I'm Sorry, But "Scene Selection" Isn't A Special Feature

[God of War]

A small rant here from me. How many of you have come accross dvds that say on the label that special features include;

Fullscreen Presentation (awesome), Interactive Menus (mind blowing), Subtitles (yay), Scene Selection (lol), Picture Disc (whoopty doo), Trailer (sry a trailer isnt a feature), Mono Audio (superb :rolleyes:) and my favourite, the flipper disc (you have to flip it for the lame extras)

Over the years in Australia I have seen many dvds that boast special features that in all honesty amount to SHIT..lol

Funny, huh?

[Badbird]

More than just a movie! The contents of this CD sized disc include:

Interactive menus!

Animated scene selection!

Star bios!

And much more!



The "And much more!" part always annoyed me. Why don't you just tell me the rest? There's plenty of room on the box.

[FireCaptain4]

Yeah, it's just a way to fill up the "Special Features" section of a DVD if they don't have any Featuretts or Making Ofs or whatnot.

And double sided discs mostly suck, mostly. Especially when they're "One side is Full Screen, while the other is Widescreen" bullshit. When I see a double-sided DVD in my collection, I pull a weed-eater move and throw the bastard out of my sight.

[FireCaptain4]

Star bios!

Oh man, "Star Bios" are the lamest. That's why we have this little thing called "the internet" and imdb. Honestly, who uses that Special Feature and goes "Well finkle me tinkles, I didn't know Kurt Russell was in that!"

If they need to put something extra on the DVD, they may as well stuff me some randomly selected porn on there. :rolleyes::p

[bigred760]

Well . . . I'll take the scene selection of a DVD over fast-forwarding of a VHS tape. Granted, I wouldn't call them "special" . . . just features.

[adamjohnson]

Well . . . I'll take the scene selection of a DVD over fast-forwarding of a VHS tape. Granted, I wouldn't call them "special" . . . just features.

Yeah but they really whored this out when DVD first came out. Same with INTERACTIVE MENUS. Whenever it says interactive menus I know its going to take about 15 minutes for me to hit "PLAY" which is all I really wanna do.

[DME]

Yeah but they really whored this out when DVD first came out...

Exactly. When DVD's first came out scene selections could've been considered special features, but now it's like power windows--you take for granted that it should come standard, and if a car salesman tries to show it to you as a "special feature" it comes off as lame.

[Joey Blue]

Exactly. When DVD's first came out scene selections could've been considered special features, but now it's like power windows--you take for granted that it should come standard, and if a car salesman tries to show it to you as a "special feature" it comes off as lame.

"....and it comes with a cassette player, power windows, and wait for it..... cup holders!!!"

[razgriz21]

Reclining seats!

Full color and sound!

Sorry. Could not resist.

[corran horn]

I too have noticed this. I've often laughed at the degree to which early DVDs hyped every possible feature as a "special feature". I suppose though that when DVDs first came out, those were "special".

Nowadays I notice that features like scene selection, production notes, and interactive menus are still listed under special features, only now they're relegated to smaller, non-bold font while the "real" special features are in bold and in bigger font.

BTW, what exactly is the purpose of production notes? Are they just a cheap way to avoid having to make a featurette or do they seriously think people will read them?

[john_rambo]

Interactive menus has always been my favorite, and some of the early dvd's where it would say behind the scenes material and it was stuff you had to read.

[Badbird]

Interactive menus has always been my favorite, and some of the early dvd's where it would say behind the scenes material and it was stuff you had to read.

Collectible Eight Page Booklet!

[JCPhoenix]

I dug the booklets they used to have with production notes, etc...I was pretty bummed when they stopped including them with most DVDs. Granted, most of them never came up to the level of quality of the Criterion booklets (which I always read cause the essays and shit they include there are fascinating), but it was nice to have that little piece inside, DVDs always felt more collectible to me then...

[Donnie_Darko]

Amen to that. A "Special Feature" should be something OTHER THAN:

Scene Selection
Menus
Trailers (for itself or anything else)
Animated Menus
Subtitles (especially for foreign films)

That's like having, Super Special Features Include:

Ability to Play the movie from the main menu!
Stop the feature any time you like!
Pause the movie, and see a still image!
Chapter Skip (only on select titles)
Audio Track!

I'll even give them the star bios as features, cause it's not "expected" on a disk, but it isn't "special".

I've always loved the "Tons of bonus features", and nothing is listed on the case. Pop in the disk, and there's literally nothing except, Menu, Scene Select, Audio Options. :confused: You get that a lot on Hong Kong disks... at least in my experience.

[Darin]

Digitally Mastered.