A look at DVD Menus

Today I want to talk about something unrelated to our software, but related to UI in another “world’: DVD menu systems. Consumers have to deal with this little bit of UI on a (possibly) daily basis and it’s amazing to me that companies are still pumping out DVDs that are completely frustrating to use.

Here’s a typical DVD Menu experience the end user has.

1. Open packaging (not being discussed today )
2. Insert into DVD player
3. Various unskippable FBI warnings, possibly in multiple languages
4. Various unskippable studio logos flying around the screen
5. Various commercials
6. Long unskippable intro sequence, possibly including spoilers
7. Main menu, possibly including pictures or shots that include spoilers

Alright, let’s watch a movie now!

Unskippable Sections

I can imagine the DVD author, who probably put many hours making some long intro sequence, doesn’t want you to be able to skip his/her creation. This might be acceptable for a rental DVD but people own these things and watch them multiple times. The Monty Python collection from A&E is a good example of this no-no. At the beginning of every disk (of a 14 disc collection) you’re greeted with a very long unskippable Gilliam-esque animation. After the 1^st disc it’s totally frustrating! I want to see Python, not this menu thing over and over and over. There’s nothing worse than to hit the menu button or next button and have nothing happen, for no apparent reason.

Spoilers

Spoilers spoil parts of the movie/show. They let you know things ahead of time that the director didn’t want you to know, but for some reason they’re not that picky about the DVD spoiling these things for you. This can happen in many ways:

• Disc art (“Oh, I guess this guy is really alive since I see his face on disc 5”)
• Packaging (“Wow, the main character’s office building blows up, that’ll be cool to see”)
• Menu (“I can’t wait to see the last standoff in the movie, I wonder if it’ll look as cool without the menu text all over it”)

Now let’s explore the other areas of the typical DVD

Scene Selection

This screen is normally filled with spoilers but I can see how this is an unavoidable problem. You want to user to be able to sensibly navigate so you have to provide screenshots and/or titles. My main problem with these screens it that most of them don’t fit all the navigation on one page, so they have to split the scene selection screen into many. This produces a screen like this

So how what’s selected when you first get to this screen? Scene 1? Scene 5-8? Let’s say it’s 5-8, what happens when you click up? Scene 2? Scene 1? Everyone DVD seems to have a different answer to these questions. The user only has a 4-way joystick so make it easy to use with this input device!

No Play All Function

I like to put on DVDs in the background, especially TV shows. I just want to hit play and have it roll for 3 hours straight. For some reason there are TV DVDs being produced that still don’t have a function to play all the episodes in order from beginning to end. This means that after 24 minutes or so you have to go through this process

Seems complicated. Here’s play all

Poor indexing

When you hit the next button, where will you end up? When you pop in a disc, I think most people expect that the first next button press will bring them to the beginning of the “real” content, going past the title sequence. This doesn’t happen on many DVDs. It’s a very similar problem to unskippable menu intro sequences. It might be great the first couple of times, there are many very good intro sequences, but after many seasons of watching the same thing over and over you sometimes just want to get to the real content.

Unclear Selections

In the Mr. Show DVDs everytime you watch an episode (no play all option) you are forced to choose whether or not you want audio commentary on. It’s completely unclear which is the default-selected option. This constantly confuses me so I have to move the joystick around to see what is changing, then make a guess. I usually have to turn it off with the audio button after the episode starts. Moral of the story: Make selections obvious. Put a yellow highlight around the current item and make non-selected things look more background-y.

Unnavigable Options

Unskippable sections falls into this category but there are others in it as well. It’s really annoying that some DVDs don’t allow you to turn on audio commentary or video angles just using the remote. Instead you have to go to the special features section, turn it on, and then watch the movie. Is there any reason to keep the end user from these features? I can’t think of any.

“Special” Features

This doesn’t have to do with user interface as much as it is a pet peeve. The extras are one of the best features of a DVD. You know you have a bargain basement DVD if its special features are “Interactive menus, Scene selection”. Take advantage of this! It’s amazing how much worth is added to a DVD by adding audio commentary tracks. I can watch a movie, put on the directors commentary and watch it again immediately. This only works if the commentary is worthwhile though.

Her are some great commentary tracks:

Dark City

Roger Ebert does a film analysis of the film. Now why can’t ALL movies do this? After I see a film I always talk to my friends about it, we debate what the film was trying to say and why. It’s great to have a professional chime in as well.

Spinal Tap

The actors came together and played the character of the film in the commentary. It’s very “meta” hearing the hilarious characters talking about themselves and what happened in the film, as the characters. I can’t think of a better commentary for this film.

Lord of the Rings Trilogy

What’s great about this is there are about 4 commentary tracks so you can hear from the different actors, the director, writers, etc. Almost any aspect of the film you’re interested in is covered and it’s all great.

The ingredients of a good commentary track are:

• Interesting information about what happened during the making of the film
• Funny anecdotes about things between the actors
• Technical aspects of the film, why decisions were made
• Good personalities (getting a monotone script supervisor might not be the best choice)
• Anything that adds to the film experience

Bad commentary tracks:

I don’t want to rag on too many so I’ll just choose one

Neon Genesis Evangelion Films

This is a Japanese Animation DVD that covers a lot of topics and definitely would benefit from a real film analyst to talk about all the different metaphors and ideas of the films. Instead the commentary tracks are of the English dubbers. Yes, the English actors they hired to do the dubbed audio tracks of the film. This commentary is completely unlistenable. They talk about their friends and weddings they’ve gone to and all sorts of things that have nothing to do with the film. While they’re probably wonderful people, I don’t care about any of this stuff. Since their role in the film was very minimal, doing some voice work in a sound studio, what are they doing in a commentary track?

So that summarizes all the bad things I see in DVDs today. I’m sure there are many that I forgot. These issues can be easily overcome. There are many great (and beautiful) DVDs that not only provide the content in an easy to get to manner, they provide much more through the special features than just the film alone. These things will (hopefully) be around for a long time so let’s try and fix the problems now.