DVDs and Blu-rays will now carry two unskippable government warnings

[Michael DeAbreu]

From ARS Technica,

"Will the two screens be shown back to back? Will each screen last for 10 seconds each? Will each screen be unskippable? Yes, yes, and yes."

I can barely tolerate the unskippable content on movies, but I hate it on TV shows where I have to watch them each time I load the DVD to watch an episode.

[audacity]

I find it amusing that these additional "piracy warning" measures are just pushing people towards piracy (or legal streaming video) because it makes watching those plastic discs less compelling.

[timmy1]

This clearly has nothing to do with piracy; it's pure politics. The FBI had a warning screen and DHS didn't, and DHS could not allow that to stand.

[ScaryBob]

Many Canadian DVDs have one FBI and then two Canadian copyright warnings in English and French. Does that mean there will now be 4 warnings on each Canadian disc? Add the previews and crappy menu system and it makes DVDs an undesirable purchase. What's next, locked in advertising?

[cooper83]

LOL these stupid corporations/organizations continue to shoot themselves in the foot. This is ridiculous.

[Neild]

Isn't there an axiom out there that says each new invention, innoation, or progress will come with some aspect that is a bigger drawback that is worse than the previous generation?

Yay, blu-ray has better video and sound! Oh but discs take over a minute to load! And now every big new release forces the customer to solve an elaborate firmware update puzzle or it won't okay. I don't remember ever doing a firmware update with DVD.

Ok, now we have faster blu-ray players that shave 20 seconds off the load time.... Oh wait let's see if we can add 20 seconds of pointless warnings that no pirate wil ever respect.

[Neild]

I'm imagining the discussion:

Govt: we'd like to add non-skippable garbage content to every movie you sell.
Studio: is there some law or regulation that forces us to do this?
Govt: not at all, in fact most laws would actually protect you from this kind of interference!
Studio: and won't that waste disc space and ruin the experience and make customers unhappy?
Govt: never mind that, these warnings will protect your industry.
Studio: well in that case, by all means, let us do your bidding!

[cooper83]

Neild, completely agree. I'm all for Blu-ray. I've stood by disc media while my peers download terabyte after terabyte for free with their subpar PQ & AQ. And meanwhile, I'm stuck borrowing year-old BD's from the library because every movie rental store in town has gone under. And now these morons decide it's a good idea to make the user experience even more frustrating? If I weren't such a home theatre snob (and I'm not, by comparison) I'd gladly get rid of my BD & HD-DVD player, cut my cable, and stick with illegal downloading. Seems to work for everyone else, which shouldn't I hop on the bandwagon.

P.S. My favourite thing about Blu-ray is when the studio includes a lossless sound format, but skips the main menu and defaults to lossy DD or DTS. Gee, thanks a lot! I may as well have saved a few bucks and bought the DVD! Idiots...

[Witchdoctor]

All I can say is thank god for Slysoft, and practice the three "R's".

[Fry1989]

Look at the bright side, gives you more time to get up and make yourself a snack or a cup of coffee

If they think that making it unskipable is gonna somehow force people to watch and read the piracy warnings, they're clueless.

[audacity]

Look at the bright side, gives you more time to get up and make yourself a snack or a cup of coffee

... and sign up for a streaming video service.

[Neild]

Personally, my wish is that they would make the blu-ray disc experience the most superior. It's already the most expensive.

Blu-ray should have the best picture and sound - which it does.

But the user experience is horribly broken. I'm speaking of the slow loading and common bugs. Also the way discs are authored to ignore commands to skip or fast forward ads or other junk content. And the way troublesome firmware updates are frequently required. Then there's the problematic region coding that is effortlessly bypassed by all pirates.

If blu-ray were the best quality and user experience, it would give more people a reason to buy them and more of a market to sell and rent them.

Streaming is the most convenient, but worst value since the stream expires and must be repurchased over and over.

Digital copies allow for repeat viewings, but are inextricably tied in with complicated and privacy-invading DRM schemes. And the quality is also lacking.

Cable broadcasts are at the mercy of disinterested service providers, who typically pay no attention to aspect ratio, versions, or extras. Picture and audio are typically degraded due to compression or other shortcuts.

Grey market downloading seems to offer a balance - quality on par with the cable, streaming, and digital download options - but with none of the convenience, value, privacy, or DRM issues.

So here is blu-ray with a great potential to easily solve all these issues at once. It already commands by far the highest retail price per movie which should afford its owners the generous margins they seek.

But instead of parlaying their advantages, they keep magnifying the weak points, and adding new points of frustration like the pointless government messages.

If the existence of these messages is mandated, then use a minimal static image so as not to waste disc capacity, and author the disc to play them at the end of the credits. The technicality would be met, without bothering customers who already paid for the movie and thus are obviously not pirates.

[eljay]

Twenty whole seconds of warnings is definitely annoying, but ultimately it doesn't detract from my enjoyment of good movies on BD.

(And, unfortunately, a lack of warnings doesn't make crappy movies on BD any better. )

[gretzky]

what's the point of doing this ?
we allready have 1 FBI arning (oh i'm scared!!!!) and 2 copyrights warning (one english one french)
i'm buying all my dvds and blu rays but adding more crap will get people pissed off and go slysoft route just to get rid of those useless add ons

[numba1killa]

Sometimes, just for laughs, I like to throw in a VHS tape, and fast forward thru the FBI warnings ... Ha ha ha! In your face FBI!

Anyway, it should be an option for us to skip it. We basically all know piracy is wrong .. so why try to cram it down our throats? If they just show the 1 FBI warning and thats it ... like last 10 seconds (with option to skip it) Why would we need another one? OR 4? 4 Warnings for the same thing ... its basically like the disc is skipping ... showing the same bullshit 4 times lol.