DVD packaging can make your head spin

By John DeFore
SPECIAL TO AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Friday, June 29, 2007

Picture this: You've paid $30 for a disc of shiny plastic that will play "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" once you slip it into your home entertainment system.

But first you must extract said disc from its package. A cardboard sleeve encloses it, attached by a long piece of tape. Peel the latter, slide the former. Then note the cellophane. Slice it and discard, then proceed to the evil, nasty "security labels" that seal all three open sides of the case — and will tear apart, leave gunky residue, and otherwise mar the package if you have not recited the appropriate black-magic incantation.

Having undressed the box, you think you're set — until you find that the integrity of this "Virgin" is further protected by two small, sharp plastic latches that must be broken off. By the time you've got the plastic case open, you realize that the rattling sound you've been hearing was the DVD itself, which has jostled around so much during shipping that it's scratched and unplayable.

In this season of eco-consciousness, you'd think movie studios would want to scale back the amount of plastic and paper they waste this way. You'd also think, after a decade with the DVD format, they'd have ironed out a few other consumer complaints as well.

Leaving aside the audio/visual quality of the movie itself, which at this point is usually pretty good, there's all the nonsense you have to go through to access the feature.

Many studios want to force-feed you trailers for other releases, too. After customers complained, most discs allow you to skip these, but the procedure varies from one company to the next (and isn't even consistent within every studio's catalog): This one requires you to hit the "skip chapter" button, that one needs "Menu," another cannot be skipped but can be scanned at high speed, making Jim Carrey look even more manic. It's almost as if the studios met in a smoky room and agreed, "if we confuse them enough, they'll give up and watch the ads."

Then there's the anti-piracy propaganda. FBI warning screens have been with us since the first cavemen set up their VHS decks, but lately we've seen loud, quick-edit commercials that go beyond the dry threat of "five years in a federal prison and a fine of $250,000" to work at a kindergarten level: You wouldn't steal a car, they say, so why would you download a movie? Of course, the poor suckers forced to view this ad are the ones who didn't download the film online. Studios are preaching to the choir, and a look at YouTube's anti-piracy parodies proves the congregation is making fun of them.

The solution to some of these annoyances has been to slip the disc in, then head to the kitchen for refreshments. By the time corn is popped, only the sofa will have learned the important lesson that Oliver Stone's director-commentary track "does not reflect the views" of the studio, its corporate parent, or most reasonable people for that matter.

But Warner Bros. foiled even that tactic when they designed discs that, once they do get to the Main Menu screen, will only stay there for 20 or 30 seconds, and then start to play the film with no prompting.

Warner's DVDs are the major-studio gold standard in terms of bonus features and quality restoration, but where did they get this idea? Do they think home viewers are so inert they can't lift the remote and hit "play movie" when they're good and ready?

Ah, well. Maybe it's just that it's too hot outside, or that Tuesday's a pretty slow one for new DVD releases, that makes letting off steam seem the thing to do today. All I know is that these petty grievances distract some of my grumpy-old-man energy away from the bigger, bash-head-against-wall consumer complaint currently afflicting videophiles: Why on Earth is Hollywood continuing to wage its idiotic, wasteful battle over which high-definition disc format, Blu-ray or HD-DVD, will be the standard for all the new HDTVs out there?

Addendum: After this column was filed, Blockbuster announced it had chosen the Blu-ray format, almost surely sealing the fate of HD-DVD.