My preferred way to consume video material (such as movies) is in 20-30 minute bits while also consuming a meal. Back in the days of VHS this was quite convenient. Videos started where I left off, I could stop (and restart) the film at any point I liked, and I could simply fast-forward all the bullcrap at the beginning. Sure the video and sound quality weren't as nice as modern DVDs, but (of course) back then I didn't notice. Nowadays, it's rather hard to find movies in VHS format. The mail-delivery services (e.g. Netflix and Blockbuster) only do DVDs and the local video stores are getting really close to that situation as well. I have a DVD player (with surround sound, even) and so it wouldn't be a problem except that DVDs are annoying as friggin' hell.

Problem 1: Time to Reach Menu. When you start up a VHS tape you can immediately press the fast-forward button and watch all the previews, FBI warning, and production material fly by at super-accelerated speed, effectively ignoring them and getting to the good part. With DVDs you usually have to sit and wait fully through the legal crap, and then the previews start. Sometimes you can skip through them by pressing the menu button, sometimes you have to "skip track" through them (the inconsistency is an annoyance in its own right). Then even when you reach the menu, you frequently have to wait for some lame animation to finish before you can actually start the movie or anything else. What makes the production companies think that when we buy (or rent) a movie we want anything but for the movie to start as soon as possible.

Problem 2: Rigid Track Times. While the first problem is something that derives from the selfish inconsiderateness and/or stupidity of business executives, there's not much that can be done about this one. However, something can be done about how the companies cope with it. The "scene selection" option on DVDs is a good idea, image <-> scene matching so that you can find where you want to go even if you don't remember the track number. But they couldn't leave well enough alone. If somebody is going through the scene selector it's because he or she wants to find a particular part of the movie as quickly as possible, so putting in more senseless animations, sounds, and elaborate (sometimes hard-to-see) navigation effects is just going to piss people off.

Problem 3: Forgetful of Stop Position. It might be becoming a standard feature, but when I was looking at DVD players it was hard to find one that could remember what time of the movie I stopped. And even fewer could remember the time after being powered down. Ironically, my discman and my car's CD player can both remember the track and time (respectively) of the CD even after being off for weeks or months. Of course CDs don't have all the other crap I hate that DVDs have, so maybe there's some problem with the way the data is encoded. I don't know, but this is a technical problem that it seems can, and certainly should, be fixed if it been hasn't already.

So my point is that all the improved sound and visual quality doesn't make up for the added hassle involved in DVDs. Furthermore, most of the hassle could be alleviated if producers just acted more intelligently and with the consumers in mind. But we don't really have a choice do we. Even if one company did stop piling crap into their DVDs, for any given movie only one producer will come out with it. So if you want a particular movie and that movie's company wants to show you previews, there's nothing you can do about it but sit and wait through them.

One more thing, on the This is Spinal Tap anniversary edition DVD the pre-menu banter is fantastically funny and totally worth the wait.