Journal Flamesplash's Journal: The Good and Bad of TV on DVD 1
After my switch from Blockbuster to Netflix I've been watching 24 from the beginning. Netflix has yet to not have the next disk available and it's almost always a 2 day turn around; rock on netflix.
As for 24, it's a great show. If you like movies with covert ops, terrorists and writers than don't mind killing important people then I recommend it. I didn't like the show at all for no good reason until I caught an episode in season 5 and got hooked. I don't mind at all.
My issue is though, is the dvd version of the show. Having watched through 3 iterations of DVD conversion I've noticed some distinct things they do nice, and also some things not so nice.
The Good:
1. In season 3 they finally cut out the break between commercials completely: It wasn't hard either, but took 2 seasons worth. Usually there's just a 1s gap between the end and begin around the show, but cutting it out makes a lot of difference; it feels more like a continuous show. In 24 though it's not always possible, some commercials have the clock up when they cut to and from a commercial ( showing the time elapsed ) so you kind of have to have some dead frames between the clock jumping a couple minutes.
It would be pretty cool if they did this in between episodes too. Now that dvd players can remember where you were between power cycles this would work well.
2. In-line Extras: Each episode has some cut scenes and alternate takes that you can watch in-line in the episode, a marker in the corner denotes when one is currently playing. I think that's pretty cool, though I have never used it as I prefer to watch the 'real' episode first. Also the fact that they have per episode extras and on almost all of them.
The Bad:
1. Only in-line Extras: You can only watch the extras in-line. Very Very annoying.
2. Skip the recap: This is the crazy one, in season 2 the first chapter of each episode was the recap and you could skip it to go right to the beginning of the new material, in season 3 they didn't do this. They must have cut it at commercial breaks only, lame.
3. Visual Spoilers!!: This is probably the most annoying thing and it applies to most than just 24 or dvds. Each episode has it's own sub menu with various option ( like extras ) and a shot from the episode. In season 2 the shot was actually pretty major and a spoiler. Some one was about to die at the end of last episode? Well the shot they have shows them back at work nice and safe. thanks, thanks a lot.
In season 3 they did away with that, choosing innocuous scenes instead. However they decided to put a montage as the main menu screen loads which definitely gives away way too much.
I often wonder how these things are designed. Are there usability people that specialize in this type of thing? I'm gonna guess that most of the time the studio really doesn't care about the interface, and simply having something on dvd is their main goal.
24 (Score:1)