Forcing Previews on Viewers
The first time a DVD movie denied me the use of our remote control’s menu button—”Love Actually”, as I recall—I thought perhaps something might be wrong with the remote control. Another movie did it recently, but I do not presently recall which one it was (I will update this post if, after getting some sleep or perhaps having my memory jogged while walking past our DVD shelves, I remember which it was). I do remember how annoying it was, though.
It is bad enough that I have to sit through the same legal warnings and disclaimers (or slight variations of them) almost every time I watch a DVD; forcing previews on me is going too far. I would prefer that previews be tucked tidily away in their own area of the DVD where I can watch them at will and only if I will (for example, aside from occasional historical interest, there is little reason to see a preview for a movie I already have), but I can tolerate them playing automatically if I can skip past them at will with a single button press rather than having to fast-forward through them, wasting time while waiting for the fast-forwarding to finish. This is a most annoying, rude, and wasteful trend and I do hope it will come to an end soon—preferably with some corporate apologies, assurances against further occurrences, and perhaps even some very public firings as evidence of the sincerity of the issuers.
Update (2004-12-19): We finally watched I, Robot last night—after fast-forwarding through the previews Fox forced on us. *Grumble, grumble . . . *
Update (2005-03-04): We watched a movie with last night’s dinner: AVP: Alien vs. Predator, Fox’s latest effort to force previews upon us by automatically playing them before the main menu and disabling the menu button.