right after the villain uses his gun the last time and sits there for a bit and then skips ahead about 10 seconds into the movie. I can't even fast forward though this part.

Anyone else have this problem?

Sorry for the run on sentences. My comma key does not work. New keyboard time.

That's strange, cause my player defaults to the DTS track.

I think Pan's Labyrinth is a fantastic film, but I myself don't understand any comparison to LOTR. They're not really similar at all.

the disc is a little strange. I watched it on a crappy set up, so I set it to 2.0 track. then I was watching it on the 6.1 ht setup, and the disc was already on 2.0 when it should have been on 6.1, or at least 5.1 EX

Incidently, my Hollywood Video had a sign posted warning customers that this was in fact a foreign language film with English subtitles. As if that wasn't enough, they warned me again at the checkout. Crazy world...

Not that crazy. I've been hearing about how great this film is for months, and only last week in the other thread did I learn it wasn't in english. The clips they show generally aren't speaking, and lots of folks aren't mentioning it in their recommendations.

A friend of mine had that happen at her Hollywood Video as well. While she's not a fan of foreign films or subtitles, she was well aware of what this movie was and still wanted to see it.

there are a lot of people out there that don't like to read when watching a movie. I'm not one of them and love this movie, but I work with a guy that wants to watch this but is waiting for an English dub to come out. I'm sure he'll be waiting for a while. To me all dubbing sounds bad and ruins the movie for me.

I had the same problem with the audio. When I put the disk in an older DVD player it worked just fine. I have never had this problem with any other disk. There should be a warning on the label or cover!

All you need to do is press/surf the AUDIO button on your DVD remote.

This must be done while the feature is playing. This will allow you to cycle through the available audio streams while the disc is playing.

RE: Subtitles, they are a default for this disc. But you can turn them on/off the same way as the above audio "fix".

Press the Sub-T or Subtitle button on your remote while the feature is playing.
Cycle through and select the desired option.

Same here, just pressed the Audio button to switch to the audio track I wanted, didn't even use the menu's except to hit play.