Why DVDs are starting to suck

On a recent purchased DVD, I found myself forced to watch four commercials for other DVDs the movie company wanted me to buy. It advertised that I could skip the ads, or push Menu to go directly to the main DVD menu. Which is nice, except every time you pushed either the Next or Menu button, a nice “Operation Not Allowed” message appeared. So in effect, I could not skip past these commercials, and every time I wanted to watch this film, I would be forced to sit and watch four minutes of advertising.

I could understand a rental DVD that forces the consumer to watch four minutes of ads on the disc if there were some benefit to me, say a reduced rental price. Rather than $3.99 to rent the movie, there would be a $2.99 version with the ads. I could accept that. But to force me to watch ads on a DVD I own is simply tacky wrong.

Bad enough that every movie now plays ten to fifteen minutes of ads before we get to see the film we paid to see. Now they are invading our home purchased movies as well.

Hey, why they are at it, why not place some audio ads on CDs that people cannot skip over. When you start up your computer, you have to sit there and watch four ads before you get to your desktop. When you get in your car in the morning, the transmission won’t shift into Drive until you have listened to three messages about the latest GM cars you could be driving. Every time you hit the snooze on your alarm clock, you have to listen to a McDonalds breakfast commercial before it turns off. Before you’re refrigerator opens, you have to listen to the latest Pepsi ad. Want to place a call on your cell? You have to hear two ads first.

If all the above sounds ridiculous, then why do we accept the same practice in the movie theatre and our DVDs? A recent DVD purchase, the Frosty the Snowman box-set for my two-year-old daughter, will not let you jump right to the show. I have to literally push the buttons at least five times before the movie can start. Disney is one of the worst offenders, so much so that I have actually returned a Disney disc after finding out that there was no way my kids could watch the movie until seven, SEVEN ads played first.

Montages on DVDs are also getting worse. You know, when the disc will finally let you get to the main menu, you have to watch twenty seconds of clips of the film you are about to watch, video feeds moving from left to right, or audio clips playing over still photos before the actual DVD menu appears.

As less and less people go to the movie theaters, the paradigm is shifting to home movie watching. As a consequence, the movie companies have much faster turn-around between theatrical release and DVD release. As such, they are stuffing as much ad content on DVDs as they can, calling these ads “Bonus Content” and expecting us dumb consumers to sheepishly continue to fork over the cash. But I, for one, am getting tired of it, and will be cutting way back on how many DVDs I purchase in the future. The content providers are simply killing this great medium.