Does anyone know how to skip the trailers on DVDs? I’ve just sat through nearly 10 minutes of promotions — ‘For the first time ever on DVD’ — for six shows from MacGyver to Happy Days on a DVD of Frasier. What makes the folks at Paramount think they can force me to sit through this promotional dross, having just shelled out nearly $50? And these people get upset when folk buy pirate DVDs. Buying tapes was easier than this: just hit the fast forward button.
Anyway, there must be a way of hacking past this rubbish. Anyone know of any, on a computer or otherwise? (No, you can’t just fast forward, skip chapter or even go to the root menu, as these buttons won’t work while the trailers are playing.)
Oh and I’m going to complain to Paramount, a Viacom Company. How dare they make me fork out money and then sit through so much stuff it’s nearly my bedtime already. My plan is to charge them for the time I had to watch the trailers as their ‘entertainment consultant’ since they made no mention of the fact on the cover of the DVD that I would have no choice in the matter. I reckon 7.5 minutes at $450 per hour works out at pretty close to what I paid for the DVD.
I don’t really have an answer for you, short of throwing caution to the DMCA and ripping your DVD to an AVI (or other format), but I too ranted (http://www.livejournal.com/users/everdred/388512.html) about this very topic not long ago.
A player like VLC (videolan.org) or Mplayer (mplayerhq.hu) probably doesn’t give a rats shit about the skipping restrictions.. try them out..
Agreed, it is *really* annoying. Same with the usual FBI logo at the front. This is especially annoying for dvd’s in the uk – who cares about the fbi statement about piracy in the uk (or anywhere else come to that )
Here’s how: With your DVD remote, hit the ‘next chapter’ button just as the ads are loading up in the player. With a little practice, a person can skip most of the ads, especially if you note which chapter the movie starts on. I can skip all the ads on nearly all my DVD’s.
JL
Over here in the US, most DVDs that do have these trailers have a “Press Menu to skip the trailers” screen for about 10 or 15 seconds. If you choose not to press menu, you have to sit through all the trailers.
Is that not the case in Asia?
Akshay, thanks for the comment. I haven’t seen that on the ones I’ve been testing. Which companies do that, do you know?
The only way I can think of is ripping the movie, but that’s way too much work.
Jeremy, to be honest I haven’t tracked which companies do and don’t use that mechanism. I haven’t found it to be a major problem yet! I’ll keep an eye out and let you know.
If you have a DVD burner, you can re-author the disc with DVDShrink, and leave out all the FBI warnings, ads and other crap, and just burn the disc with the good stuff. Not the best solution, but definitely gets the job done, and I *have* done it from time to time.
Just press the stop botton twice, then press play… you go straight to the menu