The Green Lantern

[rowyn]

This is nothing about the actual movie, which I'm planing to watch in about ten minutes.

It's about the DVD experience. Netflix sent me this DVD: it's the "rental edition", without whatever special features the normal edition comes with.

It does, however, come with at least 14 minutes of advertising that disables the root menu and the fast-forward buttons on the player.

What amazes me about this, other than the sheer chutzpah of dumping 14 mintues of consecutive ads at the beginning of a movie, is that they apparently think that just because I can't skip the ads, I am going to sit here and watch the ads. And think fondly of whatever product is being advertised, presumably.

I don't mind skippable previews at the beginning of rental DVDs; I often watch them anyway, because I don't hear a whole lot about movies. But the first one wasn't even a preview: it was a commercial for Blu-Ray. I don't know what the others are, because I stopped watching after I determined that (a) it wasn't skippable and (b) it didin't even have the virtue of being over quickly. The DVD player is minimized and muted currently. And will stay that way for another, um, three minutes now? Or however long it takes to get through the commercials. One DVD that did this nonsense would get to the end of one commercial and segue to a new one, just to make it extra-hard to tell how long it would take them to get to the actual product that I wanted to see.

The company credits are Warner Bros. Pictures, De Lines Pictures, and DC Entertainment. The distributor is Warner Home Video. I'm guessing Warner Home Video is responsible for the unskippable ads. I think I'll watch for the pattern the next time this happens. Because I may want to just stop renting or watching anything put out by Warner Home Video.

Comments

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Alienating your customers = bad idea! *nods wisely*

[rowyn]

That's what I'd think! But apparently I am wrong, because lots of companies like to annoy me. Or I am annoyed by the things others do not find annoying, maybe.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

And here I thought only porn videos did that.

...um... or so I heard. From a friend.

[rowyn]

At least in porn, the ads are more porn and that's why you got it anyway, right? >:)

[octantis.livejournal.com]

REVENUE REVENUE REVENUE REVENUE MUST GET REVENUE REVENUE INTERNET KILLING US REVENUE REVENUE REVENUE FFFFFFFFFFFFFF

[rowyn]

If someone paid them to do this, they should get their money back. c.c

[terrana.livejournal.com]

If you're willing to watch DVDs on your computer (the word "minimised" suggests you are), allow me to recommend VLC for one simple reason: it lets you skip "unskippable" ads and, for most DVDs, will just jump straight to the main menu, bypassing them entirely.

[rowyn]

Cool! Thanks for the tip. :D

[argonel.livejournal.com]

Making things worse for the people who have shown a willingness to pay you money. that really seems like a winning plan to keep people from getting stuff for free by pirating. I'm already at the point where I check Riaa-radar before buying music. If it sold by a RIAA member company I find other music instead. There are a lot of artists out there that aren't collaborating with people who are trying to infringe on my rights.

[rowyn]

It's certainly true that there's a lot of good music -- and other entertainment -- that's not produced by big media companies. I think most of the music I buy is still from big media, alas. Although I'm not really sure ... I don't buy a whole lot of music either way.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

I have experienced that a few times myself. When I realize that I cannot skip, I take that time to go into the kitchen and pop some popcorn. By the time it's done, the menu is up and I'm ready to go.

[jongibbs.livejournal.com]

You have to wonder what bean-brain came up with that idea.

[alinsa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Warner sucks about this, and it really annoys me. The worst, I think, is when even the "director's cut" is removed from the 'rental' disc. Generally (but not always) the director's cut is actually better than the theatrical version, so what they're actually doing is making their customers enjoy the movie less, so they're less likely to buy it.

But yeah, Warner gets no more of my money. Which is a pity, given I've liked several of their recent things.