You Know What’s Bullshit (episode 11)
May 25, 2009
The Bullshit Man is back with s’more buuuuulllshit in this special super deluxe extended, longest episode of You Know What’s Bullshit ever!
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Comments (326)
You deserve a T.V. show.
Dan Aykroyd feels the same about VHS, as do I.
My friend got me the Star Trek TNG Complete Series boxed set for my birthday and god damn is there some fucking stupid packaging. There’s a plastic box that goes over a plastic tray/basket thing and then there are 3 lumps of DVD cases. But they’re not fucking DVD cases. They’re like trays that are taped together. I’m not even kidding about that. They’re literally taped together with some sort of packing tape.
I hate how movie companies keep putting ads into everything now. Before you can even look at the menu of a DVD and before you can watch a movie in a theater.
And the region thing, god damn that pisses me off. From what I’ve been told, it’s to keep sales up in the different markets because the bonus features are different. It reminds me of how bands do special bonus tracks on foreign CDs. I want all the bonus crap but nooo, if you’re in the USA, you pretty much get shafted out of at least part of the stuff and so you have to go and buy an import but then you can’t play it on your DVD player so you have to get a region free DVD player…
Well, you knew all that already. Great vid!
AWESOME! James, you made my day. lol
nice work James, I have a Bullshit idea,
1: The price admission to go see movies now days, and the most annoying thing, the popcorn cost like $ 10 when IT SHOULD ONLY COST $1, THAT PISSES ME THE FUCK OFF!!!!
You are so right. My neighbour got so feed up with menus, he started ripping all of his DVDs without’em. So, both backup and simplefied version in one disk.
Me? I have a DivX version of all of my DVDs. Heasier to watch in the Media Center, and in most cases, better subtitles (I’m Portuguese, and even though I can do without subtitles, I’m used to them).
Okay James, get out of my head with this series!! I have went on tirades about everything you’ve mentioned on here before with my friends. DVDs weren’t always like they are now either-you used to be able to hit menu and bypass all the trailers and shit. Now it’s almost impossible to get one that will let us pass it all and go right to the movie menu. And I don’t buy box sets for all the reasons you mentioned. It’s just a pain in my ass.
Now when you go to the theater to see a movie, have you noticed we are bombarded with CAR COMMERCIALS, not just previews? What the fuck is that about?
Thanks for all the constant videos you put up and keeping us all entertained. Off to retweet this on Twitter for ya.
PS – Yet another cameo of a TV tray. Love it. I swear unless you’re from the Tri-State area, no one knows what the hell they are. I grew up in Upper Darby and now living in Florida. When my friends come by they look at me like, “What is that amazing contraption, almost like a mini table!” Dumbasses.
Well, for the first time, I have to almost completely disagree. I love DVD’s. I love having the ability to watch cometary, and deleted scenes, and the “making of.” I don’t generally buy box-sets, so that’s not a biog deal for me. All of the Shows that i’ve bought have the ability to play each individual episode without going through all that crap. As for skipping, just download it and you won’t have to worry about that. I usually watch DVD’s and movies on my PS3. I can almost always go straight to the menu…James, I’m sorry, but DVD’s are far from Bullshit!
Hhahahahahahahajhaa that’s so true man!
I love old analog stuff.
I agree with James too. My Simpsons Boxsets all have this 1.5 minute clip about how downloading films illegaly is literally stealing. I went and BOUGHT the DVD, why are they preaching to the people who didn’t break the law? And no, you can’t skip clip, I have to watch it everytime I put the disc in.
So I decided to just rip the DVDs onto my hard drive and burn them, at least I can have all episodes on one disc as opposed to 4 or 5.
Oh my God… the runtimes! I spent what felt like an eternity trying to find the runtime on my T2 DVD just last week to compare it to the Blu-ray that was just released. I heard there was an even more extended extended version on the Blu-ray… which I’m still not sure of.
And seeing the F.H.E. logo on the Ninja Turtles VHS brought back SO many memories…!
And WendyFromPhilly, I live in Tennessee and I have many TV trays! They’re magnificent!
You sure covered most of the bullshit aspect of DVD’s, but there’s this one thing I noticed was missing.
“Play All” function.
My two best examples of this is X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I live in the “Region 2″ part of the world, so I don’t know if the american DVD’s are any different, but anyway. Those mentioned are TV-series, right? So there’s a few episodes on each DVD, right? Not so hard to fuck up, but they sure did. There isn’t any Play All function on either of these! The episodes are about 40 minutes in length, so after each episode, I have to either wait for it to go to the episode menu by itself, or push the menu button on the controller. But even if I push the menu button I’m brought to the episode menu, and I have to click my way out to the MAIN menu, then select the next episode, THEN I can choose to play the next episode. With X-Files, it’s rather okay, since the episodes are at least arranged in a from-left-to-right-order, but in Buffy, each season has it’s own layout with the episodes in each corner of the menu! What the hell? This makes it hard to even determine what order to watch them in, and the boxes doesn’t show it either, so for every new season, I had to look up an episode guide on the internet, just to see which freaking episode I was supposed to watch next! What a load of bullshit.
Other than that, I personally kinda like DVD’s.
@ Wakkidus – Hmm….then maybe they just don’t make it down to Florida! Good to know others are aware of the magnificence of the TV tray!
@mania. Tell me about it. The Star Trek DVD’s constantly never have a play all option. Also the worst thing ever is when the company refuses to put a chapter point to skip the fucking opening.
three thumbs up for being totally right!
Great episode, James! Couldn’t agree more on the points you’ve made there!
I guess the bullshit i hate the most about DVDs is the regions. I live in region 4 but went a couple of times to the US and bought some DVD sets which are way cheaper there, but it’s a pain in the ass to make them work, I can only watch them on my computer or on my PS2! That’s Bullshit!
No special features = Bullshit
Very good and very entertaining.
That being said, here is some “bullshit” with this site:
A) Those annoying adds that pop up advertising something I couldn’t care less. Interrupting the vid.
B) I can rant on about this, but in short: All your videos here are in flash. It’s a pain in the ass to save flash vids, then you need to re-encode them into something more stable, ex: flv to xvid (losing quality + wasting time). At least at screwattack you can download them directly (WMV3) and can view them without a flash layer f’ing everything up.
Anyway, good vid tho, this is just an issue ive wanted to bring up for a while. Seemed like the perfect time considering you talked about similar issues.
lol! It’s true DVDs are bullshit! But if you think DVD are bad… wait till you see BLU RAYS! They are RANCID BULLSHIT!!!
Is your DVD just as bad or did you have any say when it came to the navigating of the menus?
I completely agree with the run-time thing. What’s so hard about putting that on dvd’s?
Amen!
Another thing to add on top your list, besides the occasional lack of “play all” other people noted for Star Trek:TOS & other TV show sets:
Some DVD players flat-out don’t like certain DVDs!
I don’t know if it’s an encoding error on the discs or flaws with the DVD players in question, but I’ve gotten a few discs that either flat-out refused to play or, in one case, would consistently crash the DVD player to the point that the power button wouldn’t work, forcing me to unplug it. These are scratch-free discs that were straight from the packaging and worked in another make/model elsewhere in the house (and my computer).
With a VHS, you just pop it in and hit play. If you have auto tracking, that fixes most playback problems without you having to intervene. Sometimes I’ll fast forward to the end and then rewind it, if it’s having persistent tracking problems. A tape has to have been really manhandled and crinkled to refuse to play.
Also, I love the cheapo DVD movie releases that just start playing after it starts reading the disc. I don’t usually watch bonus features and never listen to commentary, so if the newer release isn’t an alternate cut of the movie, I just go with the late-`90s releases you find in bargain bins. Ditto with the combo box sets at Target, Best Buy, etc. that fit a series of movies (or related movies) onto a couple of no-frills DVDs.
Good ep. Pretty much covered it all, I think.
Awesome, awesome…couldn’t agree more!
There’s a reason I watch all my dvds on my computer. First it’s region free. Secondly, I can skip all kinds of intros, logos and commercials and crap like that, thanks to DeCSS. Still requires the extra press of the skip-button, but well worth it as I got my computer hooked up to a TV anyway.
Shame I can’t play Bluray that way…yet…
I have to disagree with some of what you said James.
First off those little tabs on the side of the DVD case are actually a good idea. Have you ever had a DVD where you stepped on it and it broke and wont close, or simply has too many books inside to stay closed? That’s what those SHOULD be for.
Second most box sets, if they do have al the DVDs, most of the times have sequels which don’t fit in the box. I never buy box sets because of that (unless they’re tv shows seasons 1-whatever).
Third, some DVD players actually do start a DVD off from where you started it. It usually says on the box, I know my first DVD player would do that.
Fourth, don’t throw your boxes in the garbage, recycle them
:p
Good video though James!
Well i like DVDs because of there higher video quality. I like Bluray even more because it has an even higher quality. But you’re right, why won’t they just let watch you the movie. No you have to watch the stupid clips from other movies and the clip that tells you that pirating is evil, you know what, those things makes me want to download the movies.
That’s the funniest Bullshit ever.
I signed up so I can comment here (though I’ve been watching for years).
The points you’ve made are beyond correct.
For me the worst offender of “Fucked Up DVD Box” goes to The Simpsons Season 6. The first five seasons were boxed normally, you just unfold the case for your desired DVD. Then they sold Season 6 in the shape of Homer’s head where you opened it at the top and the insides were just a jumbled mess of advertisements and plastic.
Luckily they went back to the normal box-style for Season 7 but still sell Head Boxes as “Special Editions” and gouge the price.
Also, I hate Digital Fast Forward as well.
Get out of the format war, move all your stuff to a mac mini, play everything through VLC and on to your plasma.
Tell me about this bullshit James. Although I’ve rarely had the DVD skipping problems, I can easily agree with the rest of the points, most especially the region codes. As a result of that bullshit, there’s DVDs I couldn’t get until they were actually out in Europe such as Futurama: Bender’s Big Score and Metalocalypse. Now THAT is certainly bullshit!
This is without a doubt your best YKWB rant yet.
You have just said what we have all been thinking and yelling about for a while, except you did it better… I agree with everything, and my friends and I have had the exact same discussions…
I did notice however, that when you play a DVD on a computer, you can skip through all that crap that you are unable to skip through on a DVD player… not sure why, but that’s the way it is. Too bad I’d rather watch a DVD on a 50 inch plasma rather than my 17 inch monitor.
You keep forgetting something James! The fact that a lot of DVDs come with fuckin sleeves. And 99% of the time, the damn sleeve is the same exact information/picture/everything as the damn video itself. The only time this was different was for The Dark Knight (at least on Blu-ray). Other than that, I have for example The Mummy and the damn sleeve offers nothing new that the actual case! That’s bullshit and a fuckin waste.
@The Angry Movie Dork
Movie theatres don’t make a lot of money most of the money they make is sent to the movie studios. Also I’m surprised you don’t know but a dork is a synonym of a whale’s penis
Best YKWB ever. Totally agree on the runtime and chapters, IT’S BULLSHIT!!!
wow, almost 4 minutes, usually these things are like 50 seconds lol.
I have been saying that since about the time DVDs came out. I’ve put up with a lot of abuse for my beliefs… The worst though is when you rent a movie and it skips.
This bullshit is analogous to that of video games. The jingles can generally be skipped, but there are still games in which you CAN’T SKIP THE FUCKING CUTSCENES!
What gets on my nerves is how the newest DVD releases come in 1 or 2 disk sets. When DVDs were newer a 2 disk set would come standard.
Also, I hear that New Line is going to release Lord of the Rings on Blu-Ray in theatrical and extended sets separately! What a joke. The disks have a huge capacity and the option to watch either from one set should be a given. I hope nobody buys the theatrical, it makes no sense and would send the company a strong message about greed.
There is a way to get past all the previews.
When the DVD starts the previews or menu, push stop, or what ever button will get you to the DVD player menu. That is the menu that says (company) DVD player.
From there you can start the movie. One way is to push 1 and enter or 1 and play.
If that will not work, try the DVD player setting menu. There should be a tidal or chapter option select 1 of them. This could start the movie or bring you directly to the DVD movie menu.
The way you do this will depend on your DVD player, but when you know how to do it for one movie it should be the same for all DVD’s you put in that one DVD player.
As for scratching will it can be avoided if you are careful.
1.if a DVD is not playing it should be in the box.
2. never touch the shiny side
3. If there is dust or a smudge on it do not try to wipe it off with your shirt, use a micro fiber cloth.
4. Do not lone your DVD to any one they may not be careful.
I must say I completely agree with the “bullshit man” here… in fact I just had this argument a few days ago with one of my friends… I brought up most of these points as well as others I find annoying.
Lately I find myself, if it’s an older movie, looking for the VHS rather then the DVD.
You hit it right there James. Everything is so spot on.
One thing I`d like to add is the fact alot of older DvDs from series of whatever usually have like 3-4 episodes of each. I`m sure you can fit more than 3 episodes of fucking Transformers Armada on each disk when the series is about 52 episodes but because of all that scene selection animation and ads all over it of course you couldn`t.
Amen.
Also SOAD is awesome.
[...] Read the original here: You Know What’s Bullshit (episode 11) [...]
WendyFromPhilly: Hi, I’m Sierra from Philly. TV trays are gifts from God.
Like Wawa.
God I love Pennsylvania.
God, you are so right. I hate DVDs. And I too loathe that digital effect when a DVD fast-forwards. It skips over it in chunks, so you might miss the part you wanted. Great video, James!
P.S. You should do a rant on lines (at the movie theater, especially at amusement parks, etc). Those are bullshit.
Fortunately I don’t buy enough DVD’s to really get mad, but I will say that anal-log is still pretty good, especially for older stuff. In fact, you know what else is bullshit? Stuff that you grew up with as a kid that is so obscure that it will never make it to DVD. Of course some of it is utter crap, but what it means is that you have to track down the original copy, have the equipment to play it, then the equipment to digitally convert it. All that and there’s the possibility that somebody will catch wise to your desire to archive history and alert the owners of the property and have them get on your ass for piracy. That reminds me, it’s bullshit when a studio owns a piece of work and refuses to sell it, AND go out of their way to ensure that any other digital copies get destroyed.
Rolf “Before the elevator can move you have to watch some adds” Now that be truly BULLSHIT! XD
What I find equally bullshit to the ads on DVDs, is the recent trend at movie theaters to show ads before the movie. Not just 30 minutes before, but at the same time as trailers when the movie’s supposed to be starting. If you go to a movie that’s supposed to start at 9:30, 9:30 is not the time for more Axe deodorant and Coke commercials. Especially when you’re paying to be there.
“The bullshit man” huh? Is he a new character?
I agree with some of your complaints: A lot of the packaging is really annoying, but I like SOME box sets that do use multipule boxes, for the organization and just becuase its neat to own and look at all the cover art. It’s kind of a collectors thing, like how people put stamps in a book – its just fun to look at and own.
The menus I agree partly with — menus need to be simple and functional – but that doesn’t mean they can’t be well designed and fun to interact with either. They should be very simple and organized though, which I cannot say held true for that transformers DVD.
The AD’s are bullshit though – I mean what’s up with that? When DVD’s first came out you didn’t have that crap, but now it’s everywhere. I’m surprised you didn’t bring this up either: You’ll buy a DVD and replay it YEARS later only to find the same ads for movies that already have come and gone! Literally, they’ll stuff trailers with release dates into DVD’s. “Go see movie X this june!” You’ll be watching years later and it’s just so irrelevant its MEANINGLESS – it doesn’t even advertise anything anymore because the movies done and over with – its just fucking pointless!
GAH!
Woah! You really went all out on this one. I agree with all of it. Especially the runtime complaint, why do they hide it!? why not let it say at a the disk like you said.
Awesome video James! Loved every second of it.
How come you don’t have an apostrophe in the word what’s in the title of your videos? No big deal it just seems off. Maybe that could be another episode: punctuation quit telling me what to do!
I totally fuckin agree!!!!!!!! I love VHS and still use them. The first time I used a DVD it confused the hell out of me, and I was amazed at how fast it fucked up (Disc Error)!!!!! This review is awesome!!! Definitely the best yet!!!!!!!!
I also hate those 2-disc releases where it’s poorly marked which one has the bonus content and which one has the feature film. Can’t be that hard to label them proper?
Hahaha! There are some DVDs that are really confusing.
Awesome. Period.
Yeah the region thing bugs me. There’s at least one good reason for them though. Apparently some regions use PAL and others use NTSC. I think PAL runs at 25 frames per second (FPS), and NTSC is 29.97 FPS. So that makes them incompatible. But even then, wtf, there should only be 2 regions, not 6.
Well im afraid i hafta disagree on a few of those things, James. Biggest example is the fullscreen thing. I prefer fullscreen to widescreen, I hate those stupid black bars above and below the picture. Whats the point of that? Its distracting for the first little bit… but other than a few points i diagree on still a great vid. Made me laugh
dude that vid rocked plus I noticed your SOAD CD that band rocks!
I don’t think regions have anything to do with TV-systems. After all, both Europe and Japan use Region 2. Europe has PAL, Japan has NTSC, but I can run japanese DVDs on an unmodded european player. And as far as I know, all modern TVs are compatible with both signal types(do HDTV-technology even have those different region standards?). I live in Europe(up late, I know), and have had no problems with NTSC-signals the last 15 years. There even is a 60hz PAL-standard now.
Messy post, I know.
Great episode. The worst of all is two sided DVDs! Those things are ALWAYS fucked up! Glitchy as hell, and usually one side doesn’t play AT ALL. Fuck that shit! FUCK IT RIGHT UP THE FUCKING FUCKHOLE TO A NEW FUCKING LEVEL OF FUCKDOM ALL THE FUCKING WAY TO FUCKINGVILLE, FUCKLAND!
We all know he fished those boxes back out of the trash, but otherwise, points agreed. This is going to be overly long-winded, but it’s been gnawing at me for awhile. Here’s a few more annoying points:
1) Damaged DVD’s sometimes jump back and forth through chapters, leaving you trying to find a sweet spot you can resume at without freezing the thing if it’s irrepairable.
2) DVD releases can be inconsistent. Looney Tunes Golden Collection? Spotlight Collection? Movie Collection? Are there overlapping titles included? Is one a partial and one a complete? Original? Remastered? What about run times? Which one should I get? 93 minutes? 117 minutes with bonus features? 119 minutes? Theatrical cut? Directors cut? Director’s recut? Why don’t they tell us what changed? When I bought Army of Darkness on DVD, the VHS copy was given away. Little did I know they cut out ‘good, bad, I’m the guy with the gun.’ Why do I have to do the research? Enough already.
3) Fullscreen DVD’s sometimes operate in stealth mode. You’ll pick one up idly…little suspecting that the small print on the back proudly proclaims its status as a fullscreen video. Sometimes i’ll be fifteen minutes into a film and suddenly realized that my DVD player (non-PC) stretched the video horizontally rather than adding black bars.
4) New release DVD’s are $19. Blu-Rays can be had for ~$25. People in my household are still in the habit of buying the DVD despite the fact that something better is available. Our speakers cost more than the rest of our entertainment system, so why not make use of them?
5) Copy protection schemes prevent me from doing simple tasks like watching my copy of Independence Day on every PC media player I’ve tried, yet with the flick of a wrist I could just download the thing onto my PSP and have done with it. Pirates aren’t subject to the ludicrous restrictions and forced ads/logos of commercial DVD’s, so I don’t know who they’re supposed to benefit.
6) Returning or even exchanging a DVD at a brick and mortar joint can be a bloody pain. If it’s opened, you’re regarded with the utmost suspicion because you’ve obviously recorded then scratched it for a return. Nobody ever heard of them becoming dislodged in the box and rattling around before becoming wedged somewhere, right? Right? Well, the end result looks like they were attacked by a runaway gyro pen.
7) A plain DVD box is fine. Leave it alone. Sometimes I don’t see the tabs on the side and end up wrestling with it before the hinges stretch and turn white. For certain keep cases, there’s usually a bunch of flippity plastic DVD holders on hinges that, if weren’t broke by the time it was shipped, will most definately be with the slightest accidental pressure. Remember the old VHS clamshell? So many used DVD boxes are in shambles, but I’m still seeing VHS hard cases in library circulation that I remember from the 80s and 90s. Whatever happened to that kind of durability? The ultimate insult is when the DVD can no longer be secured inside its own case because of shoddy radial disc snaps that disintegrate like petals off a malignant flower. At least if the case itself won’t shut, you can still do the job with scotch tape.
Thank you. When DVDs were just becoming popular and every disk was pretty new I defended the format viciously. Now after years of them I’ve had about enough. Now I’m just praying for the day when studios decide it’s a good idea to distribute their movies digitally through something besides iTunes, which is also bullshit. In the meantime just do what I do, make copies of all of them with just the video and be done with it.
DVDs are cool, but some things you said were very true.
- Luke, I a-a-a-a-am yo-our fa—-a–a–a–ther.
And your collection is TEH SHIT.
Seriously, I would love to own at least half of all that.
And I also got that Ed Wood Collection that comes in a Pink Box! It rocks!
I agree with the Full screen option for a movie, it’s pointless. I under stand people that only have FS screens and don’t want to deal with black bars (use the zoom in button people, it acts as a cropper too). But put both FS and WS in one god damn set. Half the time, the main disc doesn’t have any bonus’ on it and only uses half the space. You can fit both.
SYSTEM OF A DOWN TOXICITY
The worst “commercial” that comes on before a DVD seems to be these anti-pirating commercials. They start off with… “You wouldn’t steal a car, You wouldn’t steal a wallet… etc etc… why download movies from the internet for free?”
Well… they are so stupid, comparing stealing a car to downloading a song or movie… that it MAKES ME WANT TO DOWNLOAD THE MOVIE ON THE INTERNET. That way, I could just watch the movie, and not have to watch that stupid intro, which by the way, you can’t skip over.
Holy carp, I’m not crazy! Nobody I talk to remembers that phone-dial sounding tone at the start of VHS tapes. Thought I was losing my mind.
Great video. Everything you mentioned I’ve been complaining about since DVD’s became mainstream. Ah, the price of convenience, I suppose.
toxcicity YEAH AWESOME ALBUM WOHOO
wow james your so on the money on this bullshit! i swear DVD are outta hand and u covered the most annoying of them all! i think your elevator theory is not too far . 10 brownie points if it does end up happening lol, keep up the EXCELLENT WORK! wow your really are posting more videos then often and were all happy when you do! keep them coming and i cant wait for TERMINATOR 2 for SNES cause it was my nightmare for sooo long! , long live king james rolfe
god i agree,if a dvd gets scratched it skips,but a vhs just gets all flicky,eve if you cant se it clearly you still get the full movie,and region codes fuck thts juts mean
ugh this is so true! with the james bond set theres the beginning box, the box holding the other boxes and then.. the boxes for the seasons of the boxes THEN the boxes for the dvd’s. oh and btw nice xbox ontop of your nice shaw cable box LOL
I haven’t purchased a DVD in 3 years. I will never buy a blue ray player. Everything I get is off the internet, yea it’s legal. Then again I barely ever purchase movies at all, I just wait for it to get on cable lol
Ah. I love these bullshit rants of yours James. Always funny and true (depending on how pissed off a person is at the moment). one thing that pisses me off with DVD’s is when they reach that 1/2 way or 3/4 way point and the DVD player kind of freezes to jump to the next scene. It’s kind of a pain in the ass, but when you have a jumpy DVD player you never fucking know if it’s the transition or just a random fuck jump.
Y’know what’s bullshit as well? The little chain on the mother fucking toilet. I swear to fucking god. An earthquake could go off right underneath someone or your toilet could puke shit right out of the bowl, and you will STILL be able to flush. But the second you push down on the handle too hard and too fast, the fucking chain bounces off. And sure enough, the next time you go to take a shit, the fucking toilet WONT FLUSH. So what do you have to do? You have to deal with the stink, open the top, and reattach the fucker by hand and THEN flush.
But… That’s just one of my problems. I’m also equally pissed off about rice in burritos.
I had to register just to say that:
“This is probably the greatest rant I’ve ever watched. I agree 100% on the DVD bullshit. The menus, the ads, and then they fuck around with the consumers by doing ‘Fullscreen/Widescreen Editions’, Region Coding, and those fucking little tabs that don’t let me open my 1/3 of my DVDs like NORMAL.”
At least Blu-Ray isn’t fucking up quite as hard as DVDs (scratch resistant disks, no wide/full screen, menus on the fly, and NO GODDAMN CASE TABS!!)
It shouldn’t seeing as were expected to pay close to thrity-five fucking dollars for a single new Blu-Ray movie.
That was awesome, How many movies do you have!É
I have that same Bruce Lee box set and boy was I pissed when I found out that the best Bruce Lee movie was missing from it…
But seriously, how many movies do you haveÉ
I totally agree with the menus. Some dvds movies or shows, you have to watch that Paramount crap when you’re unable to press “next”, “menu”, or “return”.
South Park dvds are worst for me. You can’t skip all that crap like other shows do.
I have a couple of 007 sets. The movies aren’t in order that you have to watch different actors. Those loose papers that came with it.
funny and true. theres something honest about vhs. i still have my tapes proudly displayed next to my 360 games and blu rays.
Digital technology is great and of course there are drawbacks just like with any other technology. But the good thing about Analog technology was that the consumer had the control, not the Companies.
DVDs are amazing because they offer twice the resolution compared to VHS. The problem with DVDs are their makers who care nothing for the format. It almost seems like they don’t use DVDs themselves.
I used to like Lionsgate entertainment until they forced me to watch their logo over and over in the TMNT Original Series DVDs. Now I’m less likely to watch a Lionsgate movie because they pissed me off.
Disney also pisses me off because they make you watch commercials that you can’t skip and they have their STUUUUPID vault release BS – WTF is that?!
Anyway, back to digital. Companies make things that suffice. Their only motivation to make things nice is only as a selling point and not as a functional point – even it is cheaper.
HD-DVD was the perfect format. Great menu, easy to use – everything was just great. The only problem was that Sony had a better business strategy and now I’m stuck with awful menus that I can’t stand because I knew how good it could have been.
CDs have flimsy cases that could be improved, but no motivation to improve them. Cause they can’t think of any. Vinyl covers were big and pretty, which made me want to buy them. CDs don’t have big cases, but they should be a little bigger. They could use Blu-Ray cases. The current ones break all the time and are easily cracked.
CDs also have that Loudness War going on that’s hurting the format. All to sell more music. Like that actually worked. WTF!
You know what? Companies don’t care about putting something out there that is good, they just care about putting something out there that will sell. Period. I’ve noticed in the last few years that marketing has gone out of control. Companies will go as low as possible to get our money. Fuck them!
I heard that some Japanese animes (lesser known?) in Japan have dvds with only 2 episodes per disk with one disk package and they charge like $40.
On the REGION CODING…
Most dvd players can be unlocked just with a code in the dvd menu. Search online a little with your model and you may just find it.
You access a panel that makes you choose the region (1,2 etc) or just plain region free (0). They just make the same damn DVD players for all the world and program it for specific regions after!
Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE ASSHOLES!
They don’t want you to get dvd’s from all around the world. That could make the fucking world explode, paying a few bucks less for the big american movies sold cheap in the philippines.
Did they even think about rare releases only avaible in Europe that can’t get to the U.S.? Hell, i’m a french speaker from Canada and I can’t get a motherfucking french version of the movies I loved as a child because they are just released in the stupid region 2 in France! What am I supposed to do, get a DVD player from Europe on ebay? That’s bullshit! Or buy these super expensive region free dvd players that are, after all, NORMAL DVD PLAYERS JUST FREAKIN’ UNLOCKED!!! This is the biggest fucking scam ever!
And don’t get me started on these crap menus, trailers and adverts… Who really needs to see a fucking 20 sec animation each time he sets a language? And if you want to specify language AND subtitles, you get booted off to the menu after the first and have to see THE FUCKING ANIMATION again! Like people really cared about these shitty CGI ugly ass sequences in the first place! We just want to watch the damn movie, just let us, god!
And who’s the idiot who schemed these stupid trailers freaturing the MOVIE YOU ARE GOING TO SEE? Yeah, just show me that the hero’s best friend is shooting at him in the trailer or in the animated sequence going to the language, I really need to know that fucking punch before even seeing the movie! It’s really on par with those cretinous movie trailer that really tells you the WHOLE FUCKING STORY of the movie in a minute and a half. Nice way to blow all the surprises and convincing me the movie was a piece of fucking trash not even worth of wiping my ass with in the first place!
…
Well, thank you James for exacerbating the anger in me. That helps a great deal.
So true James.
This is the reason I buy then rip my movies or just download them.
I use my HDTV as a PC monitor so watching movies on it is great. Even if you don’t use that kind of setup you can stream movies from your PC to your TV with the right setup.
DVDs are just a pain in the ass.
I agree with the region thing 100% its fucked! Also with the DVD stuffing up that has happened to me so many times!!
Gr8 vid though. Hope to see more bullshit lol!
I think you’ve made some good points here James. What I disklike the most is the space a collection of DVD’s consumes, box-set packaging notwithstanding. I was happy when DVD came out because it meant I could start over and junk the shelves and boxes of dusty tapes that had accumulated over the years. To me, the DVD itself is archaic. Digital players should be harddrives with an option to back up to memory stick – something simple so people who aren’t computer-savvy don’t become discouraged. We should be able to go to a video store with memory stick and pay to download – that technology is already old in itself; I don’t understand why Blu-Ray has to be another disc format – I’m sick of all these fucking discs already.
you know, i remember a logn time ago when DVD’s were new, that people were glad they could finally skip those annoying previews and warnings…. i guess the DVD designers caught wind of that and now you cant even fast forward through them!
i piss fo my friends because when i open their new dvd to put it in, i tear off those annoying snap tabs without thinking, then my friend is like “wat are you doign man?”
i thought i was the only one who hated those dvd’s that dont have a ‘play all’ feature. its like, if it were a movie, would they make you choose each chapter one by one? and the guys at aqua teen hunger force thought theyd be funny- when you hit play all on their 4th season, it does play all- every episode at the same time! 14 small screens all play each episode simultaneously! oh, haha! i get it, funny joke! now i have to navigate yoru assinine menu every 10 or 11 minutes! at least they never did ti again.
another thing that wasnt mentioned, though i am sure it doesnt piss of enarly as many people, and it is kind of hard to explain. see, on these tv show dvd’s, they either make each episode part of one big title, or make each episode its own title (from a programming perspective). if every episode is part of one big title, you can hit ‘repeat title’ and i repeats every episode over and over (for when you are going to bed or something). but if each episode is its own title, then you cant do that, and when the episodes all play out it takes you to the main menu where it repeats an annoying soundbite from the movie until you wake up. anyone else with this complaint?
This was some some epic Bullshit James
Pretty trippy how you mentioned the Telephone dialing sounds in the beginning of a video. I remember that weird shit too!!!
Wow James, you surprised me there! I asked in your last video if a new Bullshit video would be coming soon, and lo and behold, right there it is!
Once again you manage to put into words (and video) exactly what’s wrong with the subject and how many, myself included, feel about it. Not only that, but I think that was the longest and also the best one in the series so far! Much kudos!
And this is why pirates will win the wargh!
Do wanna watch adds, get scratcy dvd:s or maybe just click your mouse and play the movie, no shit included. The music and movie selling industuries are pissing in our faces and expect us to pay for it. I mean how hard is it to make a site just like any torrent search machine that you need to register in and could download movies with subtitles, max speed, etc for a few dollars.
@ scottydu81:
I had a similar problem. You know how DVDs typically have menus with background music, and said music is usually pretty short and feature a very noticeable loop, where the music stops for a second before playing again? Sometime ago (I’ll take a guess and say about 2 or 3 years ago), some retard in my apartment building apparently left a DVD playing ALL NIGHT LONG, probably from 12am to 5am or so. It played sounded like wind and a dog barking at some point, and it was very loud. You can only imagine how pissed I was, especially since I was working the next day, and that idiot never answered the door when I knocked.
James, I wasn’t going to mention this but then I saw your epic dvd shelves, I use it to store my dvds, it essentially a disc sized filling cabinet and it holds 660 discs. I just put them in labeled sleeves and sort alphabetically.
Granted, you would prolly need like five of them at least. But it would definitely save some space.
http://www.amazon.com/Vaultz-VZ01049-4-Drawer-Locking-Storage/dp/B00027BRCQ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1243319302&sr=8-3
Hi Sierra from Philly! Why must you bring up Wawa?!? I’m going through such withdrawal..I need a fix!
That’s one heck of a Bullshit rant there, James! And a great one too!
I love a lot of this new technology stuff…but then the big companies goes and ruin it for us by being annoying. I can’t believe the stuff we have to deal with when technological advancement comes around.
With packaging, I got to mention something when I got Iron Man on Blu Ray. The movie came with a sleeve covering the case. When I tried removing it, it wouldn’t. When I poked my finger into an opening, I realized that a hole in the sleeve was covered by a bar code sticker and kept it from being removed. Get this, the hole showed the area exposing the bar code on the actual case itself! Talk about being more redundant! Covering a hole meant for exposing the bar code to scan on a fancy packaging with…a bar code sticker!
Seperate WS/FS releases. Oh man! Talk about annoyance! The first three Indiana Jones film I have were bought in a box set and it was hard to tell that it was the Fullscreen version that was bought. Either put both version in one package or just go widescreen!
Region coding…it’s pretty annoying if I say so myself. It’s just some way to control who we buy our videos from. Anyone that dives into foreign stuff like anime will get what I’m talking about…it’s all about that licensing stuff.
Running time…geez, they certainly don’t want it easy for us to know the length of the video. Frustrating.
Unable to skip beginning parts…just let me watch my movie! Yeah, I love the analogy about having to watch ads when going into an elevator! It’s hilarious!
As for the last part…well I don’t have anything to say about that.
It’s just…bullshit.
@Eastline. It’s true. The highly regard straight to video series Fooly Cooly had each of its 6 episode released on its own disc. Not to mention I happen to be on the import store Play Asia as I type this and I just happen to be looking at Volume 1 of a 26 episode series with only 2 episodes on that release and that $40 price you said is pretty accurate (though said store lists it at about $55 and that’s for DVD format. It’s about $11 more for the Blu Ray format. But of course, it’s the store’s price). It’s a case of really pushing how much of a fan they are and parting with their money for it.
I think what’s also bullshit about DVDs is Image Galleries! It takes forever to move to another picture, and for some reason the zoom function on DVD players always stops working on them! And don’t get me started on slideshows… ugh.
The region coding thing is also worth a few hundred piles of bullshit. It’s keeping me from getting Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place here in the US. Well I could get it, but it would be useless because it’s only for region 2 (UK). Homestar Runner.com’s dvd’s are nice because they’re region free. Now wouldn’t making something open to all people increase the sales than just limiting it to one country? Now that’s bullshit.
I’m glad you touched on region coding, it’s the biggest pile of reeking bullshit I can think of, especially as a gamer.
Regional codes… KHAAAAAN!!!
I live in “Code 2″, but my Dad often brings code 1-DVDs home from business trips.
We actually have a second DVD-player, which has a function for switching regional codes.
You must enter some numbers of PI via the remote, then the regional code number.
Of course this information can not be found in the manual, but the internet – kinda like a cheat code…
Are they kidding? A CHEATCODE?
It’s like buying a toilet and you can piss in it alright, but to take a dump, you need a code… and another one for BULLSHIT!
COMPLETELY agree with the widescreen/fullscreen complaint. I’ve accidentally bought and received as gifts so many fullscreen movies it’s not even funny. I mean, they literally have me going to the store and buying another copy, which is fan-fucking-tastic for the movie company, but bullshit for the consumer.
What’s worse, it some DVDs are the stripped down versions. You think you’re saving a few bucks, but for what? No special features. Do people really think, “Oh man, I wish they’d lob off a few dollars from the price. Hey, those special features are pointless, they should get rid of those so I can save money!” I’d rather pay a “special feature guarantee” tax on every movie I buy then have even the slightest chance that I fucked up and bought the waste of plastic that is the stripped down version.
Admittedly, the only time I came across this was when I bought Harry Potter 4 on DVD, but it was still annoying. My local video store had a promotion where if you pre-order the DVD you get a free poster. By the time I get home with the poster and DVD and open the thing, I find out the promotion was for the non-special featured DVD. What the fuck! Why does that version even exist!?
that was funny but you sadly didnt mention those things you have to push down in order to get the dvds out i HATE them.
But still I loved the video
Hey Mr Rolfe!
It really made me think of my father though, because he always complained about pretty much everything you said. 
Great video.
Thank you!! i been waiting for you to bring that up omg…
The Bullshitman has done it again..
Greetings from Denmark
Awesome rant once again James! Couldn’t agree more on all points.
I agree with everything…Especially the stupid region thing.
I live in Korea, and there are things here that CAN’T be bought in Canada, or stuff from Canada that can’t be bought in Korea…so what…Just don’t buy it? It’s totally bullshit!
And the fact that you could fit in 7 movies on a single disk with the same quality, but they use old MPG files so you can buy more CDs.
Excellent video as always. Pity not much has changed with Blu-Ray, but at least the packaging is so far consistent and the region locking isn’t forced as much.
I’d be interested in James’ opinion on Blu-Ray actually, as I don’t think he’s upgraded yet. In fact I would be interested in his perspective on HD in general, as both a creator and consumer of movies.
Robot Jox. I loved that movie as a kid. Awesome that it was featured in one of your films.
You are right about VHS. They are much more durable and user friendly than DVD’s are. If a kid gets mad and throws a DVD across the room, you better kiss that video good bye where as if he throws a VHS, it will probably work just fine. Like an old NES Game.
Oh well. You mess it up, you just go out and buy a new one and the movie industry makes more money. Smart idea.
You should build a Home Theater PC and have all of your movies backed up on hard drives. Then you won’t have any menus or any other stupid crap to deal with that dvds have to drive us nuts. Just point on the file and click. You could use XBMC to manage everything, it’s pretty sleek looking and works well on just about any operating system. No more getting dvds out of boxes, just let ‘em sit and rot, until one of your stupid friends wants to borrow one, then you can make them dig the little bastards out of the 47 boxes they came in.
“You should build a Home Theater PC and have all of your movies backed up on hard drives.”
BINGO! I have one hooked up via HDMI (1080 p baby!) to my big screen HDTV. It’s sweet! The only problem is you’re still gonna have to deal with a ‘digital zoom’ – but what can you do?
OMG!!! Epic episode, EPICC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My best regards to you, as always.
I’ve hated DVD’s for a while. I’m not a big movie watcher, but everytime I go rent a DVD it’s scratched. If you rent it from the Redbox, you’re screwed, you aren’t getting your money back. You’re right in saying that everything is moving forward but making our lives more miserable.
@gshgsh
Wait, wait, you mean modified PS2, or is PS2 officially free from regional lockout for DVD-Video?
I agree with you about boxes/slip cases. I don’t mind putting a TV series or collection of films in a box to keep them together, that has a purpose. What I hate is when a normal DVD case comes in a cardboard sleeve. the disc or discs are already in one encompassing box so why add another? I have a big cardboard box full of these useless slip cases and some are from games and audio CD’s too.
I’m not sure if it was the camera or image quality but the brightness on your TV looked way too high.
the intro to these always cracks me up You know what’s Buuuuulllshit XD this should be on Sadurday Night Live or Comedy Central I agree btw DVD’s can be a major pain in the ass sometimes
So should we expect AVGN to be sold on VHS from now on?
I espcially agree about the TV show DVDs and the eepisode chapters I have a Cowboy Bebop box set and it does the exact same thing with the episodes
man does anyone ever notice how much cool shit james has, he must be a fucking millionaire, im so jealous of his multimedia collection cuz i know ill never anything even close to that unless i do win the fucking lottery, james u lucky bastard keep up the good work
James, you have so much awesome content on this site. Can’t get enough!
Very true sir, but I think the bigger pile of home video bullshit is the size of BluRay cases. Why the fuck are they so small. I would jump right on the BluRay bandwagon if I felt I could buy BluRays without feeling like I need to replace my entire movie collection. What was so wrong with the size of DVD cases? It feels like Sony is just being a dick of a company.
Plus, the concept in general seems to be a bit of bullshit. If you’ve ever seen 28 Days Later or Transformers on BluRay, you know.
If only DVD makers would watch this “whats bullshit episode”, They might learn how too fucking make a dvd. This was awesome James.
You should really do a bullshit episode about not having handles on food paperbags from the food store. Well it seams like its only an American thing. And it bugs me.
The sad thing is that on the cheap DVD’s you can get for a dollar, you can usually skip right to the movie without the stupid ads or logos. They’re the closest thing to VHS tapes you can get, but too bad the movies suck ass.
You know what else is bullshit about DVDs? The complete inability to copy them to your computer to watch directly from your hard drive or on your portable media player.
I own a huge music collection of CDs and when I got my iPod I simply place the CD into itunes, click “import” now I have the music I bought on my portable player. Convenient.
I also own a lot of DVDs, but if I want to watch one on my iPod my only option is to buy another copy of the movie from itunes (if it is even available). Why can’t I just stick my DVD in the computer and click import?
Well, people can do that with certain programs but I refuse to install dubious software. So as a law abiding consumer of electronic goods I’m pretty much screwed and that’s frankly bullshit.
hahahahah!
I’m unemployed right now but fuck it, i made a donation of 10 bucks for you because of tha one!
This vid is great!
[...] [...]
This is one of the great things about the Xbox 360. Whenever you turn off while watching a DVD, or take the disc out, it always remembers where you left off unless you put in another DVD
Nice work James I been wondering could you do an episode on cross over games for AVGN because you done a lot of shitty games that many people enjoy watching the show so why give us a good episode on all the bad crossover games you can find.
Here are some ideas if you decide to do it as they followed below…
Spider-Man and X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge
Robocop vs. The Terminator
Good vid james i agree with you on some of the things except for the Box sets, they are there for looks and protection a cover is not enough and yes those click tabs on the side fuckin worthless. The other thing i was going to say about your Terminator series, is that you should look at the timeline of all the movies. MAKEs no fuckin sense. research it!
Haha I was actually watching the James Bond collection before watching this video, and I was thinking to myself why aren’t they in chronological order of when the films were released. I also bought the Bruce Lee collection automatically assuming that enter the dragon was on it.
Great video!
As far as box sets go, I’d like to state for the record that I do have a VHS box set for the original Star Wars trilogy that has a big slide cover and what have you. It’s not a DVD-only problem.
@Repner
Xbox 360? My regular DVD player do this just as well.
I agree with you about the not being able to skip to the menu on some DVD’s, although I have found that this is mainly on the company logos and stuff and you can still fast-forward them.
I live in the UK and I have never seen the stupid additional clips on the DVD’s or the excessive packaging you mentioned (I hope they don’t decide the introduce them here, ugh!) but the cardboard sleeve that they sometimes come with are usually a problem to put in a DVD rack.
I hate the regions too, I think this is mainly to prevent people like me from buying a new movie from america when it has only just come out in the cinema over here.
On DVD players, there are hidden menus that you can access to unlock the region settings so you can play DVD’s from any region, just search for the make and model of the DVD player and change it to region 0 (all regions). I did this when I brought the last series of Angel, it cost $160 dollars over here when it came out (I’m not kidding!) but only $25 in america, I still had to pay additional customs charge before the post office would release it to me, but it was still a lot cheaper than buying it over here!
Damn it, James. Now I have to break all my DVDs.
on thing to say, only one : that’s a fucking point dude!
One thing I know is that when a DVD starts to skip you CAN fix it. But it’s a royal pain in the ass.
About a year ago I had a dvd scratch on me cause a not-so-bright friend of mine moved my 360 while it had the disk in it, so naturally it ruined the disc. Luckily I found out GameStop sold disc resurfacers. I think it was about $20, and it actually got the disc to run 100% perfect again.
I do agree with you on the whole not saving your place thing. I like to watch DVDs in our living room on our nice big screen, but when i have to get up to do some errands, i loose my spot unless i leave the disc in. Well we have a Blu-Ray player, and that thing is technically on 24/7, so it gets HOT. I’d rather not leave my disc in there longer than needed, so i loose my spot. Seriously, the 360 can save your spots even if you dont have the HDD for it, all it takes is a few kilobytes to tag how far into the movie you are, so why cant a Blu-Ray player that has a lot of internal memory so that it can be updated not do this?!
GAAAH!
My biggest problem with DVD is the CROPPING of films that were shot full aperture (that is, a 1.33:1 ratio) or soft matted to a new 1.85:1 ratio which is a near perfect fit for the native aspect ratio of new widescreen TVs. The reason they DVD companies do this? So that dumbass consumers who always complain about those “damn black bars!” on their old standard def TV sets get all giddy that the movies they watch don’t have the black bars anymore! But us real fans are stuck with an improperly letterboxed image that crops off vital picture information and is inferior to even old full-screen VHS releases. Follow the link at the end of this post for a telling example of this.
Another thing I hate is the overly digital look a lot of DVDs have when old films are restored/remastered. Classic films from the silent era to the 70s really shouldn’t look as artificially crisp and sharp as they do on some DVDs, thanks to excessive edge enhancement and digital noise reduction, which often just adds more artifacts like moire and shimmer. Plus the color timing can be way off for certain films as the colors are too digitally “pumped up” and don’t look right.
And what’s wrong with some grain? I don’t like the idea with DVDs that film grain is taboo. It’s a FILM! Grain is how film gets its resolution, just like TV/monitors get their resolution from pixels! I like to see some grain — it reminds me I’m watching A FILM, not a digital presentation. DVD companies shouldn’t make it their mission to completely remove grain as it again starts to look too artificial and DIGITAL.
But DVD CAN be a good thing. For one thing, there’s no ugly chroma noise, long the shame of analog formats like VHS. And of course the greater storage capacity is great for extra features. And it’s always nice not to have to rewind.
http://horrordvds.com/viewarticle.php?articleid=254
Oh, absolutely agree.
Region coding is just ffing ridiculous. At first I thought it was something the cinemas demanded from film companies; you know: well, if people can buy the DVD before it’s in cinema here, we’re screwed. But that’s not the ffing reason! No; they’re afraid you buy a much cheaper version in a cheaper country. Tell me, if they could make money with the cheaper version, why didn’t they make it just as cheap here? Because they’re greedy little bastards that don’t decide price on what it’s worth, but what they can get away with! They’re trying to get their grubby hands on every last ffing dime in your pocket, instead of simply selling a good product.
And you know, thankfully over here in the Netherlands, they don’t have full screen versions; there’s only widescreen versions, aah. That is, unless you’re in ffing STORE THAT SELLS IMPORTS! And do you think the import section is nicely split from the non-import? HELL NO! Of course not! So you’re looking around, think you’ve got a nice purchase, but oh, no, WRONG REGION and FULL SCREEN!!!!
FUCK! FUCK! FUCKING BULLSHIT!!!
Its only a matter of time before the bullshit carries over to Bluray.
There are two things that annoy the shit out of me about DVDs.
1-Region codes. You already said everything about it.
2-Say you live in Spain, because that’s my case. The majority of movies and shows I watch come from America, and every single time I buy a DVD I have to check the package and find out if the movie comes with the original language (because they dub EVERYTHING here). Can you imagine watching a DVD and only be able to watch the stupid dub!? And something that’s even worse, there are DVDs that when you choose to watch the movie in english you FORCEFULLY have to have the subs on! That sucks my ass!!
Boxed sets can definitely suck. I got the Aliens Quadrilogy one, and the part of the packaging that holds the discs is basically one long piece of cardboard that folds over on itself into two halves. There are nine discs. So if I want to watch Alien, I have to unfold an entire half of the damn thing. And pre-menu ads are really pissing me off. I don’t remember putting up with this shit in the earlier DVD releases, but now there on almost all of them. From my experience, Disney DVDs are usually the worst. Fortunately, I can usually skip them. As for skipping, I’m pretty sure it only occurs if the surface of the disc has been damaged. I’m fairly obsessive about keeping my DVDs free of scratching, however, it is bullshit when you’re renting or borrowing a DVD, and you find out it’s scratched to hell already. Even worse when it’s your DVD that you’d lent to someone who is entirely careless with the things.
I hate those pre-menu ads. The Disney films definitely have the worst case. Luckily, I’ve found I can skip most ads on DVDs, but they still shouldn’t do that crap. I’ve noticed most of the Blu-Rays i’ve watched don’t have ads or production company logos, but go straight to the film or the menu.
Also, those pre-film ads we see in theaters now are annoying. I don’t want to go to a movie and sit through some f’ng coca cola and Ford ads that I see on TV already. Just show me some f’n previews and get to the damn movie. Or give me a damn good trivia reel, not one that loops every 3 minutes. I noticed when I saw Terminator Salvation they played a “Making Of” video before it, along with other crap from the film companies. I don’t want to see that crap! Leave that as an extra for the DVD for god sakes.
I wanted to do a vid like this for a year now…i am a big fan of Indiana Jones, and i got the VHS, and the DVDs when they came out…
Then there was a special boxed set some years before the announcement of the 4th movie…
Then When the new one was coming out, they released a new DVD boxed set of Indiana Jones with special features about the new movie…
Then Kongdom of the Crystal Skull DVD…and a new boxed set with finally all the four of them?
Gosh…
DOOD YOU READ MY MIND WITH THE WHOLE FAST FORWARD REWIND THING WITH VCRs!!!! When i was like 7 years old i used to watch the movie, and if i thought a part was halarious then i would watch it over and over again. I swear it almost killed me i got an athsma attack from laughing so much once and that why VCRs are badass cuz they KILL
You know what’s bullshit? commercials.
lol, when I rent the star wars DVD from the video store it fucked up at the exact same part
I haven’t laughed this much in a long time, I really really agree with you, especially those menus, oh, I love you for making this video.
I’m sorry, James, but in some of the things you’re complaining about have some logic left out. Example:
The boxes for boxsets. The boxes are there to protect the case and dvd from dust and spills. With a regular case, if you spill something on it, the said drink could seep in through the thin opening on the case ruin your dvd and the case, making it sticky or unreadable. With the boxes, yeah, THAT will collect dust and can stain, but the cases dvds won’t.
Now onto the fullscreen/widescreen shit. People who buy widescreen if they have a widescreen tv or just like the widescreen format. I prefer to watch fullscreen because I don’t like seeing the black bars on the screen. I mean, if you play a fullscreen dvd on a widescreen tv, it’s just going to look shitty.
As for the snap things, what if the case just CAN’T shut properly, say it’s broken or something,? Without them, you’d be shit outta luck because the dvd could fall out and break or like I said above, will collect dust.
Now I have spoken about my personal flaws with your video, I do agree with the rest of the video.
i agree with you about the dvd packaging like these “eco friendly dvd cases” like all the futurama dvd movies come in …i hate those damn cheap things , for 1 it fucks up the dvd sliding it in and out ,2 it’s suspectible to all kinds of wear and tear then your dvd artwork is ruined and 3 if there gonna put dvd in those kinds of cases at least dont charge full fucking price for it i don’t know about you but im not gonna pay $19.99 ( or $25.99 at bestbuy) for a dvd in a cardboard case that’s been crushed to hell ….
and if you bought a dvd lately you have seen the newer light weight flimsy dvd cases with the holes cut out and recycle logos that’ll probably damage the dvd/artwork somewhere down the road …now im all for saving the environment but lets find other ways to do so and dont mess with the design of dvd cases the thing thats supposed to protect and store dvds
here’s a pic of the new eco dvd cases
http://riskening.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/eco-inside.jpg
Also, this is a question for everybody.
What is so wrong with fullscreen? Nobody complained about that shit when it was VHS, why are you fucking complaining about it when it is on DVD? Seriously, widescreen is great and all, but I prefer fullscreen because it doesn’t look like part of the film I’m watching is cut off.
Seriously, why is the fullscreen/widescreen debate a big fucking deal?
People complaining about fullscreen when they had no problem with it on VHS? Now THAT’S bullshit.
james great episode of bullshit.
btw…when did your AVGN episodes start syndicating on The CW?
@Toxic1225
In the case of boxsets, James was not hating on boxsets but boxed boxedsets. One box is good enough but four in one, that’s too much.
For the widescreen/fullscreen debate, James is right that DVDs need to have both wide and full on the same disc. And some are.
As for the snap cases, I just can’t see how a normal case would break and even so one could either replace the case, take better care of the case, or try to keep the case closed even if it’s a broken case. I do respect your opinion though. I just though I could defend James that’s all.
@James
Once again you outdid yourself. This is one of the best in this series and I hope to see more down the road. Keep up the good work!
Agreed. The worst for me is the X-Files DVD collection. The box folds out so far, everything just falls out. I think it folds out to be about 3 or more feet in length! That’s some steamin’ bullshit right there.
I agree with this video on all fronts. What pisses me the most off is how easily the dvds get scratched and how fragile they are. Everytime I get done watching a dvd I throughly monitor for scratches and always wipe it free of smudges. I have some dvds that have crzzy ass looking scratches but they work just fine but I worry sometimes they may skip. It seems with VHS you never had that problem and VHS always seemed to last longer. I could go on and on….
Follow this link to see why widescreen MATTERS. You are most certainly NOT getting “the full picture” with fullscreen. Full screen is one of the worst misnomers in consumer electronics history:
http://www.moviesbystarlight.com/widescreen/widescreen.htm
This Video is very good, i wouldnt have even thought about how inconvinient DVD’s actually are until you pointed it out, but its true! we actually are using advanced technology to step backwards!
DVD’s are more convinient for companies to make and less convinient for the consumer!
I never understood their logic. Who’s gonna care about a company logo after they force you to watch it. The companies that let you go straight to the menu would be on your good side…
I can believe people think that widescreen version had the picture cut in half
the widescreen version is smaller & have black stripes on your old tv because it have to fit into your tv
widescreen is the theater version with the full picture
I have the same TMNT TV show VHS tape.
Although, I do agree, it is bullshit.
This video inspired me to register because I have felt this way for a long time. I’m glad I found someone who’s as annoyed as I am by it. I have those same 007 box sets and I don’t use the cases either. Another weird one is the Alien Quadrilogy. It has 9 discs, 2 per movie, and the 9th disc is bonus features. There’s not a lot of packaging, but instead the whole thing unfolds into a 6 foot wide spread that I can barely hold up. You need a really wide table.
I like trailers but the warnings, ads and menus! This is why I started copying my dvd’s. You put the disc in, it tells you exactly how long the movie is, and you can cut out everything else and just get the movie. It’ll start playing immediately! I find that menus also show a little too much of the movie sometimes too.
Anyway, keep up the good work James! Your videos rock!
With one exception, I totally agree about the boxes in boxes. The Lord of the Rings extended edition has nice-looking faux-book boxes for each of the three movies which I thought was rather cool.
Now the whole force-me-to-watch-ten-previews-before-I-can-watch-the-movie-I-just-paid-twenty-two-bucks thing? That’s the biggest bullshit ever and it’s just begging consumers to rip the DVDs to make clean versions sans Bullshit. Way to promote DVD piracy Mr Movie Industry Man!! Woo Hoo!
Then again, it’s pretty much like you said, it’s becoming an alarming trend for the movie and music industry to treat their customers like shit. Then they whine and moan like a buncha fucking babies that people pirate the shit. I’m not even going to get started on the “quality” aspect of the shit the entertainment industry is crapping out their asses.
It’s no wonder the gaming industry is growing faster – though they also have their share of swill.
GREAT EPISODE.Could you made a bullshit about vhs,or laserdisc.Thanks in advance
Here’s another bullshit DVD thing, when two disc or four disc sets are packaged so one dvd rests on top of another, increasing the chance of scratching. I’m seeing more and more of that instead of the better slimline two sided hinged cases (like the one on my copy of Goodfellas and the reissue of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) and it sucks.
I hate cardboard digipacks where they don’t include a protective sleeve for the disc, leaving it prone to dust and scratches. Luckily I found some cheap solutions, store such dvds in a flip book or get disc sleeves from dollar stores.
The reduntant cardboard sleeve with the same artwork as the inlay card is total bullshit. Why is it there? Except with digipacks the inlay card is already protected by plastic. You don’t need to protect the protection.
Hollywood is also pissing me off with it’s endless remakes and franchise renewals in place of original ideas.
Oh gawd, I hate DVD rereleases, & VHS rereleases. I have a friends who collects anything Alice in Wonderland, so I got her 3 DVDs & 5 VHS tapes from a used book store, & the packaging gave no indication that any of them were the same; some of the movie ones actualy has no cast listed & the animated ones had hand-drawn covers thqt didn’t exactly match the actual animation. In the end, 2 of the movies were the same & 3 of the cartoons were the same.
I hate widescreen DVDs. Why do they bother releasing widescreen & fullscreen seperately when they can actualy fit both versions on one DVD? Widescreen looks like shit on old school TVs with those obnoxious black bars taking up 50% of the TV monitor & fullscreen stretches on widescreen.
I hate the region stuff too. I even bought 2 “so called” all-region DVED players that won;t play region 2, so I have to watch region 2 on my computer instead.
Damn, I’m always looking for the runtime too. & yeah, having to sit there & do math on the runtime does waste a few moments of ones life.
I hate the unskipable special menues that play for 5 minutes before you can push anything.
Remember renting VHS tapes with 15 minutes of commercials at the begining & having to fast-forward to them? I have a few DVDs that won;t skip the adds but they do let you fast-forward, however, at a speed much slower than a tape would go.
Don’t forget Disc Rot; lazer discs weren’t the only ones that got them.
Damn, I should have checked my f**king spelling….
Anyway, I just remembered one…
DVDs that have 3 half-hour episodes per disc & cost $25. (In Japan, it’s 3 episodes for $60).
lucky for me I have a DVD player that can skip all that bullshit 90 percent of the time
SYTEM OF A DOWN!!! niiiiiiiceeee. i love them :]]]
another great bullshit episode
Oh god I love you for making this video. I’ve been complaining about this bullshit myself. Really, why the fuck do you have to watch ads on a disk you fucking bought? I stopped using using a regular DVD player and set up a Media PC so I could have absolute control. Skip all that crap, I bought the disk, let me use it. There’s a big damn problem when the downloaded pirated copies are a superior product. I’ve even seen disks where they have an un-skippable ad for the movie I’m about to watch. I swear I’ve seen ones where they show the company logo’s 3 times. One for starting the disk before the menu (perhaps for the trailers), one for transitioning out from the menu, and one in the actual video. What is the point?
I don’t mind that they put trailers for other movies on the disks. Sometimes that’s helpful and I might like watching them, but just stick them in the damn menu or something.
How about the DVD cases where they have an indentation around where the disk is held that is obviously for you to have access to under the disk… and then they put a damn wall there making the whole thing worthless. What the hell kind of design decision is that?
And you’re right. Fullscreen is a waste. Even if you have a 4:3 screen it’s retarded.
I need to know what camera you have. It’s astounding that you can record what your TV is playing without the glare. Or was that an editing?
Ah, forget my rambling. Awesome ep.
Couldn’t agree more with everything you said. DVD menu and boxset designers need this video burned into their brains forever. A few things you missed, though:
DVD cases take up too damn much space, box sets or not. Is there any reason they need to be any bigger than a CD case? Or even one of those thin CD cases? Coincidentally, I was just talking with a friend of mine about DVDs before watching your video, and he was showing me his DVD collection… what would take up an entire wall of shelves normally is all neatly organized and easily accessible in a single binder because he’s thrown away all his boxes and just kept the discs.
Related to that, DVD sets that have a ridiculously small number of episodes on each disc, just so they can have more discs in the set and bump up the price. My Prisoner DVD set could be half the size (and cost) it is if they put 4 episodes on each disc instead of 2, like many TV sets do- hell, some of the discs only have ONE episode and a special feature! That’s bullshit!
Anti-piracy ads at the beginning of discs. If there’s anything worse than ads, it’s being lectured not to steal DVDs in a way that you will ONLY SEE if you LEGITIMATELY BOUGHT the DVD. I haven’t pirated DVDs, myself, but somehow I doubt the pirates leave that shit in, because, like any sane human being, they just want to watch the movie without any bullshit.
It’s no wonder piracy is so successful- it eliminates ads, excess packaging, region codes, disc scratches, security stickers and tabs and all that crap, and it doesn’t even take up any physical space unless you choose to burn a copy- in short, it fixes almost everything that’s bullshit about DVDs, and on top of that, costs NOTHING. I know it must be hard to complete with something like that if you’re a DVD manufacturer, but their current efforts show that not only aren’t they even trying, they’re deliberately showing utter contempt and malice toward consumers.
Yeah, if you think some box collections are bad, see the packaging for the later Simpsons season collections. Yeesh…
You could not have chosen a better movie for DVD ’skipping’ than “The Empire Strikes Back”. Awesome work man!
I so hate the multiple versions of DVDs. I remember buying the Hellboy DVD when it first came out. It was so hyped on tv as having hours and hours of special features. I buy it, bring it home, and INSIDE packaging for the dvd I JUST BOUGHT is an advertisement for ANOTHER VERSION OF HELLBOY ON DVD. It was an ad for the directors cut or some crap like that. I was so pissed off!!!! I just bought the dam DVD and they’re already pitching another. BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t know how it’s in the rest of the world but here in Europe we have an five minute anti-piracy ad before we can watch the movie. I probably doesn’t have to add that it’s impossible to skip it. God damn it. It’s almost an idea to download the movies illegally from the Internet just to escape the terror.
The thing I find funny about the anti-piracy ads:
“You wouldn’t steal a purse. You wouldn’t steal a car. Why would you steal a movie?”
True, I wouldn’t steal a purse or a car But if I could make an exact copy of the purse/car and keep it for myself without depriving another person of it, then I damn sure would.
one word: genius.
Isn’t piracy a retarded name for downloading illegal copies? It has nothing to do with real pirates at all, real pirates commit murders and steal property at seas, do you see the similarity between that and downloaders? I dare you to say yes
I agree too… These things are bullshit no matter where in the $|”#ing world you live. The overdoing with the boxes is just too much… The bullshit man said it, we want to watch the $%#&ing movie not the adds…
Nice episode GJ : )
I like box sets.
“Seriously, widescreen is great and all, but I prefer fullscreen because it doesn’t look like part of the film I’m watching is cut off.”
You’re the one who’s getting cutted films, you should change to a widescreen TV like everyone else.
Great rant man, your anger has seen me thru countless shitty days at work. I think DVD’s and Blu-ray are physical medias last gasp with the future moving to more streaming or downloadable content. Like many users I purchase DVD’s and rip them to a media tank so I can bypass menus, commercials etc. and can go back for the extras only when I choose to. Once the fightings over and television and film industries embrace the inevitable, you’ll simply point and click and your movie will start to play. Until then I look forward to many more rants.
this is the fullscreen that is cut
eyes see in wide, your brain doesn’t see the black stripes because it focus on the movie you watch
when you watch fullscreen, you see half of what your eyes normaly see, it’s like if you put your hands in your face to cover half of your vision
Box sets are nice, but I agree the packaging can get ridiculous. Most of my boxsets are anime, and those just have a larger box with individual cases in the box that you slide out. That’s not so bad.
But I’ve got a DVD set of the old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon that the box is actually a flat box with a lid that you remove, and then take out the main package, which unfolds and has the DVDs in it. Even worse, some of the discs overlap, so if you want to take out the one on the bottom, you have to remove both of them.
And sometimes those discs are stuck in there so firmly that as I’m trying to pry the damn things out, I feel like I might snap the disc in two. Not so good when quite a few DVDs in my collection are rare or out of print.
It looks like that white entertainment center is about to collapse under the weight of the television. If you ask me, particle board entertainment centers are bullshit.
Sorry to double comment, but the X-Files box set is absolutely horrible. Not only is there a series of boxes, but there is also a pull out “drawer” on the bottom that won’t open due to the weight of the ten seasons on top of it… Love the series, hate the box set.
You made my day. I love VHS tapes too
Btw, you DO know that there are a shitload of region-code-free DVD players out there, you can even buy them for low price in big stores like Best Buy, Circuit City or even stores like Target (I’ve seen them in these three on my 11th USA vacation in 2006, but I don’t remember if there’s other stores, I’m not from the states)
Keep the bullshit up!
You know what’s NOT bullshit? this video!
its amazing how i was nodding everything. well done!
whats the name of the robot movie played in VHS?
you should start download the movies instead
. yea i know it’s illegal but so is most other rebellic behaviour.
p.s not up for disussion with tards so plz stfu gtfo in advance.
o and by the way is that soad?
we must have been brothers in another life. music, movies, videogames alle the same 
Anonymous123
I’m sorry, but not everybody can afford a widescreen tv.
But nobody is answering my question. Why is everybody making a stink about fullscreen now when you never complained about it when VHS was in its prime?
100% James. This is why I don’t buy DVDs.
My mom has bought DVDs several times only for them to later release a bigger, better package. It’s so clear they’re milking us for all it’s worth.
And while I don’t like adds and logos on the dvds before the menu, it gives you time to get drink, take a shit, etc. before you start he movie.
Ever thought about that? Yeah, didn’t think so.
But widescreen should at least have a rival of sorts. Like the width in long as widescreen, but the height just as equal.
Now THAT would be perfect.
did i see robot wars
I didn’t make a stink about “Fullscreen” when it was only released as “Fullscreen” on VHS, because I was too young to understand it back then.
If I had been old enough back then, I would have asked why the hell those shitty cropped up 4:3 versions are being released instead of a proper movie theater ratio.
Just a nitpick, “fullscreen” is a misnomer. “fullscreen” is the wide screen release. The movie is filmed in (movie theater) wide screen, thus to see the full movie – the full screen – is a widescreen release. After all; watch 4:3 “fullscreen” on a widescreen tv and you get black strips on the sides. Whether or no a movie’s screen ratio covers the full screen of your tv depends on your tv.
Oh man, I hate when the dvd skips. It totally takes me out of the movie expirience. This was a great bullshit vid.
Man you are totally right! I don’t even buy dvd’s anymore because it was skipping all the time. sure my laser might have been kinda old, but it was only for some dvd’s! it’s a total movie-experience-killer!
I just put the disks on the shelf and downloaded the Xvid version, and put it on my XBMC. never skips. never shows those worthless trailers/commercials. auto thumbnail/resume. pure awesomeness!
Holy fuck this made my day. I am right there with you.
Here’s something really fucked up: My parents bought Tomb Raider 2 (yes I know) on DVD one time, and it was early. So we pop in the movie, and we start it (after 50 unstoppable ads). And not even 10 fucking minutes into the movie, and it’s skipping like a bitch. So we go back to return the shitty DVD or another one, and… it fucking skips. 2 DVDs, brand new unwrapped, and they’re totally fucking useless. Goddamn DVDs are a hassle. They took an awesome idea, and turned it into a pile of…well, bullshit.
i though this video was really funny! and it is so true! but what really though was funny is that you have a system of a down cd i love that band!
-Alfred
What is really bullshit is all the damn grey bar ads at the bottom of every video I’m trying to watch. Whether its here or youtube, that shit pisses me off. I just want to see a video, not have to worry about closing a bar just so I can see whats going on
Oh god… my boxscreen vs. widescreen rants are legendary.
As soon as you showed “FULL SCREEN” on the screen and started talking about it, I wanted to go shove a steak knife through somebody’s head. Just jump at somebody out of no where and go “YAH!!!!” *SHAAA-WINK!* Dead.
That’s how boxscreen makes me feel.
yes i like cause u explained it but i also disagree
first i think its good they tell you how long the movie is … and that skipping through scenes is bad… but i think its more convent and saves time then fast forwarding for a long time
i like ur thoughts, very nice i bet you even changed people’s opinions about dvd’s but i still like them cause there thin and cool – imo i like the box
As I heard a brilliant comedian once say James:
“For a list of ways in which techonology has failed to improve the quality of human life, please press 1.”
Look. I understand there are some strong feelings about widescreen and fullscreen. First off letme get this out of the way. I am a widescreen user. I have widesceen TV’s for watching movies. For those that don’t , the problem with watching widescreen movies on a 4:3 ratio screen isn’t the black bars, it’s the loss of resolution. So you actually have to choose between cutting some of the edges of the image, compressing the image horizontally, loosing some of the precious image clarity or some mix of those options when you watch a movie on a different shaped screen than it was designed for.
Hahaha, all very true. I especially liked your rant on the annoying tabs on the side of the DVD.
Great as always James! Everything was so true.
Hey James, I have an idea for a horror movie.
I think you should make a movie about a guy in a silk-screened hockey mask who goes around at latenight sleepovers killing people who watch “FULLSCREEN” movies and say it too many times by shoving steak knifes through they’re head. Like yeah it would be a total ripoff of Friday the 13th, but it would be a newage interpretation of it. It’s like if Jason went around killing people based on intellectual stupidity. It’s be like “Don’t say FULLSCREEN 3 times straight while looking in the mirror, or the UCF will get you”. And would be like “FULLSCREEN, FULLSCREEN, FULLSCREEN!” And then he’d be like “YAH! YOUR BRAIN IS USELESS! YAH!” *steak knife through the head* Dead.
Oh yeah, that would be an awesome horror movie. And of course, you’d have to cast me, undercoverfilmer, as the crazy dude who does all the killing. I’m normally not a horror film type of guy, but this would be a HUUUUUUUUGE exception. I’d love to play a part like that. I’d fly to whereever the fuck you live just to play that part. That’d be awesome.
I know what you mean for all the DVD bullshit, but wasn’t the original advertising feature for dvd’s all about just being able to skip all previews and go straight to your movie? you would think that someone would have the bright idea of using a protective case like the PSP discs or the 90’s super miracle the mini disc. that is just one fanboys opinion
Great as always James.
[...] am: Pour ceux et celles qui l’auraient manqué: « You Know What’s Bullshit – Episode 11 [...]
One major problem i have with DVDs is that it can only take so little. I have VHS tapes that has been here since before the beginning of my existence that still works fine. I have DVDs that is just a few years old, and some of them has become scratchy enough for it to not work. It´s…Bullshit. If VHS would had as good picture as DVD, then i would take VHS any day. The more modern VHS tapes actually have very good quality, not too far from DVD.
Well, it seems that the new blu-ray format should be able to take more of a beating.
What’s funny is those dumb clips are on my Wizard DVD.
James all ways has the best topics.
o.0 That James Bond box set is ridiculous! And yes, those little tab things are obnoxious. My dad will buy all of the different editions of those DVDs. It’s sort of a running joke around the house. DVD players are assholes. “NO, you can’t skip this logo! If you try, you have to watch it TWICE.” Why do these designers feel the need to put lengthy, pointless animations in between menus? It’s BULLSHIT!! Just like the bullshit man said. ;D
Hey UCF00v! I remember your 007 videos from along time ago, those were AWESOME! You do good commentary.
As for this video, I agree with the box set things, even though they do look cool but at least put them in order.
I agree with all the things you say, James. But I do have to add that DVDs did bring easier scene selection, language and subtitle selection, commentary tracks and lots of bonus features which are really nice if you enjoyed the film. But many of the issues you talk about are really annoying.
I’m a film student and very frequently my teacher wants to show a fragment of a certain film and we always have to wait for all the intro pieces and logos, before we can finally see it.
Perhaps even worse, I bought the Monty Python’s Flying Circus box set and sometimes I want to see or show just one sketch from an episode. The menu has a sketch selection, so that’s handy, but before every sketch I get this 30 second disclaimer about illegal copies and that this DVD is for home use only. Sometimes the sketch is even shorter than that disclaimer…
As always, a top notch vid from the man who truly knows what’s BULLSHIT.
But here’s some ideas for future episodes:
Censor bleeps & blurs/profanity edits. This would be even more hilarious to see this YKWBS episode actually censored as such to really drive the point home. But if you did it, you’ve gotta have the censored scenes from Die Hard 2 & The Big Lebowski.
The DMV. I don’t even need to explain this one.
Man, I hear you.
I just rip the DVD and put it on my PS3.
+I can skip whatever I want.
+I doesn’t fuck up
+I can stop and watch from the exact same spot again later
-Takes more time
I actually have a VHS tape that turns off the connection to the TV periodically while we watch it.
It’s pretty weird.
This is the best episode of this series! I HATE the tabs on the DVD clam-shells… and the excessive packaging is a waste! Thanks for filling up my time with something enjoyable!
If you have a laptop with a built in DVD playing program then you can just switch regions. So i’m not sure the region thing is a big complaint.
I love this version of Bullshit. Have you ever gotten those DVD cases with the tabs but one of the sides is just flimsy crap.
I really like having Full Screen version because I don’t have a Wide Screen TV. I really hate seeing those black bars at the top of the TV. What they really need is to have the option of Wide screen/Full screen option. Is it that hard to do? I love the movie Darkness falls and it is even better because you can choose either one on the same freaking disc.
I still have my VCR which I use to tape my TV shows. God I hate using DVD’s for taping. I can’t really afford a PVR.
Great video james!. I agree with everything you said, especially the little snap things on the side, they piss me off too. A couple of times i almost got suckered into buying full screen version DVDs. But other than that, you read my mind man.
Throwing away the boxes is a blasphemous move for a FILM FAN to do. Other than that, the bullshit is right on.
Suggestion: put all your DVDs in a giant CD folder. That way you won’t have to deal with ANY cases, no matter how nice they look on your shelf.
Why do people keep forgetting about the zoom button. Use that to cut off the sides, to simulated full screen.
That widescreen/ full versions on DVD we dont get in the U.K, thats fucked up actually.
I agreeon everything james said upto a point. THe only film i disagree on with packages is bladerunner and some packaging is worth collection, but yes DVD’s have gotten over the top. I dont watch VHS tape no more, but i agree on that with DVD’s sticking and shot. ONe thing i liek about VHS tapes, their very durable, the only thing i have never liked abot them is the quality. The only way you get a DVD quality tape is a rental thats never been used.
James saying that, you should do a review on lazer discs, because thats what was going to get before DVD’s come out, but lazer discs were still fukin £29.99.
Point it on your comment Archer, you shouldnt have to
They shoud still make the dvd like the “Leathal Weapon” serie. It’s kinda like VHS, put it in, it play no shit. Side A Fullscreen, Side B Widescreen.
BUT Here a NICE tip :
When you want to skip all the adds and jump to the menu, put the dvd and then press “stop” and “stop” again. The first one stop the dvd, and the second one act like you “already” seen the film so when you push play, the movie beguins. It work for 90% of the dvds.
Oh, yeah. I hate the multiple versions. I stupidly bought a lot of full screen DVDs before I had a widescreen TV, and, lately, I’ve been working to switch out my faves for their widescreen versions.
Blufyor, I know what you mean. Some DVDs are faulty from the getgo. This happened to me just once. I bought a copy of At World’s End that my DVD player deemed unreadable. Thankfully, I didn’t have too much trouble exchanging it, and the second copy worked fine. This doesn’t bother me so much, as defective units right off the shelf isn’t a problem unique to DVDs. I’m sure there were plenty of defective VHS tapes.
I don’t know if it’s been mentioned yet in the 200+ comments, but there’s a little trick I picked up with all those trailers.
They’re all in chapters. So what you do is hit the “Next Chapter” or the >>| button until you get to the menu.
TAKE THAT TRAILERS! >_>;
*cough* Anyway.. I’m not sure if it works for everything, but it works for everything I own so far.
No. People are bitching that they disable the controls when the FBI, company logos start up. First it was just the next chapter button, then it was the menu button, then stop, then manual fast forward where blocked off. All because they want to make themselves look like gods, or something. They practically force you to copy the disc with all that crap.
Quote: Satoshi
“You deserve a T.V. show.”
Hear, hear!!
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I experienced an issue when I rented Shawn of the Dead on DVD – a friend and I sat down to watch it, and for the life of us, we could not skip the previews. Normally, previews are optional, but for some reason, Shawn of the Dead would not let up with the Previews. We’d hit menu, and it would start with a preview for a Jason Statham movie.. At first we thought maybe it was the movie – we hadn’t seen it for a while… but it wasn’t, we hit menu, and it went back to the beginning of the preview…
this happened about 6 times, until we ended up turning the TV off while the previews played.
lol man these BS rants make perfect sense. Hey James i got one for ya to try to rant on. The ESRB rating system!
Its nothing but BS! Heck no one really enforces it and to make it worse its prevented certain games from being released thanks to biased opinions. More then that do some parents truly take the time to even LOOK at the rating before they buy it!? I can’t speak out for every parent but uhm..i think some of the stories you hear about on the news clearly shows its not always the case.
Anyways thanks for the BS rants james and keep up the great work!
yeah you gotta love crap like that. hell i love the back to the future box set (the old one btw) i have.
Disc 1 1HR 56Mins
Disc 2 1HR 48Mins
Disc 3 1HR 58Mins
that is what all DVD’s should do but no that would be to convient.
like for example i want to watch terminator 2 for the first time (yes first time shoot me if you will people).
152 Mins
….well.if theres any thing these all minute runtimes do well is they make you faster at math.
why not put 2HRS 32Mins?
i understand where you are coming from with the runtimes. sometimes i have to go to bed soon but i wanna watch a movie just before i go to bed but if i don’t know how long it is then why should i watch it?
You are ABSOLUTELY right with this vid… Especially the part about the DVDs screwing up more than VHS. Like, when I used to rent VHS tapes occaionally from the video store, Id sometimes bring them home to find out that they were not rewound by the previous user. Oh well, throw it in the rewinding machine for maybe 2 minutes, problem solved. You could then fast forward through all the previews, and be on your way.
With DVDs nowadays you put it in the player, and are FORCED to watch all the previews, those annoying ass Anti Piracy commercials, and even sometimes ACTUAL commercials, for cars, shampoo,etc! Back when DVDs first started, you could actually hit the MENU button, and BAM, the menu, and you could play the damn movie!
However, with newer DVDs, if finally make it to the movie, and get to watching it, watch out for fuck ups… Renting a DVD now is like nerve wracking experience. You hope to GOD that the DVD doesnt start doing its annoying pixellated glitches, that require you to skip 30 minutes of the movie to get past it, all because someone touched the bottom of the disc with their finger.
I have VHS tapes from the early 90’s that still play perfect, and I have come across a couple BRAND NEW DVDs that last like 3 weeks and they glitch on you!
ARRRRRRRRRRGHH!
LOL, I have that exact same fucking TV tray you set your James Bond DVD’s on.
Awesome!
they did that bullshit with the Seinfeld DVD’s (unless you got the more expensive version), it was fucking retarded.
@BatDan: I refused to buy Simpsons Season 6 in that idiotic Homer-shaped box, but I was lucky enough to stumble upon a regular S6 box. Yes they actually do exist. You better believe I snatched that shit up.
I was with you on the “not skipping menus” part until you griped about how you can fast-forward through the previews on a VHS. That’s definitely true of DVDs too. I fast-forward through the previews on my DVDs, owned or netflixed, all the time. I’ve never encountered one in which I couldn’t do this.
I’m surprised you didn’t cover “snapcases” at all. Those monstrosities that had an extra flap on all Warner Bros. DVDs. I’m not sure if they make those any more but God those were annoying.
That should have said “not skipping previews” in the first set of quotes.
This is so fucking true.
I have the same James Bond collection as you, but it didn’t come with the four inner boxes, just the big outer one.
They were still in the wrong order, though.
You may have ready seen this post on your My Space but just in case you haven’t I have a suggestion/request and who knows maybe this is something you were already planning, but in the near future you should have a Bond-a-Thon”. It could be month long thing where you review all the James Bond movies, maybe do an AVGN review of some of the James Bond video games, and whatever else you want to throw in. I, as well as lot of people I’m sure would love to hear thoughts on some of the best action/spy movies out there.
If the James Bond movies had been packaged chronologically, then they couldn’t have charged as much. I bought the collection you have. but in four sets. To get Goldfinger, I had to buy some crap along with it. Because the Bond movies have good runs (Dr. No to Thunderball, e.g.) and bad ones (most of Roger Moore), there is a wide disparity in value over time. By bundling different films, they can engage in limited price discrimination. Sucks, but it’s rational!
Yeah, but in the box set which contains every movie, correct the order.
Wow, that video being played through VHS was Robot Jox. What a great movie… when I was a kid. Movies are always better when you are younger guaranteed.
lmaoo thanks for the laughs. the skipping at the end was hilarious
This is why I am a big fan of libdvdcss. Software library for cracking DVD encryption.
I just rip the movie from disk to my harddrive. Don’t even bother with re-encoding it.. just copy the entire original MPEG-2 stream.
Of course some companies, especially Sony, like to put physical flaws and screw up the tracks on purpose to make that hard. Of course that is trivial to work around.
Why do media companies hate their own customers so much? All it does is just make people want to download stuff.
Why pay for a inferior product when you can get what you want for free off the internet? It is one thing to be nice and support the companies that make the movies, but its another that you paying for the right for them to abuse you!
So use your favorite media playback program with libdvdcss support and just skip all the commercials! Blow away all the restrictions and copy the movies to your harddrive. You can pause, rewind, and skip very very quickly to the point were you last watched the movie.
Free the media, crack the DRM.
i bought a CD today and found something bullshitty for you. cd cases with stickers on the case instead of the outside plastic.
I miss the simplicity of video tape too. In fact, tape should be better and improved, like those very old 2 inches reel tapes, you can’t be wrong with those, direct transfer.
With the CD, the sound is fine and it’s way more pratictal to skip tracks than tape or vinyl, but with the DVD, the image seems unnatural, like a crystal clear HD image. Why is it so faked-bright? You can even see the pixels even if the technology says DVD has more resolution than tape, especially with LCD TV screens. I miss the licked and little obscure image of the tape which made you relax while watching the whole movie. The image at least was uniform and continue.
Remember those old DVDs as big as old vinyl records released near 1993-1994? I wonder if they skipped more than our actual DVDs. One thing I’m sure of is they didn’t have commercials included
. I remember watching a part of Jurrasic Park on these old DVDs at a local electronic shop where they had some big home theater.
It’s also on that year they released the mini-disc.
Your complaints are funny, but some of them are pretty silly. The plastic tabs on DVD cases for instance. It’s a good idea in my view. Less likely a toddler will be taking the disc out and scratching it. Parents buy movies too.
Runtime seems irrelevant to me as well. Most movies are about 2 hours long (unless you have an over-ambitious director like Peter Jackson) and most episodic TV shows are about 20 minutes or 45 minutes (without commercial breaks). You can read the runtime of any feature you want on IMDB if you’re really concerned about your bedtime.
On most DVDs I’m able to use the chapter skip button to pass trailers at the beginning of the disc. VHS movies always had trailers at the beginning and you would have to fast forward through them. This isn’t anything new. You mention being able to stop a VHS tape at any part and play from where you left off, but how is this any advantage over DVDs? You can chapter skip to any part you want instantly. No manual fast forward or rewind necessary.
You’re right about the higher probability of discs being able to fuck up, but this is no different for video game consoles or music CDs. The price of quality is having to take care of your possessions. The picture and sound quality of DVDs is a drastic improvement over VHS and movies come out on home video much faster after being in theaters now due to the greater ease of making copies. The availability of rare or hard-to-find movies has increased greatly as well.
I don’t know. I agree with James on runtime. You’re not supposed to do any Internet research just to be informed of how long the movie is. And it seems DVDs wanna make you feel that you’re sitting in a theater (previews, commercials, other surprises) while you’re not.
Some say image and sound quality is better on DVD than VHS. On course, DVDs have less video noise and don’t need to be rewinded, but VHS has the advantage to subconscienlty be relaxed while pushing fast forward through the commercials, having no sound while you’re doing this until you see the movie begins. With DVDs you have to search for the good button to really start at the beginning of the movie and you have to hear, not only watch, the logos.
The point of James as I get it too is that skipping FFWD or RWD is way more annoying than tape FFWD or RWD. It’s stressful and it’s not precise at all when you want to search for a specific scene at a specific time. VHS lets you see a linear unskipped image while fast forwarding and also it lets you the chance to stop when you see the desired scene. DVD’s fast forwaring goes either too fast or too slow. Like you got 1/4, 1/2 for the slow motion and then the 2X 4X 8X 16X and even 32X for the fast speed (not to mention “Sega” haha). Why can’t there be a variant between 1X and 2X, like 1,5X?
And why with the 2X we hear the skipping sound of the movie? VHS at least let you with 3 basic choices: forwarding, fast forwarding and very fast forwarding (no image seen), but you didn’t hear anything and let your mind peaceful. That’s why knowing runtime was useful because you could know where to FFWD and where to stop using a bit of your logic and math.
Oh BTW, the big old DVDs I was talking about yesterday are called “Laserdiscs” and were released in the mid-80’s in Japan by Philips. Here are some intersting advantages of the Laserdisc (LD) towards the DVD took from Wikipedia. Unfortunately, there are some disadavntages.
“Advantages of Laserdiscs”
“Laserdisc players were known to provide the operator with a great degree of control over the playback process. Unlike many DVD players, the operator is immediately tied to the transport mechanism: pause, fast-forward, and fast-reverse commands are always accepted. There were no “User Prohibited Options” where content protection code instructs the player to refuse commands to skip a specific part (such as fast forwarding through copyright warnings). However, some DVD players, particularly in the higher-end units, have the ability to ignore the blocking code and play the video without restrictions. With CAV laserdiscs the user can access each individual frame of a video; a feature not common among DVD players.[citation needed] However, Some DVD players have cache features which stores a certain amount of the video in RAM which allows the player to index a DVD as quickly as an LD, even down to the frame in some players.
While Dolby Digital and DTS offer multichannel sound, many Laserdisc enthusiasts claim that the uncompressed PCM tracks can often outperform the respective DVDs of a title in richness and depth (and, because of the ways in which 5.1 tracks are often mastered, in dimension as well).
Another advantage of Laserdisc is that damaged spots can be skipped, while a DVD will become unusable. Some newer DVD players feature a repair+skip algorithm, which alleviates this problem by continuing to play the disc, filling in unreadable areas of the picture with blank space or a frozen frame of the last readable image and sound. The success of this feature depends upon the amount of damage. Laserdisc players, when working in full analog, recover from such errors faster than DVD players. Direct comparison is, however, almost impossible due to the differences between the two media. A 1″ scratch on a DVD will probably cause more problems than a 1″ scratch on an Laserdisc, but a fingerprint taking up 1% of the area of a DVD would almost certainly cause fewer problems than a similar mark covering 1% of the surface of an Laserdisc.
Some Laserdisc proponents believe analog laserdisc is theoretically capable of higher quality than the “lossy” quality of DVD. Early DVD demo discs often had compression or encoding problems, lending additional support to such claims at the time. However, “LD-perfection” is rarely achieved in practice. Only the best LDs in the best playback systems exhibit such superior quality in comparison to the newer DVDs. Proponents of Laserdisc argue that Laserdisc maintains a “smoother”, more “film-like” image while DVD still looks slightly more artificial. This is similar to the CD versus LP sound quality debates common in the audiophile community.”
Of course, LDs had a maximum runtime of 120 minutes and it was 2 sides of 60 minutes so you had to flip the big disc when the first part of the movie was over, which was a big inconvenient.
But a question remains: how did we pass from a DVD as big as a 33rpm record to a DVD as small as a CD in only 10 years (1986-1996). Couldn’t they have try something like a transitory kind of DVD, lets say as big as a 45rpm record, which could have been less skippy and better quality?
Another interesting thing was that the Laserdisc is analog (same as VHS) while the DVD is digital. With that said, Laserdisc was closer to a normal film than the DVD. The sound and image were less compressed. Plus, have you ever remarked the DVD’s runplay is faster than the VHS or the normal feature at the cinema? Some people also claims Laserdisc was smoother and slower than DVD.
Somebody has to chrono a DVD. Anyone volontary?
No I was kidding. DVD runplay is the same as VHS, but since the image is compressed, it seems that it invisibly skips every 2 frames rather than play frame by frame (normal film is 24 frames per second), which is why anlalog runs smoother than digital).
Here. Check this old 1980 video promoting the Pioneer Laserdisc. Notice at the end the “Scan” button (Fast forward) which is a bit similar to the VHS and it seems to skip less than the DVD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvvwcgGC8as
ncie vid
tabs on cases: Yes!Series out of order?:Yes!Movies that do not really belong in a series, like ‘game of death 2′?(or Halloween 3: season of the witch, imho):YES!Extra packaging? yep.looks cool as a gift, but heck on the shelf.Menus for tv shows that do not show all episodes? yep. menus that don’t allow you to skip the bs: YES!Menus that cue the menu when you try to skip: HECK YES!commercials, or scenes from the movie (ESPECIALLY IF I HAVE NOT WATCHED THE MOVIE YET!)YEESSS!
my points i would argue are: dvds still have better quality and longevity than vhs tape. I had several (many)tapes i bought new that ran fine ONCE then were grainy and stretched forever afterwards. maybe it was my player, but it was frustrating to spend $10-20 on a movie and it was almost trashed.
i find that even a lightly scratched disc (used)cleaned with our disc repair machine play very well.
Second, as for playing from the last place you left off, some (not all) discs we load in our newest dvd player will start at the last place we left off. (even if the movie was rented previously, and the next time we play that movie its our copy we bought…the thing starts up at the credits…weird)
we used to have to fast forward movies on tape all the time cuz we fell asleep watching a tape and the thing would rewind…forcing us to find the spot we wanted, usually half way through.
I have a bullshit idea for you!;) tax!! if you are in a store one day and its a sale.. it might cost 25 dollars for 3 t-shirts, but when you get to the cashier, it suddenly costs 26 dollars and 54 cent or something bullshit like that! and you only gave the them 25$ so you have to search your pocets for quarters you dont have on you!! WHY DOES IT SAY 25$!? then the salesmen explain to you that we need to have taxes so we can maintain our good sosiaty! I KNOW THAT!! but why does it say 25 dollars on the fucking sale poster then?! when it should have said 26 dollars and 54 cent!! BULLSHIT
[...] [...]
Yeah, while it’s definitely true DVD’s are toast once they have a good scratch, at least you could stick it in a case in a drawer for 100 years and it would still play, providing the backwards-compatible optical media trend keeps up (CD->DVD->Blu-Ray), while a VHS tape (or Beta, or some other magnetic based device) will degrade no matter what the fuck you do with it.
For all the other points- well, I don’t watch movies very often and when I do watch a DVD it’s in MPlayer on my computer which ignores the damn menu bullshit and I can skip the annoying advertisements easily.
For data, I use DVD’s all the time, and, ironically, they seem to hold up physically much better than CDs despite the finer data on the disk.
Yes, taxes can be a pain in the *avgn voice* ASS, but putting tax inclusive prices on posters in stores would be ASS as well, because the posters would have to be changed when the tax changes. Therefore, always assume taxes are not included and carry some extra change or do the math (N = P + Pt, where P is the price without tax and t is the tax rate, such as 0.13 meaning 13 cents on the dollar, N is the price after tax). Easiest of all (minus the service fees, and availability) would be to use debit.
As for the widescreen vs fullscreen, apparently where AVGN lives (US of A), the fullscreen is tabooed, possibly because a) people like the aspect ratio, even if you have a non HD TV and it letterboxes the video or b) practically everybody has HD (the stereotypical american guy in the house can’t watch his football without it), but in Canada (where I live), the Widescreen one is tabooed, because there are still a good bunch of people here who have good old SD (like me).
Anyways, retailers should be forced to sell both together. The problem with making it double sided is figuring out which damn side is which (if the dvd is double-sided then there can be no label, because the data takes up both sides of the disk, and data and the label cannot coexist on the same side.)
[...] know what’s bulllllll s$$$ You Know What’s Bullshit (episode 11) | Cinemassacre Productions thought it was [...]
Fyar Ball, that’s just simply wrong. Most of the people prefer widescreen in Canada. People look like jack a$$es in fullscreen, plus, you’re missing part of the screen. Screw your argument of the HD TV, widescreen format exist since much longer.
But hey, it is true that DVD package for TV series are bull$hit. I had the the first season of Rome for a year and went through it 2 times before I found a hidden DVD in the package with more episodes. And also, why can they only fit 2 or 3 episodes on a DVD ? If the Lord of the Rings (standard version) can fit on one single DVD, there is no reason not to fill the DVD. Having to change DVD each hour and a half is just anoying.
u know they only do it for the money cuz the discs alone r not expensive so they use all the packaging possible…they do it with few video games i hate.just cover the things in plastic and thats it.
You know what’s buuuuulshit? This show.
James complains all the times. Above the fact that he sorted some pieces of argument we couldn’t find anywhere in hopes that the passionate truster you should be wakes up, I had never found anyone being so violent in my life. I challenge you to be like me James. Stop feeling the need to post anything you feel the need to share, and be the one that ironically you are dying to tell everyone to be. Cuz noone real passionate will ever watch this stuff and say hey, I hate shit as much as he loves it. Just to point out only the potential to understand, that you can’t be mean twice as much as shocking sharing a perfect life, the world as it should have been from Doc’s alternative timeline, you’ve just happened to live in the wrong one.
Easy (but time-consuming) solution:
Rip your favorite DVD’s to your HD, then convert them to nice, high-quality 700MB AVI’s with AutoGK.
At least with digital files you don’t have to deal with the packaging, menus, and scratched disk BUUUULLSHIT.
Great vid!
My suggestion- stop paying those MPAA a-holes, and start pirating things. Why PAY for this kind of treatment and get worse experience than you get with piracy? To get that worm fuzzy feeling that you are a honest man and have just contributed to some multibillion dollar corporations profits? So that they can abuse you some more?
There’s another thing about DVDs that’s BULLSHIT! Why do DVD distributors maintain their hold onto the license of a movie when they aren’t even fucking selling it on DVD? Example? Drunken Master 2. I’m a Hong Kong action movie collector, and the only copies of Drunken Master 2 on DVD that exist are foreign, have poor subtitles and don’t have remastered video.
Now in comes Dragon Dynasty, an English speaking DVD distributor that remasters HK movies and loads them with extras. Only problem is they can’t release Drunken Master 2. Why? Because fucking Miramax has the license to it in the US, but the only copy they’ve made for it is shitty! It doesn’t have the original Cantonese dialogue and they’ve even changed the entire soundtrack of the movie, which is outrageous.
Why don’t shitty companies that clearly don’t give a damn like Miramax SELL their licenses to passionate companies like Dragon Dynasty? They make one last buck off the movie, Dragon Dynasty has a new source of revenue, and we the fans are happy. It makes perfect sense.
But they don’t. And that’s BULLSHIT!
[...] His newest series of videos, You Know What’s Bullshit?, takes on everyday nuances like DVD box sets. He may be vulgar and his vignettes silly, but damn straight he’s got a point. Enjoy all his [...]
Excellent DVD collection, James. I enjoy your B.S. videos. I hate when everytime I turn the dvd player back on to continue watching a movie, and the DVD player starts the movie all over again. That is B.S.
You rule, James!
LONG LIVE HORROR!
[...] His newest series of videos, You Know What’s Bullshit?, takes on everyday nuances like DVD box sets. He may be vulgar and his vignettes silly, but damn straight he’s got a point. Enjoy all his [...]
ya but if u turn the dvd player of with the disc in then later turn it on press play there u are the point u left off
Yeah, DVDs are fucked.
YES!
And what about double-sided DVDs? “Which side am I gonna set that on so it doesn’t get scratched? Fuck!”
Or how about DVD cases made of chipboard w/ plastic clips to close it? The front isn’t flat and it pulls out 3 movies when I pull it off the shelf!
As with everything man made there will be flaws. Nothing can be perfect. I happen to like dvd’s however there are some good points here, those being you should be able to ff through the previews and/or advertisements.
Is it me or does this guy like talk about what everyone is thinking. The run time was classic fuck minutes I wanna see actual time. See ya in a week not 168 hours lol ! classic!
I sorta agree with you and I sorta do not. I hate fullscreen and just about everyone loves Widescreen like I do. But some special editions and box sets are pretty cool like the Apocalypse Now Dvd and Blade Runner Dvd and if you hate dvd menus trust me i’ve seen the worst one on a great movie Memento I mean I don’t want to take no fucking test just let me watch the movie! Special editions are sorta cool cause you know more of your movie and everything behind it movie menu are sorta cool too cause you can go where you left off and you can know more about your movie too.
Finally! Someone with the guts to talk about how shitty DVDs are! I mean they are more convenient,but still! And that whole thing about the time not bein on the box pisses me te fuck off too!! YOu the man James!!
Thats Why Blue Ray Rules!!!!!!!
Actually, a lot of DVD players have the option of you setting it up so that once you pop the movie in, it starts playing the movie right away. Still, you really shouldn’t have to do that, and it is seriously bullshit! I know some DVDs also have the option of letting you at least skip or fast forward through the previews, so they should at least make that option available for all DVDs!
i saw that you have a ps3, i was wondering if i could have your psn name so i can add you as a friend.
This is my first comment, I had to come and show my appreciation of your awesome videos. I just finished watching all of your AVGN videos over a long weekend with a friend and wow!! such genius!
So, hungry for more entertaining anger fuelled brilliance I came to the bullshit section and found this… hehehe =). I do agree with a lot of what you said about DVD’s and it reminded me of something else about them that has been getting me more and more pissed off. This comment section is rightfully vast, but if you read this and you agree with the topic maybe you’ll want to make it in to a DVD rant trilogy =P.
Ok here it goes… “Anti Piracy”. Back in the old days of VHS we had macrovision, which only really stopped you doing VHS to VHS copies of certain movies (well most of the ones you bought). It was stupid as you could get around it if you wanted to but is not what I’m angry about. What does make me angry is all the effort (and more importantly our money) they spend on doing it now. I opened a DVD box once to find no booklet but just a piece of paper warning people about fake copies. Apart from the silliness of preaching to the converted, since the only reason you are seeing the stupid message is because you bought the damn movie, it typifies the punishment you get for actually buying the movie. Like you say in this video the “Anti Piracy” message (be it video, text or both) is another thing you cannot skip at the beginning of the movie, it’s fucking annoying. Not only is it rubbing it in your face that you pay more money for you DVD’s because of these stupid “Anti Piracy” messages but it’s telling you that if only you had ripped it off you wouldn’t have to watch that BULLSHIT!
Blu-Ray is even worse! I have to pirate software to get over the “Copy Protection” bullshit just so I can watch the legitimate movie on my fully HDCP compliant hardware and again, I am paying for them to add this bullshit in to make my life a misery. Then they wonder why Blu-ray is not as successful and DVD. Because their prices are too high from all the “Anti Piracy” bullshit they stick on there that btw. doesn’t fucking work!!
I’m sorry for the massive comment but you have inspired me to rant James =P
For most DVD movies (there are exceptions,) there is an easy and fast way to start the movie without waiting for the menu.
Insert the disc and wait for the disc to start.
When the player starts allowing commands again, press STOP TWICE (so the player says “stop” not “resume.”)
Then, press PLAY.
Almost always, this will start the disc at the beginning of the movie and bypass the menus.
Well, my DVD player is archaic (well it was one of the first Sony DVD players to be released) and still, I can skip all the trailers and stuff, I just keep pressing the “next (scene)” button, not the menu button since like you referred it usually makes things worst rather than making the menu appear (too bad the copyright stuff cannot be skipped i think).
It’s also funny that I rented the episodes IV, V and VI of the Star Wars Saga from the rental store and the film started stopping right on the scene you showed. It was so frustrating, but well, i cleaned the DVD and popped into my senior xbox and it worked fine. Sometimes the DVDs might be scratched but it will also depend on the DVD player itself if they’re read or not.
My biggest complaint about DVD’s (especially ones of old TV series) is that they can sometimes be sold in strange combinations or separate box sets that are very expensive.
Last week I saw a rerun of a TV show that I had liked when I was younger so I went on the net to see if I could find any DVD’s of the seasons (particularly seasons one and two as they were the best seasons of the series)after doing some research I discovered that there are DVD’s of all the seasons available (seasons 1 & 2 are available on Amazon.com but they are either individulally for eighty bucks each or as 150 dollar boxed set), although its supposed to be cheaper if I order it through the distribution companies website)The final cost of the seasons one and two set from amazon.com after shipping handling and duty is 192.50 american thats almost a hundred dollars a season and from what I can tell there are few special features on the discs )and the last three seasons are only available as a boxed set through the distributors website and that is also very expensive (about 150 dollars) so if you want the full series you’d have to lay out more than three hundred dollars (after taxes and shipping) but even after you shell out all of that money you still aren’t even getting the whole series there’s also a Christmas special that is sold separately for 40 bucks.
It really hacks me off.
Why shouldn’t I be able to decide if I want a single season first just to see if its really worth buying the rest or if I’m only interested in one season why then should I have to buy another that I’m not going to watch?
I mean why not just sell them individually by season with a few bonus extras for about 40-50 dollars for those who may only be interested in owning one or two seasons of the program, along with a “complete series” boxset for the hardcore fans who have to have all of the episodes and whatever special extras they can throw in like they did with Red Dwarf A Nightmare On Elm Street Friday The 13th and The James Bond Series along almost every other TV or film series that I can think of.
Do they think the consumers (and casual fans) are stupid? I mean if you really like a show you’ll go out of your way to track down all of the seasons (or get the boxed set) while the casual fan that may have only ever watched a season or two of that show may only want those particular seasons.
Or is it because they just throw a dart at a dart board when deciding the price and say “oh this DVD that should cost forty or fifty bucks will now cost almost double the suggested retail price just because we feel like charging it”? I get they have to make money but what the hell? is there any reason to make people pay through the nose for something they could just as easily get through other means like Ebay or independent suppliers.
One other thing that REALLY REALLY PISSES ME OFF is when you spend a large amount of money on a DVD set of a season of a TV show (some sell for up to 80 bucks)that claims to have “special features” but either don’t or what they do have really stretch what the definition of “special features” is.
I recently bought a season of a show that I’d watched when I was a kid and it claimed to have as a special feature a behind the scenes special that was really just a three minute advertisement for the show which aired just before the show premiered on TV in 1996.
but that’s not all I also got a general series credits screen, why they did that I have no idea because each episode has a detailed credits screen at the end of it so it serves no purpose and has no point other than to take up space on the DVD.
The only real special features are a bi-lingual audio tracks which is more or less a given here in Canada because we do have two ofical languages (french and english) and closed captioning that doesn’t even work with my dvd player or TV.
The other thing I hate is when companies use those stupid low density dual-discs for dvds when they should be using regular high density discs because they can hold a lot more footage so a four disc set can easily become a two disc set and be sold at a cheaper price point.
All the dual discs do is make it incredibly frustrating to watch the program you may want because they are almost never marked as side a and side b so you always end up having to get up and flip the disc over (or go hunting through the entire set) just to watch the episode that you want.
They also scratch so easily that you have to treat them like they are your grandmothers finest china because they are so damn delicate and once one side is scratched you have no choice but to throw out the disc because it won’t play on either side.
EXELENT!!!! SO FUNNY SO REAL BULLSHIT THAT MAKE US HUNGER!!
So very true.
Oh yeah try “Star Trek Enterprise”. I got it for my Dad’s birthday.
Outer Box (Slip that off)
There are no individual boxes for the four seasons…no.
There are discs in visible slots like for a photo album. Each page does not label say ’season’ and ‘episodes’ on said disc.
Oh well…
Back to fast forwarding……
I’ve noticed that Paramount won’t let you fast forward or skip to menus.
Fox on the other hand will let you skip. I know I have all seasons of M*A*S*H so I just keep skipping till I get to the main menu of the disc.
~~Notice~~
If it won’t let you skip try pushing the ‘fast forward button’. It might work then again it might not. It’s worth a shot. Enjoy!
love this episde =)
i love this video i would love to see more how about minimum wage now thats bull shit
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I luckily found away to get around the region codes. I bought a Cyberhome DVD player that all I had to do was put a code into it and now I can watch all regions and it has the ability to translate PAL format video to NTSC.
Well done! I love all of you vids. I totally agree with you with dvds. Everything you say in there is so true. I hate those snapp things, and the menus.
Keep up the good work! I look forward to more Bullshit videos.
The chapters on DVDs pisses me off too and movies have the same problem: they have too much chapters for nothing.
For example, the movie The Matrix: you get 38 chapters (or scenes) for a 2h15m movie, which means a scene for every 3 or 4 minutes. Why do you need that much? Would you memorise for every movie which chapter you want from all 40 of them or would you just fast forward at high speed until you see the scene that you want?
For a 2-hour movie: 12 scenes is enough (which means one chapter every 10 minutes of the movie).
i 100% agree! DVDs suk ass!
True, you do make some valid points!
I do like DVD’s, since most have some great bonus features to check out, you can skip to a scene without excess fast-forwarding, and some other things. You are right though, there are flaws to DVD’s, as well as VHS tapes. So in all, no video-playing system will ever be perfect.
None the less, I guess we just do what we can to make it work.
Really great points, they annoy me just as much, i find it strange that technology has not really found a better medium for the dvd, it’s like technology stopped there, we only had the HD DVD and Bluray, but those are actually identical in form, one scratch and you can toss away the dvd. I still have VHS tapes from the 80’s and still work great…
You know what else is bullshit?
People that don’t listen to a certain band just because it’s a principle or because their friends doesn’t and people that say a band or a movie sucks before they have even heard them or seen it!
So true.
I love the Alien movies (alien, aliens, etc.) But I hate the DVD case for the set I got. It stretches like 3 feet. I know it’s a bitch to make videos, but if you get spare time PLEASE make another Bullshit video. Speaking of Bullshit, I got fucked bad on a purchase. I’m on a tight budget, but I liked Watchmen. So I decided to wait a while so I could buy the Director’s Cut. I was ecstatic. When I opened it, it had a coupon for $10.00 for WATCHMEN, the ultra edition. I read up on it and it is suppose to have more deleted scenes and extra bonus features. More deleted scenes? I swore I just bought the Director’s cut. BUT NO! I can’t believe they had the balls to tell me after I open the movie, “HA HA you stupid fucker! Buy the same fucking movie again this winter!” That’s some shit. Do I dare to say Bullshit?
loved the video James. i mean, who’s fucking idea was it to make dvd? whoever made them is a real dick. what the fuck is the deal with them fucking up constiantly? and the thing that pissed me off the fucking most was the HDDVD’s war agianst Blu-ray. Blu-ray was already out before HDDVDs and they still had the god damn nerve to release these things.
i wish we can go back to VHS…
Hey on alot of DVD movies, if you want to skip all the trailers and menu bullshit here is a trick you can try:
press stop, stop, play.
push that sequence as if keeping in beat with
one onethousand, two onethousand, three…
hope that helps!
I hate when a dvd freezes up!
Oh man james, Your so right!!
I fucking hate the DVD! why don’t we have small chips already?! And now with the blue ray, its just getting worse and worse.
Cheers for making the vid!
and what’s the deal with airline food?
There’s a bit of a culture gap for this video. In england you don’t get those little clippy things and I have a little disk cleaner thingy which has never failed to fix a stuttering dvd, I have never had the menu problem my x-box (which I use to watch dvds) lets me skip through. Editions do piss me off but you got that with videos as well. I do agree that dvds are annoying and the episode lists piss me off. Also with certain dvd players it skips back to your last scene
shit i know how you fell rolfe i only own 3 dvds clerks II,breakfeast club and some anime movie and vhs’s like 500
I also have that 007 box set. Boxes galore!! It reminds me of those Russian dolls that stack inside each other.
Hey man! First of love all the shit you do man! it’s great! Second, I have noticed that you have started to use adds on youre site, when I sit down at the site I wanna watch what you do not witch the new and best car is or whatever. Thought you made a good point about the elivator, and now we have to watch the fucking adds on the internet to before we can watch what we really wanna watch? come on man / Angry Swedish guy
I can understand logos not being skippable, but why not the trailers?
i agree with james dvds are bullshit. period.
I seems like I’m lucky to be living in Sweden, where the back covers always are structured and easy to read!
I’m gonna make a guess, that the Warner Bros logo that starts over again when you hit the Menu button was from a Lethal Weapon DVD. Only saying that, because that’s exactly what happens on the Lethal Weapon DVD. Then again. It could be a few movies released along its time.
Spot on. It’s only gotten worse with Blu-Rays. I fucking hate these things. God forbid your blu-ray player has an internet connection too (like my ps3) because then you have targeted fucking ads popping up from the internet as well. Plus you have to sit through a goddamn 10 minute intro about how fucking great Blu-Rays are. Hey fuckfaces, I already HAVE The FUCKING BLU RAY! I don’t need to be sold on how good they are when I’M ALREADY WATCHING ONE! Jesus fucking christ.
AVGN: You know what is bullshit?
1. You need to login to post a comment here
2. You dont know that you can sand your dvd to new again like 10 times. Every optical media can be sanded like 10 times to new before their plastic shield is so worn that sanding penetrates to writing layer.
So dvd’s are not bullshit, this time you are, because you are so noob with DVD’s. This was worst episode of yours as you liked vhs more than dvd when DVD kicks vhs ass!
Atleast in Finland you can skipp all adds on dvd. Tough usually you cant skip antipiracy, and the company logos. How ever, my dvd player atleast can pick tracks what you like with remote controller. I just hit track 1 with remote to dvd player screen and it finds track 1 on dvd and starts movie immidiately.
Autoboot only makes you view those crap before dvd menu. Atleast my JVC dvd player can pick track numbers in hardware screen without any visual elements on tv.
And more:
1. The menu system or software in the DVD is bullshit, not the DVD format.
2. This comes to conclusion, taught of companies bosses who releases these movies on DVD format are bullshit.
I’ve got an old VHS tape of TMNT II: The Secret of the Ooze recorded way back in 1993. I’ve watched it multiple times and it’s one of my favourite nostalgic films.
I could pop it in my old VHS player right now and watch it without any distractions.
Infact, that’s what I’m going to do.
A tape that is 17 years old.
It’s been with me for more than 6,000 days. Fuck DVDs.
I hate DVDs and any kind of disks, they are so inconvenient. Not to mention the price, they are too expensive. Thats why i prefer to download movies for free so you get only what you want to watch hahaha.
I remember when dvd’s were new.
The big thing companies talked about was how you could skip the trailers by just hitting the root menu button. Now you can’t even do that. :/
I agree with this video 100%
The menus, cases etc. are pretty much why I’m ripping my entire DVD collection, one at a time, into Mp4 files, on an external drive, so I can do a “video on demand” style of my whole collection. No menus, no “not allowed to skip”, it remembers where I was last, no fiddling with lost covers or having to dig through my stacks to find that it’s been hiding under the couch for the last year and that’s why I’ve never been able to find it.
And the player lists the runtime in hours:minutes:seconds…
It costs a bit in time and money (I can rip about 2 DVDs a day), and you need either a media pc, or something like an appletv or mac mini acting as one… but I think it’s well worth the lack of aggravation once I’m done…
agree with Satoshi
That’s just funny but true..the star wars dvd skipping part actually got me mad enough to throw my coke can on the wall.
So here it’s still Jan 27 @ 11:00 pm interesting
I can’t stand when DVD’s don’t have special features. It defeats the purpose if you’re going to just put the movie on for fuckin twenty bucks. I bought Benjamin Button, and there are straight up no special features. It’s bullshit! That was a big budget movie, and epic at that! How could there be no commentary or “Making Of” at all??
thats why ill have all my DVDs on my HD
and damn i fucking hate region Codes >_>