I’m sick of the silly animated menus on movies. They were moderately interesting the first four times ten years ago. Then they became more and more annoying. I don’t want to put a DVD in, wait several minutes to get to the main menu, scroll to scene selection, watch an animation, select a scene, then start the movie. I want to put the disc in and have the movie start. If I want the menu, I’ll hit the menu button. If I want to watch trailers, I’ll select trailers. Direct access was supposed to be one of the benefits of DVD over tape. But since many DVD players don’t let you skip all the animations, you may as well be fast forwarding through trailers. Not that I want to go back to tape, but new technology should make life better, not just different.

The second problem is the CRAP included on DVD and Blu-ray. It is bad on DVD. The CRAP on Blu-ray it is so bad I refuse to ever buy a Blu-ray disc.

I may as well include a third problem: How do all rental DVDs end up scratched? Are people playing frisbee with them? Using them as coasters? I have never scratched a CD or DVD, yet most rental DVDs are scratched enough to loose whole scenes.

I hope whatever high-definiton format (HVD?) we end up with in a couple years fixes these problems. Maybe we’ll even get a decent frame rate, 24 or 30 frames per second flickers way too much…

P.S. For those less informed on the ethics of technology: DRM is an acronym for Digital Rights Management. It is used as a euphemism for copy-control. Some companies try to control the ethical–and legal–fair use of music, video, and text. A common method is encryption designed to only allow files to be accessed on approved devices. Good examples are Blu-ray disks and some PDF files. These encryption systems are superfluous and unethical. This is why the euphemism DRM commonly makes lists of technology terms to avoid: Some Confusing or Loaded Words and Phrases that are Worth Avoiding, and Tech Terms to Avoid. We settled on the term CRAP: Controlled Reading and Playing.