milo bloom

Exactly that. So you can't use plausible deniability to say you didn't know you weren't supposed to do that.

orangerunner

I know some discs are authored where the menu appears before the FBI Warning. The user presses "Chapters", then selects "Chapter 1" allowing the user to completely avoid the previews and FBI warnings. This worked really well with a lot of Disney "Fast-Play" enabled discs which usually spun the viewer into a whole labyrinth of previews, warnings etc.

Travis McClain

I was scrolling through my liked lists on Letterboxd and came across this one: "Where it all began. The first DVDs of your collection." It hasn't been updated in nine years, or even had any new comments in that time, but thought I'd share in the spirit of the discussion. You'll see Tombstone on the list courtesy of yours truly.

jjcool

That is an interesting list. The writer was a few years after the initial rollout of DVD it looks like. Anyone else remember two versions of the Fugitive DVD? Both snappers but one had extras (maybe a commentary?) I know I had both for some reason. And Seven had the initial snapper release then a 2 disc new line platinum release. Ahh, those must have been some of the earlier double dips that would soon become the norm.

Travis McClain

All I remember about The Fugitive is that I bought it along with U.S. Marshals. I'm reasonably confident they were shrink-wrapped together at Walmart. I'd forgotten all about those side-by-side bundles they used to sell. Sometimes they were a ready made double feature, like that pair. Sometimes I think the only thing they had in common was that there were piles of those two movies they needed to get out of the warehouses. Those intrigued me. I'd pick them up and turn them over to look at the credits on the back of the packages to look for any commonality.

clckworang

I had both editions of The Fugitive. I also remember owning Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in 4:3. That release caused a lot of backlash and online petitions, which I signed. Warner Brothers not long after did announce and release a flipper version with "full screen" on one side and widescreen on another. It seemed like such an exciting time for movies.

milo bloom

Yeah, it was an incredible time, when we could actually affect how the studios released DVDs. Like getting the original Japanese audio added to the Princess Mononoke DVD so late in the process they had to put a sticker on the shrink wrap about it.

Travis McClain

Speaking of influencing releases, I fondly remember TVShowsOnDVD.com and their organized campaigns. The 1966 Batman was, as I recall, the top demanded series pretty much the entire time that website operated. Ken Burns should make a documentary about what went into finally getting that series put out on disc. We've only ever heard rumors and speculations about everything from Warner and Fox not agreeing on how to split the money to DC not wanting that embarrassment to be kept alive in the public's consciousness to George Barris owning the rights to the Batmobile and being uncooperative, but to my knowledge, nothing has ever been publicly confirmed as having been a problem, nor have we heard how the issues were ever navigated.

I was always hesitant about getting TV shows on DVD. For one thing, a season could easily be $100 or more. I also just couldn't convince myself I was ever going to re-watch shows enough to justify the price or even the shelf space. I get why they went for large boxes for TV shows at the time, to convey a sense of volume versus the standard DVD Amaray case for a movie. A lot of those TV season boxes were surprisingly unattractive (looking at you, Star Trek spin-offs), but some were spiffy. I loved the BCI Eclipse releases of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra, Princess of Power, and the mural on their spines. Unfolding the package to get to the individual discs was a nuisance, though. I thought the season sets of The Sopranos were elegant. I also dug the original hardback cases for Psych.

Trevor

If I knew then what I know now, I probably would not have bought a single DVD.

milo bloom

But didn't we find out? The story I read was that one of the top producers of the show distributed percentages of the rights amongst his kids so they would always have some kind of income and the trouble was finding all the now grown offspring and convincing them to go in on the project.

I would have bought way less stuff that is just mainstream things that will always be on TV/streaming and more stuff like classic monster movies with really good making-of's and maybe more anime.

BobO'Link

I'd have just delayed my more expensive purchases that've stayed in print (with lower prices and/or BR upgrades, better pq, *and* packaging) and picked up a few things earlier - before they went OOP and I decided I "needed" them... Essentially, I'd be up by a few thousand dollars and have just as much content...

orangerunner

My hesitation towards TV shows was not only the fact I would probably not re-watch them but my feelings about TV shows is that they were "free" when I first watched them - so now I have to pay for them?

Watching movies in the theatre was (and still is) expensive so owning the home video version had a higher perception of value in my mind.

Gobear

I still feel that way about DVDSpot. I contributed a lot of reviews to that site. My first DVDs came with the first machine I bought in 2000, Divine Madness and True Stories.

Alan Smithee

You also could have taped them off the air- that's why in the 80s and 90s I never saw the point of TV shows being released on pre-recorded VHS (or Beta.) I like having the complete original airings of stuff from that era, with commercials. By the late 90s though the networks started keeping their logos onscreen all the time, so that was when I quit watching. Commercial time got excessive also, almost doubling what it used to be. That was a good time to put shows out on disc without any of those annoyances. That was also an early instance of "binge-watching" also; I would usually at least watch every episode that was on a single disc, though I had also taped a few weeks' worth of shows previously then watched them in one sitting.

There was a LOT of TV-related stuff on DVD that didn't really deserve to be released (mainly reality shows), but since it was that means it'll be preserved for eternity. It'll be harder with the HD stuff as only a select few have been on Blu-Ray with the rest left for streaming, where it could just disappear one day and never be seen again.

Travis McClain

I wasn't a fan of channel logos but I acclimated. It was when they started imposing animations on the screen during the TV show in the aughts that I lost my patience. The absolute worst offender in that respect was hands down Spike TV. Their graphics had sound and would "fly" across the screen over the show. Do you know how irksome something has to be for me to decide it isn't worth it watch Deep Space Nine?!

I will also note, I think watching shows uncut undermines them in a certain regard. They were structured to account for those commercial breaks. Part of the viewing experience was to have that suspense fester. Where did that character come from? How did this thing get there? Did she say, "Yes"? It wasn't just for dramas. Comedies had that factor, too. How was he going to explain this? How was she going to fix that? Not being able to pause also meant that if you were going to the bathroom or to get a snack or take out the garbage, etc., you had to be expedient. That timer imposed a certain urgency that amplified the suspense--especially because you didn't know for sure how long the break would last!

I realized this when I went through DS9 a few years ago. I had my choice of where to stream it. At the time, I had access to Netflix but I went with Hulu instead for those ad breaks. They gave me time to remember what happened next. They also gave me time to reflect on the last segment and what I saw this time that maybe I hadn't caught before. A lot of episodes I hadn't seen since they first aired, which meant I was seeing them for the first time knowing how it all played out. I couldn't have contemplated those little things during a split-second fade out/fade in.

All that said, I have every intention of treating myself to the eventual DS9 Blu-ray box set. I think the shift to streaming has changed the game. It was one thing for the bean counters to say they wouldn't sell enough discs to justify HD upgrades. Now, though, it's an embarrassment for DS9 and Voyager to still be in SD while all the rest of Star Trek can be viewed in HD. I expect at least announcement, if not releases, for those by the end of the year. In that case, streaming will actually have benefited us disc collectors.

orangerunner

I agree. I didn't mind the station logo watermark in the corner but once they started with the moving animated ads running along the bottom, that became irritating. A show like "Three's Company" would have an epilogue at the end which would often be cut-out in favour of more commercials. After that, the credits would be squeezed into the top corner and put on fast-forward.

Now that I'm reminded of those things, maybe the DVD versions were worth the money.

PhantomStranger

I'll take logos every day of the week over unending news crawls. Absolutely loathe them on sports and news channels.

Travis McClain

Along those lines, I despise the default setting in most streaming apps to minimize the end credits or just straight up cut out on them to autoplay the next episode if you're watching a series. I can't even find where to turn it off on Paramount+. I want there to be an I Have an Attention Span setting that fixes all that, and ideally it would also prevent a service from autoplaying a trailer--or straight up starting the movie/show!--if you linger longer than five seconds on anything. Disc menus are sometimes tedious but there's no question that the viewing experience is more gratifying.

When they started the crawls, I thought those graphics were separate from the show, like the channel logos and such. Then I started seeing clips of news shows that had aired previously and they still had those original crawls. They're obnoxious in perpetuity.

Alan Smithee

I have zero tolerance for any of that crap. Most services have ways around that which I use- one is Airplay which lets you play content from an iphone or ipad and then send the video and audio to your streaming device in full quality, but playing it through a generic interface that can't do anything like that. Netflix doesn't work with that, but it does work with a Kodi add-on.

Some of Sony's recent 4k and Blu-Rays have a small menu popping up during the end credits giving you the choice of going to the extras or main menu. I've stopped buying their discs because of that. Even movies bought on streaming don't do that (yet, at least)- Sony obviously wants to kill discs at this point. They already pissed me off plenty when they reissued several DVD titles without the widescreen transfers, when they originally had both. They've kept flip-flopping from one of the best companies quality-wise to one of the worst.

Travis McClain

I haven't picked up any recent Sony discs so I haven't encountered that. It certainly sounds obnoxious, though. What surprises me about all of this is that so far, none of the various guilds have stopped these practices. They have all these stringent policies about credits for the full casts and crews, but what's the point if no one can see them? I wouldn't refuse to buy a favorite movie over it, but I'd certainly be disappointed and grouse.