Do NOT buy the Shrek 2 DVD!

[TXlib]

There are 8 minutes of commercials at the start of the DVD, and the DVD does not allow you to skip them and go to the main screen.

For this reason, I am very sorry I bought the DVD, and I will likely be reselling it through half.com.

I am going to contact them Monday ((818)-695-5000) and communicate my displeasure, and tell them I will not buy another DreamWorks DVD that has this flaw.

If you were interested in the DVD, I urge you to do the same, and hold off on buying it until a commercial-free edition (or at least one that lets you skip the commercials) is released.

Please keep kicked for a couple of days!

[ET Awful]

1. Hmmm, I was able to hit the "menu" button on my remote

and go straight to the menu.

[Midlodemocrat]

16. Me, too. I went straight to the movie.

Didn't even know about the commercials.

[7th_Sephiroth]

26. i just hit the triangle button on my ps2

its all ya gotta do, so dont be blue.

[trotsky]

2. What a bunch of BS!

I hate DVDs that do that. I bought the damn movie, now leave me alone!

[GCP]

3. It really pisses me off when they put the ads on like that

I'm much less likely to buy a DVD if I know that's going to happen, and I think the majority of the new movie DVDs out now are like this.
I go with Netflix nowadays.

[tjdee]

4. I've had this with other DVDs too, you can't fast forward...

Don't remember which studio--actually I'm thinking it's Disney?

(And like a moron I will probably continue to buy Disney DVDs)

[Deja Q]

5. I'll be happy to help. Thank you for reporting this. BTW:

For 90% of my purchases these days, I go to a used DVD seller. (Half Price Books, et al). But never buy used from a rental place (Hollywood Video, Blockbuster, et al). Saves money and the prices are usually fair (though always check the new price first, the used price may not be worth it.)

Universal does the same thing, at least with the Battlestar Galactica (1978) DVD I bought.

[bikebloke]

17. I do the same

Or try a cheap, cheap seller like Deep Discount DVD. I've found that sometimes their prices for new DVD's are cheaper than used ones at half.com. Shipping is just slow, but if you're not in a hurry ir worth saving a bit. For comparison shopping try dvdpricesearch.com or pricegrabber.com. Just be sure to check the customer reviewrs of each vendor first.

I'd never buy from a rental outfit. Have you ever looked at the surface of rental disques. It looks like folk eating fried chicken rent them specifically to wipe their hands on.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

23. There's also Movie Trading Company if you have one near you

they trade, buy from you and sell used DVDs and VHS tapes. Often for dirt cheap prices.

That's the only place we get DVDs. We try to buy new as little as possible.

[itzamirakul]

6. KICK!

I hate being force-fed these silly, money-grubbing commercials.

[lapfog_1]

7. Yet another reason to build your own video vault

I've taken my entire collection of DVDs, copied them to my video
server, and watch them on any TV in my house. One of the advantages
is that I can edit crap right off the movie before saving it in
the server.

A 1000 movie server is only about $4500 dollars now.

[Courtesy Flush]

21. $4500?

You must really like movies.

We just use Netflix, and we're seeing more movies than we really want to.

[lapfog_1]

25. Oh, I don't HAVE 1000 films

and my current server only has room for around 500. It's not
full yet, but getting there. I like a lot of TV series. For
example, I have all of the Avengers, two seasons of CSI, all
of HitchHikers Guide, all of the James Bond films, all of the
Indiana Jones films, LOTR, etc, etc.

It's just that if I built another one today (occasionally friends
will ask me), I could built it for around $4500 for 1000 films.
That's a 4 TB system with RAID and hot spare drives and such.

My system is only around 2 TB usable. I may have 800 hours of
programming on it. Think of it as a Tivo on steroids. Besides,
I can loan out my DVDs to friends without worrying if they will
return them... and I have indexed all my films and can play anything
I like using a remote control (better than a DVD jukebox).

[DS1]

27. mega spiff!

What software do you run on that?

[lapfog_1]

30. The server is running SuSE Linux

The playback units (shoebox PCs) run Redhat, using mplayer for
playback. I also have an experimental Windows XP shoebox running
PowerDVD playback software.

[SarahB]

8. That's just NOT cool.

Thanks for the warning.

[Swede]

9. I fix the damn things,hit menu,it should get you past the crap.

Read the owners manual of your DVD.

[TXlib]

11. On my player, hitting 'MENU' does nothing

At least, not for this DVD.

Perhaps if I had the remote, I might have other options, but the *&^%$^* kids walked off with it and lost it.

I'll be buying a new DVD player soon, as this one is continually skipping.

[Swede]

14. The remote should help.

There are so many functions not on the player. Not having a remote is not a good thing.

[Touchdown]

15. A little trick that works on most DVDs like this.

...once the first "Buy more of our shitty movies" peddler comes on, power down the player. Turn it back on, and push menu.

Some DVD players have memories of the title flag (usually up to 300 titles), and will override the access blocking codes, once the DVD flag in in the player's memory.

Before you try that, try "chapter skip" first. it looks like this... >>| If not, then try FF... >>. If not that, do the above.

[mrfrapp]

18. Unlocking

Does turning off the region-control affect the behaviour that TXLib is describing?

[Touchdown]

29. I don't think so.

Region coding is transparent to the controls. What's occuring on Shrek 2 is that certain buttons were disabled to disallow skipping forward, or menu jumping, until their sales pitch is overwith, and they are coded on the disc themselves. Upon subsequent viewings, some DVD players by Toshiba, Sony and Panasonic will override this coding. The DVD authors in Hollywood hate doing this, but the Marketing Dept. demands this on some titles...especially high volume children's titles.

The only studios I've seen not do this is Warner Bros/New Line, 20th Century Fox, and Columbia/Tri Star. At one point of another all the others have been guilty of this.

I don't recommend making copies onto blank DVDs from Target though. The Picture quality suffers greatly when it's compressed even further from what the Studio gave you. Studio DVDs are 9 Gig, Target's DVD's are 4.7 Gig . 19-27" square TVs may not see much picture loss, but on a 55' Widescreen, it's a HORRIBLE picture, with dot crawl and artifacts galore!

[LifeDuringWartime]

28. hmm

i dont have experience with the shrek 2 dvd, but neither of my dvd players let me skip past intro stuff. they just show this annoying little hand up in the corner

[Kellanved]

10. self defense

Use a DVD burner and DVD Decrypter to create a commercial-free version.

[TXlib]

12. When i get my next computer.

where can i get DVD decryption software?

[Kellanved]

13. here

http://www.doom9.org

DVD Decrypter is a pretty good tool.

[Groggy]

19. We bought it yesterday...

Just hit the fast-forward button, no problem. It would be nice they didn't have them on there in the first place though!

[Don Claybrook]

20. I have a solution and it works every time

Buy the movie.
Download dvdshrink 3.2.
Download Nero 6 eval version.
Buy a spindle of blank DVD's at Target for less than $1 each.

Don't worry about using Nero 6. It just has to be installed on your PC.

Learn how to use dvdshrink. It's very easy and intuitive.

"re-author" the DVD. In the end, you'll have a DVD that starts exactly where you want it to start, i.e., the opening credits and not all of the commercials. You'll also have a great backup since you invested good money on the DVD.

All of this is completely legal, so long as you have purchased the movie instead of renting or borrowing it.

[DS1]

22. It's a trend with kids movie dvds

They assume parents will just pop it in and leave for 2 hrs

[name not needed]

24. Pizza Hut did it with the Free DVD promo a while back.

I shouldn't have to sit through commercials to watch Bill & Ted.