DVD Question....

[anathema]

Originally posted by frogboy4
LOL! I've noticed that the special features on my Kermit Swamp Years DVD don't work properly on my DVD Rom drive. It fast forwards through all the menus so you have to click quickly. It's kind of funny, but very sad. It really is hard to wade throught the standards these days.

That is indeed odd! I wonder what they're doing...I'll have to take the disc apart and see Which player software are you using? I know PowerDVD has some nasty little bugs.

On the subject of standards, I've just heard that the decision has been taken to allow progressive-scan 625/50 video on DVDs (probably as of the next revision of the spec). Apparently one company was pushing for this NOT to be included...beats the h*ll out of me why! Prog-scan 525/60 has been around since day one.

The DVD spec itself makes for pretty dense reading. It's not entirely logical in the way it's laid out, and as it appears to have been translated from Japanese into English by a Korean rice-husker armed only with a copy of 'How to speak French', you have to do a lot of reading between the lines... It also has a tendency to contradict itself :-(

Heck, even VHS tapes had issues. I've worked at a video store before and have first-hand knowlege that for no apparent reason, some tapes will not work in certain VCRs. It isn't a PAL/NTSC issue. Just for some reason even some upscale VCRs wouldn't read the information on some recordings propperly. Weirdness.

That's very strange! There have been a few tweaks to the VHS spec over the years, but they're supposed to be backwards-compatible. Of course, rental tapes take a lot of punishment, so it's possible that a VCR would have problems with a badly-worn tape, but the machine itself would also have to be pretty badly worn for that to happen.

And I know that CD specs were also ignored in the 80s. I owned several players that didn't play certain discs. Heck, they boycotted Sinede when everybody else did. LOL!

My favourite story is this: with all the copy-protection schemes being tried on audio CDs at the moment, many people have found that they can't play a protected disc in a CD-ROM drive (and many cheap CD players are nothing more than a CD-ROM and a small motherboard, so this is a big problem). However, without exception, these protection schemes break the CD spec. Philips, who own and license the spec, have threatened to withdraw the rights of these labels to use the 'Compact Disc' logo on the protected discs, since they are technically no longer CDs

 

[frogboy4]

Yup. I've seen where perfectly good tapes won't play in top shelf new VCRs. It's rare, but it could be a malfunction in the tracking component. Craziness. We'd usually just refund the money of those who knew the right answers to our questions.

The copy protection tactics are completely lame and unnecessary. If the companies put out competitive and affordable products there would be no need to dupe them. Most people want glossy packaged products.

 

[anathema]

Originally posted by frogboy4
The copy protection tactics are completely lame and unnecessary. If the companies put out competitive and affordable products there would be no need to dupe them. Most people want glossy packaged products.

Companies can't compete with 'free' (Ok, 'the cost of a blank tape/disc' . There will always be people who want something for nothing.

That said, I don't see the point of any copy-protection scheme. It just seems a complete waste of time/effort, since whatever is used will be cracked or bypassed within weeks/months of release. "Keeping the honest people honest" is garbage: the 'honest' people won't bother trying in the first place, and someone who does want to make a copy won't have any problems in finding the tools to do so.

The CSS protection used on DVD is pathetically weak, and in any case is completely ineffective against the big-scale piracy the Hollywood studios are most concerned about, since all the pirates do is a bit-for-bit copy of the disc, including all the copy protection. Dual-layer discs are a slightly better bet in that there's currently no way to burn them, but I doubt that's stopping the pirates

CSS is in fact so weak it can be cracked in real-time by a Perl script using brute-force methods...

 

[frogboy4]

You hacker, you! LOL! I think dupes would be minimal if prices went down on CDs and DVDs. I know people who will buy several versions of the same CD if the covers are different. Those are extreme collectors, but it more than makes up for piracy issues.

Getting back to DVDs. I still don't like the interfaces they use. I think some of the intros are rather tacky and splashy. They detract away from the film. Many people have this obsession for extras and neat graphics and you think I would too, but I am more of a film purist. I just want a simple high quality print in the original aspect ratio, maybe a commentary feature. The fun and games could come separately. It seems the films are ignored in favor of a bunch of extras. Most of them add up to be a lot of nothing in a shiny package. I rent too many DVDs with overly long intros I can't zip through and extras I feel that I have to watch. Who really wants to see the actors flub their lines in Bring It On? LOL!

 

[anathema]

Originally posted by frogboy4
You hacker, you! LOL! I think dupes would be minimal if prices went down on CDs and DVDs. I know people who will buy several versions of the same CD if the covers are different. Those are extreme collectors, but it more than makes up for piracy issues.

Why thank you! I am indeed a hacker, although probably not in the sense you mean ;-)

Getting back to DVDs. I still don't like the interfaces they use. I think some of the intros are rather tacky and splashy. They detract away from the film. Many people have this obsession for extras and neat graphics and you think I would too, but I am more of a film purist. I just want a simple high quality print in the original aspect ratio, maybe a commentary feature. The fun and games could come separately. It seems the films are ignored in favor of a bunch of extras. Most of them add up to be a lot of nothing in a shiny package. I rent too many DVDs with overly long intros I can't zip through and extras I feel that I have to watch. Who really wants to see the actors flub their lines in Bring It On? LOL!

Extras have their place - I produce them myself on occasion - but animated menus just irritate me. Once you've seen them, they rapidly become boring :-( And unskippable intros/trailers are just obnoxious! Sadly, the DVD spec has many many features which are open to abuse in that manner (almost certainly put there at the behest of studios - they serve very few legitimate technical purposes). Once again, Disney are a prime offender - are you getting the impression that I don't like them very much? ;-)

 

[frogboy4]

I agree. Disney's release of Muppet Christmas Carol totally irritates me because I can't skip through the intro. Sure, it's only about 8 seconds, but it seems like a lifetime when all I want to do is view the horribly cropped film. More and more DVDs have blocked the jump forward button in their openings.

 

[anathema]

Originally posted by frogboy4
I agree. Disney's release of Muppet Christmas Carol totally irritates me because I can't skip through the intro. Sure, it's only about 8 seconds, but it seems like a lifetime when all I want to do is view the horribly cropped film. More and more DVDs have blocked the jump forward button in their openings.

I'm about to start writing a DVD player. I don't see myself implementing the 'block controls' feature somehow...

As for MCC, 'less there's a widescreen release over here in the next year or so, I'll be transferring my laserdisc copy to DVD

 

[Chilly Down]

I hate it when they don't allow you to skip the intro. What's the point? If the person's trying to get past it, they're not going to be entertained if you force them to stay there. Scooby-Doo is a disc like that. OK, the opening was cute ONCE, but every time I restarted over the course of two days...ugh.

I don't mind them putting copyguards on. To illustrate, I lock my doors every night even though I know that a person could easily break into my house if they wanted to. I'm just not going to INVITE them in, that's all. But admittedly copyguards are irritating when they prevent the disc from working properly.

So the Toy Story disc is messed up, huh? That's one of the first discs I tried to play when I got my DVD player. I was angry practically to the point of tears! I had no idea all the discs were affected like that.

The OTHER disc I tried out that night, and the first one I owned, was my Labyrinth DVD. When I first started playing it, it was fullscreen. So I went into the menu options and changed it to widescreen. Why, oh why, can't ALL DVDs be like this? Why this ridiculous trouble with putting one version on each side, or having to double-layer it, or selling them seperately, or not even giving us the option? Why, why, why?

Disney has no idea how it hurt itself by refusing to even listen to the fans about widescreen. I still haven't bought either disc. (Looking much more forward to the Roger Rabbit DVD!)

 

[anathema]

The 'Toy Story' disc isn't technically defective, it's just that the cheaper players out there can't handle it cos their manufacturers skimped. The extras disc with 'Gladiator' had a similar problem: the cheap players didn't have enough memory fitted to cope with the disc's menus, and crashed. There wasn't anything wrong with the disc.

I'm not aware of any copy-protection scheme preventing a disc from being used. What irritates me is that it effectively makes it impossible to watch the disc you've bought on anything that wasn't sanctioned by the studios. I have no particular wish to run Windows or MacOS, yet the DMCA makes it illegal for say a Linux DVD player to decrypt CSS. Of course, the DMCA doesn't apply over here

I don't know about your 'Labyrinth' disc, I've not seen that release. However, the normal approach is to let the player decide (according to the user's settings) which image to output. I've never seen it controlled via the disc menus.

The bottom line is this: some customers want widescreen, some want fullscreen. The studio may decide to try and cater to both, or they may decide to cater only to the one they perceive as having the bigger market. In Europe, this is normally the widescreen market (the original release of 'The Crow' being a notable exception). In the US it's all too often the fullscreen market. I expect this to change once you guys get serious about widescreen TVs ;-)

Disney probably just don't care: they're in the business of selling children's entertainment, and they know that the kids won't a) know any better, and b) care. The market for selling their product to children is much much bigger than the market for selling it to the fans. Eventually, when widescreen sets become more common, the kids may start to notice the black borders down the sides of the picture, and complain, at which point Disney can happily sell widescreen copies to the same customers. On the other hand, it's possible to have the TV stretch the image horizontally to fill the display, and the kids may be just as happy with this. (My take on it is that the feature is evil...)

Personally, I'll buy MTI at some point, since they got the UK version right, but not MCC.

 

[Chilly Down]

Sorry I wasn't clear about my Labyrinth disc, Alex. I meant the options on the player, not the disc. My point is, I changed my preferences with a click of a button. Why can't it always be like this?