What is with commercial DVD and previews / commercials

[Rynoc]

I bought 4 DVD's this weekend 3 of which were for my kids. After inserting them in an older player (circa 1999), I spent 20 minutes watching forced previews and commercials before I was able to launch the video. Ripped everyone of them the next day and made DVDR's which had only the movie on them.

Is there no public outcry on this?

5 minutes of the forced previews were about pirating DVDs. Do they even think about thier audience? Really, if I was a pirate, I would not be buying their DVD and seeing their commercial. It is like they have no clue who their audience is.

Seems like this trend is getting worse...are we just going to get even more of this garbage with HD DVD?

[ROF]

The trend will continue. How many times have you sat through 20 minutes of previews in the movie theater? How many commericials are on your favorite broadcast TV show? How many advertisements do you see driving to work? ever listen to terrestrial radio? How about a magazine? read a newspaper lately?

DVD is no different, except you can avoid the previews by hitting stop twice and then play once the disc is initialized.

[mats.hogberg]

The TV ads pay for the TV. The radio ads for the radio. Some daily papers are free. (Metro for one) Shelling out $20 or more for a DVD (that's already earned it's production cost 100 times over) should entitle you to a advertizing free enjoyment IMO. OK, if they gave it away for free, but we all know what they think about that!

/Mats

[ROF]

You can't escape ads. They are everywhere. At least with dvds you can avoid them completely with three clicks of your remote.

[dphirschler]

Those three clicks should be unnecessary. You should be able to hit the "Menu" button to skip the f%cken ads! But NOOOO!!! They disable that!


Darryl

[PhoneMatt]

Giving credit where it is due- I rented the "40-Yr_Old Virgin". There were the usual previews, but also a screen that said that these could be skipped, if you wished. Thanks, Universal.

[Rynoc]

Saying they need them in to lower the DVD cost is almost laughable. Movies on DVD may or may not have earned production costs but the adds are for other movies from the same distributer - free adverts.

The video segment about video piracy really ticks me off and that is the MIAA. Talk about preaching to the choir...and on a KIDS video!!!

I am thinking the bigger problem is that this practice does not hurt sales and that means no outcry. Those of us fed up with it will continue to buy or rent the movies. Those of us with enough sense re-author the crap out of them. That leaves publishers to think the practice is acceptable.

Just a matter of time before adverts start getting embedded into hardware, already showing up in my games.

[lordsmurf]

Previews only advertise their own products anyway, so it's not like they make money off it.