oxonce

to HD-DVD feature/menu programming wise? We have all seen how the HD-DVD titles auto-play and the menus appear on-screen with that stupid "whoosh" sound.

The thing that bothers me is when you press the Subtitle button while the feature is playing, it will put that blue box in the middle of the screen with instructions. Why doesn't it also show which Subtitle track is selected in this dumb blue box? Would it be so hard to have for example "1/3 ENG, 2/3 FRE, 3/3 Comm." appear in the top corner of the screen? You don't know what you selected until the blue box disappears and the subtitles finally appear.

Is Blu-Ray going to be the same way as far as auto-play and on-screen feature menus? I hope not. If you could design the layout for a Blu-Ray disc, how would you have it? Would you want it to auto-play or go directly to a Main Menu so you can set it up before the feature actually starts?

I'm just looking for some comments...

OXonce

FYI...I know I posted this in a different forum, but I'm looking for more feedback.

Drexl

I would allow the user to set the player to autoplay or go to the menu.

Josh Z

Only the Warner titles do that. The Universal titles have different menu structures.

Yes, the Warner menus are annoying. There's going to be a learning curve here. And it's not like there aren't plenty of regular DVDs with annoying menus.

This is frustrating, but I'm sure Toshiba could address it with a firmware update.

Until the players come out, we have no idea what Blu-Ray is going to be like. They may be a little more streamlined and slick, but would that really be worth twice the price to you?

darkside

BTW, the whoosh sound can be turned off. Its an option on the menu for the disc when you bring it up.

RoboDad

When the DVD format was first released, Warner was then an advocate of automatically starting the movie, and only displaying the menu when the button was pressed, or at the end of the movie. However, in 1998 a major survey was conducted on peoples' preferences regarding DVD features, and one of the questions dealt with whether people preferred automatically starting the movie, or going to the menu when a disc is inserted. The menu was by far the more popular choice.

I suspect that Warner is assuming that peoples' preference will change with the addition of the ability to bring up the menu without stopping the movie. While this is definitely a nice feature, I still prefer having the disc go to the menu on startup.