As a fervent movie watcher and since I actually work at a DVD-renting gas station, I tend to handle more than my fair share of DVDs. There are many positive things to say about ‘em, but, as always, I’m going to go taboid on your asses and list what the hell is wrong with them. Feel free to add your own points of hatred in the comment section.
- When the DVD is ruined. You know, when the bloody thing starts clicking worse than Windows 95 and you take it out and wash it, but nothing seems to help? That’s so infuriating I scantly have words to describe it.
- When the DVD won’t come out of it’s cover. Well, they normally do eventually, but you always have that sinking feeling in your stomach going “Oh God, oh God, I’m gonna break it!”. This happens to me every time I wanna watch my extended version of The Lord of the Rings. Heart problems runs in my family and I fear that this will be the end of me someday.
- The damned “Piracy - it’s a crime” intro. I got it, okay? Pirating is illegal, you don’t have to play that fucking brainwasher every time I want to watch a DVD.
- When your only subtitle options are Scandinavian. Why, oh why, is it so hard to have English subtitles as well? And with this point I also have to add:
- When the bloody translators are clearly hopelessly retarded. The reason why I hate Norwegian subtitles is because they tend to translate English, sorry I meant butcher English, like a third-grader.
- The movie trailers in the front. Movie trailers in general bug me. Why see the film if they blow the entire plot in the trailer?
- DVD commercials. Uhm… Don’t they understand that I rented a DVD so I could not watch commercials?
- Where the hell did the menus go? This has happened more often now than before. New DVDs without special features try to make up for it by cutting every other option like Scene Selection (which is a must have in my opinion) or Options. Irritating, to say the least.
- No Special Features? This doesn’t bug me if I didn’t like the film, but if I did, I damn sure hate it when they don’t have any special features.
- When they play the ending credits before the film starts. Hello?

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“When the DVD is ruined.”
Just about the only area in which VHSes were better than DVDs: They were much harder to break. Not quite as tough as AK-47s, but not far from it.
“The damned “Piracy - it’s a crime” intro.”
Yeah. It’s especially annoying for us law-abiding citizens who’ve never even considered pirating DVDs. And those who do, why the hell should they care about these noisy, epilepsy-provoking infomercials? (And that’s anothre thing; why the fuck do they need to make these idiotic things so godsdamned noisy?)
“When your only subtitle options are Scandinavian.”
This doesn’t bother me much. If I’m watching an English language movie, I rarely care much about the subtitles at all — they’re just there in case some noise or other suddenly decided to drown out the dialogue for a moment — but it’s still practical to have them there, so that it won’t be too hard to watch subtitles movies from, say, France or China. Because trying to keep up with subtitles when you’re not used to them? Difficult.
“When the bloody translators are clearly hopelessly retarded.”
What?! You hate THIS?! I get at worst slightly annoyed, but more often I feel grateful for getting to make fun of the translator, not to mention that I get too feel superior.
“The movie trailers in the front.”
Indeed. I get why they’re there, of course, but still. I haven’t cared about trailers since I was ten…
“DVD commercials.”
Luckily they often forget to add a skip-blocker on the commercials. But when they remember… and worse, when they do so on the trailers, too… brrr.
“Where the hell did the menus go?”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen that one. Sounds annoying.
“When they play the ending credits before the film starts.”
You mean when they have the names of the actors and some of the crew before that feature film begins? How can that be annoying — and how is that specifically related to DVDs? I thought this was just an alternative way to do the whole credits-thing?
Anyway, as much as some of these has annoyed me from time to time, the really annoying thing is that the whole DVD format seems to be on its way out. Not ten years after the format arrived on the market, HD and Bluray and whatever show up. Now that’s annoying…
3. August 2007 @ 11:49 ( Permalink )
The piracy-thing, while impossible to skip, is usually possible to fast-forward through, so that doesn’t bug me. The Scandinavian-only-subtitles can be a drag sometimes, but that’s why I’m AWARE of whether or not the copy I’m buying is Scandinavian or not. This isn’t a surprise to me when I put the DVD into the player, I knew this when I picked it out to begin with.
Never seen a DVD without a menu either. Yay?
I agree with Terje on the last point - I honestly don’t see how it’s my place to be annoyed with whether or not the moviemaker wanted to put the names of those who made the movie where people’d actually see them. In fact, it’s kind of understandable.
Movie trailers do not bug me at all except when you’re not allowed to skip ahead past them. When they rob you of this choice, however, yes, then it’s a travesty.
Oh, and consider me to have added my wholehearted agreement on all points I did not address directly, by the way.
Am I a spambot? Wouldn’t be anything else for the world!
3. August 2007 @ 13:42 ( Permalink )