Why Do Media Companies Hate Their Customers?

Yes, or no, could be maybe

Hi, Reverend RD,

We're the choir. Pleased to meet you.

Hate? Does a farmer hate the cow he milks? Only if it refuses to stand quietly and be milked.

They dont hate their customers, they just like money more.

They love money more than customers. You know it clearly.

Well, obviously there are other reasons for declining revenues. I doubt that any company knowingly and willing wants to drive customers away. They're in business to make money, after all, and they have to make compromises to do so. You may not agree with their compromises, but they seem to have things figured one way or another. They include trailers and promos, for instance, to sell other products to a semi-captive audience, but usually one can bypass these annoyances with the "Exit" key or "Main" or "Top Menu" keys or just continuing to press "Skip." I know the studio that annoys me most is Disney, where I've encountered discs that require the user to skip through up to a dozen different logo screens, FBI warnings, trailers, promos, menus, and such. But it's usually worth the effort if the movie, picture, and sound are good enough. I've found that yelling at the TV screen sometimes helps relieve the frustration, although it can also raise tensions with my wife.

John

All of the frustration of us users could easily be eliminated by a simple menu selection that comes up after a disc is inserted asking the user what they wanted to do. Play movie, do BD Live, Play Trailers, etc. This should have been made mandatory in the BDA spec. The fact some lockout the ability to go directly to the main menu or use the popup menu shows total disregard for us that purchase disc.

+1


Ian

The "problem" so to speak isn't that studios hate consumers, it's that they have studio heads, marketing people and bean counters who "think" they know ways to bring in more revenue through forced previews, ect and good ways to combat piracy through redundant FBI/Piracy Is Bad warnings. Add to that the ridiculously complicated and poorly developed way "special" online content is increasingly being offered which sole intent is to harvest personal viewer information for marketing purposes. It's a long standing internal culture with pretty much all the major studios that is both bizarre in the obvious anti-consumer friendly attitude as it is amusing in its uselessness in achieving the goals intended.

B-b-b-b-but...corporations are people too! LOL! (Just very venal people!)

ACtually, I severely curtailed my BD buying when they started eliminating the extended versions and extraa from rental copies. (Fox being the worst, as the content is actually on the discs, but somehow blocked. Though I've heard people with the right computer equipment can access them somehow.)

Disney is a horrible offender also. I've seen movies with over 10 unskippable previews before the movie!

That's one major reason I invested in a HTPC, the other being I now have two small boys, and Blu-Rays are far from childproof. Previews are nice once in a while, but not every single time. I just copy the main movie, and I only copy movies I own, not ones I rent.

Fortunately, the more "important" movies usually don't have previews. Star Wars and Lord of the Rings come to mind.

Imagine if they got the idea to follow the internet/TV methods and have trailers popping up in the middle of the films. Thank goodness turning off Javascript stops that.

I've never encountered a single Disney disc (DVD or BD) where I couldn't just hit the Top Menu button and skip all of it - even rentals. Heck, they even put up a little slate that tells you that you can skip them by hitting the menu button.

You must be thinking of Lionsgate, which makes you manually skip several trailers one at a time - including ones for games.

If not, maybe your equipment is the issue?
Edited by NetworkTV - 8/29/12 at 11:12am

It's possible you're thinking of Disney discs of the last few years. And even then, you can't bypass their multiple logo screens without pressing "Skip" about 80 times.

John

Sorry, but I haven't encountered anything other than the occasioanl "don't copy this" or the "Blu-ray is new and may take until tomorrow to load" screens that appear on many other company's discs - which is far less annoying than Fox reminding me the special features and commentary might say stuff they don't endorse.

Most of the time, the Disney disc loads and the trailer screen comes up saying I can skip them - then I hit menu and it takes me to the menu. This is going back a decade or more and forward to every new title I've watched.

There's always the "Disney Blu-ray" logo animation, but Universal and Fox always put up their company logos at that point so it's wash.

My point, though, is you made it seem like you have to sit through or individually skip things like multiple trailers and warnings when that simply isn't the case. Disney is actually one of the least annoying ones in all this. Heck, they also have a resume feature on their Blu-ray movies if you stop it in the middle, something not all studios do.

Probably the only thing that annoys me about Disney is the large number of titles they released early on in the DVD format that were full screen - and have yet to re-issue.
Edited by NetworkTV - 8/31/12 at 6:20am

I suspect that everyone has his or her own pet peeves about movies and movie discs. With me, it's always been Disney discs, from the DVD's through their BD's. With Warners, for instance, you usually get a WB logo screen--one click to skip, then the menu--and a second click to begin the film. With Disney, even with the skip all the promos and trailers function, you get warning screens and logo screens to skip through before the menu; then you often get an animated menu that you have to wait to unfold; then you click to watch the movie and what do you get: A Disney Blu-ray logo screen, then a Disney movie logo screen, etc. But for other people like yourself, it doesn't bother you. For me it's a little annoyance; for you it's not.

John

The problem I have with your arguement is you equate this only with Disney. Fox, Sony and Lionsgate all do this and their rental discs also stick you with trailers that either need to be skipped one by one or (in some cases) have to be fast forwarded over. That's far worse, yet you post about Disney as if they're doing something far beyond everyone else. That simply isn't true. With most Disney discs, I get the following (not necessarily in this order):

- The Blu-ray logo animation
- A screen that says "hit menu to skip to the menu"
- An FBI warning
- A warning that some features might no be available or might not function on a particular player

With Fox, Universal and Lionsgate, I have to watch their studio logos before I can get to the menu, which compares to the Blu-ray logo for Disney. With Fox, I get at least two warnings about features availability and commentary or opinions that may not be supported by Fox Studios along with the normal FBI warnings. With Sony and Lionsgate, I not only get variations of warning screens, but tons of trailers - often including those for games. Plus, with Sony and Universal, I often get things like advertisements for Blu-ray (that misterious format I apparently am not already watching) or PSAs about not doing certaining things like smoking or not stealing movies (You wouldn't steal a car...you wouldn't steal someone's free time...). With Warner, I get their production number showing all their old films to a music montage.

It's obvious you have some sort of issue with Disney. I can't help that, but it's not helpful to keep implying you "have to hit skip 80 times" to get to the movie with their discs. If I actually hit skip on each item prior to getting to the movie (and that includes pressing the menu button to skip to the menu), it's like 4 times. If you encounter more than that, you need a better player.

The fact that Disney gives you the option to either let the trailers play (believe it or not, some people like to watch them while sitting down to watch the movie) or simply skipping to the main menu is a good thing that should be allowed by all studios. Further, they are one of the few studios that detect when you've stopped a disc before finishing it and let you choose to continue it from that spot.

If you're going to complain, complain about stripped features on rental discs, trailers you actually have to hit fast forward to skip past (thankfully rare) or even those you have to keeping hitting skip to get past. Warning screens have been a part of home video since VHS. and are common to almost every every studio.

To single out Disney in that regard smacks of a vendetta. Maybe Bob Iger kicked your dog or something, but stop blaming Disney when so many other studios are far, far worse with the stuff you're complaining about.

Whoa! Seven paragraphs just because I mentioned a minor annoyance I have with Disney discs? Do you really have so much empty time on your hands that you have to jump to the defense of a movie studio over so trivial a matter? I didn't mean to start a fight, really. (And, in fact, no one else seems to care, so why don't the two of us stop wasting space, OK?)

John

No, it's seven paragraphs because you keep implying that Disney is somehow so much worse than the rest. I'm not a huge fan of certain things they do, but I'll take the number of things I have to skip over on their discs over what I have to go through to get to the damned movie on other studio discs any day of the week.

It took me over 5 minutes to get to the movie on a Lionsgate rental disc the other day. That's unnacceptable. I kept hitting skip and crap just kept coming. i felt like I was on the internet in the 90's trying to surf through a porn storm. At least a porn storm has, well, you know...porn...

Point blank: If you want to call out all the studios who require tons of skipping of bloat on discs, that's fine, but you're picking on one of the few companies that limits that stuff. Could they trim even more? Sure, but let's tackle the worst offeneders first, of which there are several others far worse than your current whipping boy.

Finally, if you want me to stop responding to you, stop responding to me - especially with exagerations of the truth. However, it should be pointed out, that my comments have been on topic.

I'll agree with this, but my point still is that at least Disney lets you do this on both purchased and rental discs, unlike some studios that make this as hard a possible to do on rental discs. If the stuff is going to be there, I'll take the ability to skip most of it with one press of the menu button over the alternative, which sometimes goes as far as the need to fast forward over stuff because even the skip button has been disabled.

Having said that, the best option is to go straight to the menu screen where you can choose to ply the feature, the special features or any trailers that might be on the disc. If someone wants to play the trailers, they're free to do so.

I don't think even that should happen. The FBI warnings should follow the end credits if they're going to be there at all. No one reads them anyway and having them there isn't going to make a pirate go, "whoa, I guess I shouldn't copy this thing if the FBI says I shouldn't". Putting it right up front as the first thing you see when the disc spins up is the studio assuming the viewer is going to steal it before they even see the thing. By putting it at the end, it does due diligence of stating the rights of the studio and existing copyright law, but doesn't impede the buying customer.

Frankly, the copyright notice already in every end credit sequence should be enough.

In most cases, that's what happens. The trailers are almost always before the menu. Some companies are better than others about letting you skip them. My point to you is that at least Disney lets you skip them all with one button. I'll take that over skipping each one individually or (the worst case) having to hit fast forward on each one.

What I hate is when you hit play and the studio throws all the FBI and interpol warnings or a message up there about how the studio isn't responsible for the content of the special features before the movie actually plays (something Fox often does).

At least most studios have stopped putting that annoying ant-piracy ad on the discs that plays about 10db louder than all the other content (click to be annoyed): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU

Of course, it's likely they stopped using it because apparently they didn't have the proper distribution rights to the music they used in it, which is ironic in itself: http://www.pedestrian.tv/entertainment/news/anti-piracy-movie-ads-caught-using-pirated-music/60075.htm

I'm so very sorry you had to pay full ticket price to see Chicago....

Sure, but how?

If we don't buy content, it sends the message that we don't want it. If we buy the stuff, it sends the message that everything is OK.

The problem is, there aren't discs out there without this stuff on there (at least not legal ones) that we can buy instead to make our point.

Anti-piracy campaign

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_of_the_Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation#Anti-piracy_campaign

Just because the government makes a rule about something, doesn't make it a good idea. Prohibition was legislated, too.

It's important to remember that our government that claims to know what is right for us is the very same one that has experiment on people using things like LSD, radiation, surgical experiments, pathological agents and many other things we likely will never know about. That also includes many attempts to spy on us, often with the assistance of those companies we're perfectly OK with giving our money to if they have an exclusive device we desire.

Now, I'm not trying to say that a stupid warning on a disc compares to that stuff, but the point is that those in leadership we're supposed to trust often prove to be unworthy of it, all the while assuming its citizens are scoundrels and thieves that must automatically be up to no good.

It's wonder we actually buy this stuff, since the media companies spend a great deal of our purchasing dollars trying pass rules like SOPA and PIPA that would would potentially fundamentally break the Internet while likely have zero affect on piracy. We can actually be grateful the internet seems to have bigger dogs in the fight - for now.

The thing is, the goal of the studios has always been pay per view. The resisted home video, which would be a pay once/watch many times format because it was a threat to the theater ticket price. Their lawyers coordinated with Circuit City to produce DiVX, which would create a disposable DVD that would expire and fail to play after only a few plays (an effort that likely failed more in light of environment waste concerns than viewer rights). They continue to make disc based media protections more onerous and cram more advertisements at us when we rent instead of buy. Now they want everything to go to streaming where we can potentially pay for each viewing while owning nothing for our money - all the while being at the mercy of the whims of studio distribution dollars. Want to see it today? Pay up. Want to see it tomorrow? Pay again. Want to see it next month? Sorry, the rights have run out and that title is no longer available.
Edited by NetworkTV - 9/3/12 at 3:50pm