I’m becoming more annoyed with DVD production companies these days.
Nearly every Disney DVD has about a half hour of previews before the feature starts. Many of the discs don’t let you push the menu button to skip directly to the menu. It’s not possible to skip over the FBI warning or the INTERPOL warning at the beginning of many of these DVDs.
You can buy a blank writeable DVD at Staples for less than a dollar now, and still these movie DVDs cost $25 and up at the botiques. They jack up the price of the box citing the 43+ hours of extra features. Have you really ever bought a disc because of the extra features?
And what of all of the promise of DVD? Very few of the discs have both the theatrical version and the director’s cut at full length on the same disc. Instead, we get the theatrical version and a menu of scenes that were cut from the movie. (The extended editions of the Lord of the Rings aren’t even exceptions, because you can’t watch one or the other version without watching a different disc set.) Back when the movie industry was touting the technology, they said this was all possible, and they have yet to deliver on their promise.
I actually hae a couple of DVDs that use the multi-angle feature. Did you even know that existed? It lets you watch the same scene from different camera angles, and put syou in control of what you’re watching. More DVDs should have this option.
…And don’t even get me started on the region encoding madness…
What I propose is that a company with not much to lose (see many companies in China) creates a DVD player that solves at least some of the more annoying problems. The ultimate DVD player would have the following characteristics:
- Play DVDs from any region.
- Play DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-V, VCD, SVCD, PhotoCD, CD-R of JPEGs, and CD-R or DVD-R of raw MPEG clips.
- Connect to the network wirelessly and play videos from SMB shares.
- Remember where the movie actually starts on a disc (by pushing a button or contacting a service over the net) and start there instead of playing through all of the up-front junk the studios insist you paid to watch.
- Remove Macrovision so I can make clean clip reels on tape.
- Have front-panel buttons that allow access to every player option.
- 5 or 7 channel audio out and digital out.
- Composite, component, S-video, DVI, and HD video hookups.
I’m sure there is something I’m missing, but that seems to cover my needs.
What would be really nice are components that all talk to each other. Maybe something like that cheesy JVC link cable thing, but something that actually works. It could be something like S-CART, but actually useful - with digital channels, control lines, and room to grow. Every component would have a port and you’d plug one line from that port into a jack on the back of your tuner/master-controller. Powered Firewire? You wouldn’t even need controls on the individual devices any more, since you could control it through the wire. Yes, this is a good idea.
I mean, imagine being able to push one button to turn on your TV. Ok, this sounds crazy, but I have to push at least three buttons to turn on my TV. Having everything operate on one control would be very, very nice.
So whoever wants to start a company to begin producing this type of device and wants to hire me as a designer, feel free to drop me a line.
