DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Unleashed (region 4) – Not for deaf people

English is not my first language, so while watching DVD movies, I prefer to have the English subtitles on. Obviously, subtitles are essential for people with hearing difficulties.

This week’s pet peeve is DVDs that don’t have subtitles. Back in the old days, when buying a DVD player would mean a week’s wage, many region 1 DVDs would not have subtitles, and only closed captioning support. CC support is completely useless to people outside of region 1, as we don’t have CC decoders in our TVs. But this is perhaps understandable, since these DVDs were never intended for sale outside of the US and Canada.

However, I’ve noticed that even today, several high profile releases do not have subtitles. The most recent one I’ve encountered is the region 4 copy of Unleashed (released by Universal Pictures in region 4). This DVD has a DTS track, extra features, but no subtitles. The region 2 version has English subtitles for the hearing impaired, while the region 1 version has at least closed captioning support. While I would be able to live with having no subtitles once in a while, but what about people with hearing impairment? Are they not entitled to watch this movie?

This week’s pet peeve is stuff you can’t skip on DVDs. These include studio/distributor trailers, warning notices, anti-piract messags and even movie trailers.

Yes I would, if stealing a handbag meant that I wouldn’t be forced to watch this stupid trailer again

If the Internet has taught has anything is that people like the freedom of being able to get and use information without being limited to a particular process or method. The freedom, therefore, to choose what you want to watch and what you don’t want to watch is essential. Being forced to watch some stupid studio trailer (Universal Pictures, I’m looking at you) that you’ve seen about a million times, or being told that you are a terrorist because you made a copy of a movie for your mother, is just plain annoying. Sometimes you are forced to wait up to 5 minutes before you can get to the movie, and that’s just not good enough. Ripping DVDs to get rid of these UOPs (User Operation Prohibitions) seems to be the only method, except that it’s illegal in most countries.

Many studios don’t employ these heavy handed tactics to force you to watch things, and they need to be applauded for doing so. Others should hang their heads in shame.

This is a feature which I’ll post weekly (or thereabouts) in which I outline my completely irrational ramblings about certain DVD features which I just don’t like.

First in the firing line is two disc DVD editions. No, I don’t hate these, but rather, I hate the completely random way in which the 2 discs are organised within the DVD sleeve – should disc 1 (the main movie) sit on top in the swing tray (see picture below), or should it sit on the bottom in the more traditional position?

Some studios like to put the discs in numerical order, disc 1 on top, disc 2 on the bottom. Some prefer to have the main movie on the bottom, and have the extras disc swing around and be more prone to damage. Some studios just don’t care and randomly chooses a location. And many studios don’t even bother to number the discs anyways, just to make it all a bit more interesting.

Personally, I prefer having the main movie disc at the bottom and not in the swing tray. This way, the main movie disc won’t move around during transport (but to be fair, discs placed in the swing tray is unlikely to be damaged in any case). On average, I have to “correct” this problem on 80% of the 2-disc edition DVDs that I buy. It’s not that annoying, but I’ve always wondered how studios decide which disc goes where. Maybe they even have an executive in charge of making this decision!

You can vote for your method of 2-disc management down below.

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