[Red Z]

I have several DVD players and in the conversion to Bluray, one of the features of my old Pioneer DV-F27 does not seem to be available on any of the new players. On the Pioneer, when you first put in the DVD movie, instead of going through the 30 minutes of movie trailers and advertising, you can press the menu button and it takes you straight to the begining of the movie home screen--just press play and you are watching the movie.

I am subscribed to Block Buster's mail rental program and the DVDs are always front loaded with advertising and movie trailers. My old Pioneer seemed to know how to get through this and take you straight to the movie's home screen. I am updating my system to include Bluray. The new multiformat Bluray/DVD players that I have tested do not have any function that eliminates the constant Fast Forwarding to get past the junk and straight to the movie.

I have a Sony BDP-S350 and a Samsung BDP-5000U (piece of junk), and neither have any button or command that will advance to the movie's home screen. I have tested many more display models in stores and have yet to find one with the same feature as my old Pioneer. My Pioneer never advertised this as a function or feature and even so, I found it by accident. Through-out time, I found this to be such a time saver. When I have asked audio/video techs about this feature, they look at me as if I am crazy and tell me that there has never been a player made with that feature except some professional high dollar models that are not available to the general public.

Does anybody know of a new generation multiformat bluray player that has the capability to jump directly to the main movie menu?

 

[Mike P.]

Not sure about BluRay players but you can try pushing the stop button twice on the remote, and then push play. On some players this is how you get past the intro's and go straight to the movie.

 

[tonyvdb]

The option to skip the trailers and previews is a feature built into the BluRay or standard DVD and is not a hardware feature of the player its self. Disney DVDs for example have the "quick play" feature that allows you to go directly to the movie.
On some BluRay movies the only way to skip the junk at the beginning is to FF through them one at a time and on others you can just hit the "menu" button.

 

[TRiSS]

Afaik, being able to skip certain parts of a dvd (or not) are the so called UOP or PUO or puops: prohibited user operations. Some dvd's have these enabled (can't skip ads), some don't (can skip ads). What you are looking for is a player that ignores these puops. Any player carying the dvd logo has to adhere to the standards set by the dvdforum (or else they are not allowed to carry the official dvd logo) and thus oblige these puops.

Some software dvd players (on a computer) do ignore these puops (all linux dvd software seems to ignore them), but using those may be illegal depending on where you live (the illegal part is the way they handle css-encrypted dvd's). An other option is to rip the dvd, remove the puops, and burn it to another disc (or play it back as iso from a harddrive). I have no experience with that though, since I playback everything from a linux HTPC, which means the prohibited operations don't bother me.

Wikipedia has some information about this, as well as about options to remove/ignore the puops: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_operation_prohibition

 

[Sonnie]

I always press the Menu button and it takes me to the Play option. :huh:

 

[MatrixDweller]

I have had a few DVDs and a few Bluray movies not allow me to jump to the menu. It's not all of them, just a select few. What I end up doing is hitting FF so that it is 100X and it wizzes past the trailers in a matter of seconds.

 

[Red Z]

Thanks for all of the replies. I did just try Mike P's advise about pressing the stop button twice and it worked on one bluray disc. I also discovered (by accident) that if I put the disc in and turn off the player, when I turn it back on it goes straight to the menu as well.

 

[Prof.]

Not sure about BluRay players but you can try pushing the stop button twice on the remote, and then push play. On some players this is how you get past the intro's and go straight to the movie.

Mike..I tried that last night on a DVD, and it worked a treat...Straight to the movie..
Good call..:T

 

[jliedeka]

I'm not sure if this is the case with all DVD players but this works for me. After loading the disc, as soon as the DVD logo on the player's display appears (or when the TV says DVD-Video), I immediately hit the menu button. That usually skips over the junk and goes straight to the main menu. Second best is hitting Stop, then Menu. My observations may only apply to the Oppo HD-981DV.

Jim

 

[Red Z]

Bummer. I just tried the stop/stop to skip to the movie on the Sex and the City on bluray and it would not work, also tried the power off/on toggle with disc in and it did not work either. Apparently, directly skipping to the beginning of the movie appears to be hit or miss on my Sony BDP-S350. I didn't get a chance to try the Samsung before the wife returned movie.

In my switch from standard DVD to bluray players this is such a hassle. My old Pioneer standard DVD player used to skip to the beginning of the movie with the menu button. I tried and compared it against discs the Sony and the Samsung will not let you skip through--it still does. I was originally planning on phasing out the Pioneer for the multiformat blurays--to get more features/quality, I did not expect to lose a function I really liked.

For those of you that rent DVDs you know what I mean--it is not as simple a FastForwarding or skipping chapters, and go straight to the movie. On these rental discs, it is as if they have added several chapters to the front of the disc that do not let you skip them--the most you can do is FFWD at high speed until that movie trailer/advertisement/rating screen is over, and then do it again on the next, and the next....until the movie home screen appears. The whole process takes a few attentive minutes.

Also, in looking to the future, as bluray takes over, I can just imagine how much that can be front loaded on a disc with all of that extra capacity and with me not in control--being forced to watch. Does anybody know of any software or firmware tweaks that can remedy this?

I have been renting (and not purchasing) DVDs for so long that I am not sure if the ones you buy in the store have all of this front-loaded junk on them or not. Some discs I receive are specifically made for Block-Buster and have their logo in several different places through-out the disc.

It seems to me as if i really began to notice all this after belonging to the rental program--and it appears to be getting worse. This might be a way to screw up people trying to copy the discs.

 

[jliedeka]

I just added a Blu-Ray player and I have some discs that won't let you go right to the menu. The best I've been able to come up with is to keep hitting the "next" button until I get past all the previews.

Jim

 

[TRiSS]

It seems to me as if i really began to notice all this after belonging to the rental program--and it appears to be getting worse. This might be a way to screw up people trying to copy the discs.

slightly OT:
The irony of it all is that people who copy the disc (at least for dvd, not sure about bluray) can remove these prohibitions in the copy process, or even cut out all the parts they don't want... Though I don't want to condone any piracy, I really think the movie/music industry should realize that part of the problem with piracy is that it's hard to counter a "free" product with a paying one, especially if the paying version contains all kinds of restrictions/nags that the "free" version doesn't have!

 

[Red Z]

There were programs such as the now bankrupt, sued-to-death 123 studios DVD copy that used to cut all of this type of stuff out. 123 had a decent product and the movie industry killed them. Making duplicates of movies you owned for personal use was kind of a gray area. I know its completely wrong for movies you rent. Like you, I have no idea about the copying blurays.

I have a rather large collection of original standard DVDs that I have purchased over the years. Last year I gave away cases of original VHS tapes to a friend having a garage sale, and years before that I gave away cases of Sony Beta VCR tapes. Allot of money spent on obsolete formats and old movies I would never watch again. With my DVD colection, as with the previous tapes, the only time most of these older movies ever get watched is when we have company over and someone never saw this or that movie. Most of the time we are too busy watching new releases. Anymore, I do not think it is worth it to buy but only a few movies that are destined to be classics. Problem is, so few movies are actually worth watching enough times to justify the expense of buying it. I would probably say there are less than a dozen a year that may be worth buying, and of those, now, maybe I would buy one.

With expensive blurays coming on to the scene, and the low cost of rental programs like Block-Buster and Netflicks that rent them, it is not worth maintaining a library of movies that might get watched--if I can't wait 2 days to get it in the mail, I can just go to the store and exchange for the title I want on DVD and an increasing selection of blurays. My monthly rental club fee is less than the cost of buying one movie and I can pretty easily watch over 25 a month.

 

[Red Z]

slightly OT:
Though I don't want to condone any piracy, I really think the movie/music industry should realize that part of the problem with piracy is that it's hard to counter a "free" product with a paying one, especially if the paying version contains all kinds of restrictions/nags that the "free" version doesn't have!

Just realized you are from Europe. I spent the entire '80s in Germany. It seemed to me most of Europe had different laws on copying pre-recorded materials back then. In Germany where I was, it was legal to copy crack video tapes and make personal back-ups. I remember buying several macrovision copy guard crackers on the open market just for that purpose.

Are the copy infringement laws there different than the US laws or are they easier? Is there such a thing as a personal back-up copy, or is this sort of a gray area there as well?

 

[TRiSS]

Just realized you are from Europe. I spent the entire '80s in Germany. It seemed to me most of Europe had different laws on copying pre-recorded materials back then. In Germany where I was, it was legal to copy crack video tapes and make personal back-ups. I remember buying several macrovision copy guard crackers on the open market just for that purpose.

Are the copy infringement laws there different than the US laws or are they easier? Is there such a thing as a personal back-up copy, or is this sort of a gray area there as well?

Well, in Europe things are quite complicated, in that each individual country has it's own implementations of European "guidelines", so I can't speak much for other countries then my own, allthough most law in other countries is likely to be similar. I'm also not that big an expert on the subject matter, as far as legislation goes. We (Belgium), as far as I know, do have a right that says that you can create a "backup" copy of copyrighted material for own use. I'm not sure of that right allows you to make any changes on that copy though. Also, we don't have things like software patents, meaning that although software is protected under the author right (the same rights eg a novelist has), one cannot forbid someone to implement a similar software, as long as you can prove this similar thing is your own creation, eg you did not peek at the other's code. I believe that makes things like libdvdcss (an alternative way under linux to read css-encrypted dvd) legal here.

I"m not sure of the current status of being allowed to "crack" protections in order to make that backup copy.. It's somewhat dubious: I believe you are not allowed to break protection anymore, but in some ways some protection is so weak that it could be seen as non-existent in a legal way :scratchhead:

I think in general I can conclude that copyright law is a bit more lenient here, and there is a little more attention for consumer rights, but in practice it's not that big a difference, especially since it can be difficult to be able to exercise the rights you have...