December 15, 2004
Forced DVD Trailers
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Okay, so it's not earth-shatteringly important. But I am sick and tired of paying twenty bucks for a DVD, only to be forced to watch commercials! That's one of the big reasons why you get a DVD, so you don't have to watch it on commercial TV. I just got my first Amazon shipment of DVDs that I'm ordering, and wanted to check out Shrek 2. But before you get to the main menu, you have to sit through 'previews' of upcoming stuff they're working on. In this case, two trailers for Dreamworks features. The skip and menu features are disabled here. This, thankfully, is not on most DVDs, but Disney has them a lot, and now Dreamworks, it seems. You ask me, whatever genius decided to add the "feature" to disable such things on DVDs should be taken out and shot. A DVD player which could override such blocks would be worth buying, if they could make such a thing. Fortunately, the fast-forward feature still works on the Shrek DVD, and you can get through the trailers after a minute or so--often times, the forced trailers do have some way of getting around them, but you have to try three or four things before you find them.
Now, I've bought perhaps over 100 DVDs, a sizable investment, largely because the prices are usually just reasonable enough--but the forced trailers are exactly the kind of thing that would drive me to download the movie from the Internet instead. Commercials are for people who don't pay. Not for people who just coughed up some cash for the media. Pardon my opinion.
By the way, if you are considering buying the Shrek 2 DVD, and one of the factors pushing you in that direction is the "all-new surprise ending," then pull back--it's not what you think. It's not a new ending, it's simply another karaoke video like they had on the end of the first film. If you like that, then great--and I like the film enough to want to have the DVD anyway--but this is one of those cases of blatant false advertising.
You are SOOOO right. I bought the DVD and was really p***ed off to have to sit through the trailers. My brother has a DVD writer and I'm gonna have to get him to re-author this DVD before I break it into little pieces!!!
And the new ending - what a rip off.
The film itself is great though!!!
J
Posted by: Jeff Dyer at January 2, 2005 01:23 AM
I agree wholeheartedly with the rant.
Luckily for me, I usually can fast-forward the opening previews or simply just leave them to an empty audience.
I'm all for a means of disabling it through publisher or consumer.
Posted by: Cubed at May 6, 2005 01:11 AM
Actually, there are means, if you have the right software. You can get the DVD-ripping software, and, if you do the settings right, when you copy the DVD you can change it so you can zap past the trailers (or even get rid of the trailers altogether). The same software allows for getting rid of region protection and other stuff too. But it is a bit involved and as I said, you need to buy the right software. There may even be loss of image quality if the studio used dual-layered disks and you use single-layered (that's why they use dual-layered DVDs for videos, to prevent casual copying), as the ripping software has to compensate and compress the image to fit on a DVD-R.
But it is legal, as you bought the DVD and have the right to make a copy strictly for your personal use.
Posted by: Luis at May 6, 2005 01:17 AM
Luis, you are correct that it is not copyright infringment to make that new version as you suggest, but it is NOT legal. In the US it was criminalized by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Decrypting your DVD like that is a violation of Title 17 Chapter 12 Section 1201(a)(1)(A). The software that you need to use to do so is also itself illegal under 1201(a)(2)(A,B, and C). Violatiing the DMCA carries a penalty of up to $250,000 and up to 5 years in prison, double that on a second offence. The EU passed an equivalent European Copyright Directive, the EUCD. The US has also been forcing this law across the globe in the supposedly "Free Trade" treaties. It it is imposed in AUSFTA the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement, it is imposed in CAFTA the Central America Free Trade Agreement, and I expect US has forced into other treaties as well and I expect the US will continue to do so.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation currently has a handy dandy website up to ask your representative to fix the DMCA and decriminalize non-infringing activites: Help fix the DMCA.
Posted by: Alsee at August 5, 2005 01:39 PM
If it's illegal, that's gotta be BS statute written by the MPAA and made into law through lobbyist payments.
But that's OK for me--I don't rip DVDs anyway, it's far too time-consuming for my tastes. But I do have a DVR which can record DVDs, and so I can copy movies directly from one DVD to another simply by playing and recording at the same time.
Is that legal?
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at August 5, 2005 02:04 PM
