Worst Menus Ever: Live Free or Die Hard

What about the menus didn't you like? I didn't have have any problem with them.

Warner Menus are the best because there aren't any!

I thought the main menu was just an ugly design overall, the wireframes didn't work for me. The pop up menu during the movie was alright, but the one by one scene selection was really annoying.

Apparently TC you haven't watched Cars on blu ray. Now that is some terrible menu design.

Ugh! I hate Warner Menus with a passion! The first time I watched Departed, I was wondering why the audio was "ok" and not "great". Then I popped the menu and it was on Dolby 640k and not PCM. Having a menu reminds you to set the audio and other stuff.

QFT, I was watching Oceans 13 on SD DVD today at my parents house (I know, I know, but there was no where to rent an HD DVD version and I was certainly NOT going to buy it) and I hated the little 8 second intro animation before the main menu loads.

I love throwing in Batman Begins or The Matrix and just seeing the movie start right up.

As far as HDM goes, Universal gets #2 on my list. Sony and Paramount are usually good. Fox misses a few times but Disney is just flat out horrible. First we get 8 previews, then 1-2 "don't pirate our movies warning", then we get a huge animated, albeit pretty, 3D animated menu that takes a day and forever to load (I'm looking at you POTC).

Another vote for the best menu is no menu at all or at least minimal. The talking pirate skull is cool though.

You can slam LFDH(story deserves it) all you want, but the picture quality was excellent and the DTS HD MA sounded incredible.

Simple and Unremarkable is always better than Pretty, Complex, and Gaudy when you are creating a user interface.

Just look at one of the worlds most popular web sites. (Link)

No menus? So you want the movie to feel like it was a pirated copy, DivX pasted onto a disc?

This thread is also useless without pics.

New Line has the best menus so far. There are actually chapter titles. Sweet.
And they are supper easy to navigate. They went full throttle with the quality.

Fox charges the same and has been at it longer. The 28 weeks menus are pretty crappy too. On the plus side, Fox doesn't have a lot of special features to navigate.

Uni's aren't bad, but they are all the same(I like how they telescope). WB doesn't really have menus. It's more like a list of cluttered text.
Paramounts were OK.

Who wants to start the "best menus by studio" poll?

I haven't seen anything from New Line yet, but in general I prefer Universal and Warner's approach to menus, as they are fairly inobtrusive. Fox could use some improvement.

Cars has the most pain in the butt menus ever. It took me forever to find anything on that disk. This is perfect example of cool and complicated but unfriendly and hard to use.

I totally agree with you.

I totally agree. This severely bugs me. And also, even if you do remember, oftentimes the film starts and you go to the menu and movie's still going, so you have to pause, reset the audio, then chapter skip back to the beginning.

I agree that the Universal HD-DVD menus are preferable (to me).

Holy Cow! So now people are bitching over menu's?? Wow, just wow!

I think the new interactive pop-up menu's are awesome and leagues above DVD. The menu system used by Universal for Heroes being my personal favorite.

Beides a lack of graphical competiviness one of the things I dislike most from the BR menus is that many of the movies completly start over after going to and selecting any menu option.

BFD, who cares about the flipping menus... Totally agree with you MichR, not important to me but it looks like they are to some, so I will respect that next time I poke fun at some one...

Except that the pop-up menus on Blu-ray don't work while the movie's paused, so you actually have to make your selections while the movie plays and then chapter skip back to rewatch the scene again.

What is wrong with HD DVD menus? Honestly, I'm being serious. I own like 150 HD DVDs and never once said to myself that the menus were screwed up or were slow to load, etc. I realize that is the BD software section, but if you're going to go off topic and say that HD DVD menus are horrible, please at least give examples and explain, 'cause HD DVD menus have never been a complaint from HD DVD owners. I'm really curious as to what you are talking about.

They are the same on every HD DVD (to the best of my recollection). I don't really think that they are particularly interesting. They are not confusing or anything. They are just, well, boring with that lame curve design and the background.

Have you seen the live free or die hard menus?

I think this thread is hilarious. We are not criticizing the layout of a menu on a disc....Not the extras or the movie itself, the actual menu...

Apparently you have seen mostly Universal titles. Universal menus are very boring. I've been quite impressed with the menus other studios are implementing onto HD DVD titles though.

Not that menus mean much to me.. I just want to get to the movie ASAP.

Actually, every title on hd dvd I own is Universal (except transformers), so I guess that would answer why I think they are boring. I buy Blu Ray, except certain red only titles.

I never even really thought about that.....

My gripe is with menus that make it difficult to impossible to actually make a selection. I just rewatched Casino Royale last night and found it impossible to select English subtitles from the menu, could only get Thai fer chrissake. These all seem to be on the BD side of the fence--I think Easter-Egg loving guys are designing the GUI on these things.

Casino Royale is straight forward.

The arrow keys work like there in a different universe with Fox titles.

The popup menus in DieHard4 is what I tend to like. A lot of popup menus look like some high school art project and cover up big chunks of the screen. The minimalist approach is the right thing here, and I'm glad that since titles like CR, a few people put some thought into giving us functional and not just assume garish bitmaps is what people want.

I just finished watching Live Free or Die Hard and its menus were just fine. I popped it in, and easily navigated to the audio options and made sure the dts hdma track was selected. Then I went back to start the movie. I saw nothing wrong with its menus.

As many others mentioned, Cars was an absolutely horrible menu design. I popped it in, and I was asking myself "where is the dang 'play the movie' button?" And Ratatouille was very similar to Cars.