Note to DVD User Interfaces: You Are Horrible and I Hate You
Is it just me, or do DVDs have the most annoying user interfaces on the planet? I have yet to pop in a DVD, any DVD, that doesn’t annoy, bewilder, enrage, or sadden me, and scandalize my effete and finely-tuned UI sensibilities.
The problems are myriad, and endemic. First and foremost, there’s no standardization: although every DVD menu has pretty much the same stuff in it, the menu options are scattered across the surface of the screen and hidden in the weft of the invariably overproduced background image. Figuring out how to move between the various options is nightmarish, because the menu items don’t often line up, vertically or horizontally, so there’s no way to know what where the cursor’s going to go when you hit an arrow key. And I’m being charitable in using the word “cursor” to describe the ridiculous position marker these menus generally have; often, they just turn the selected item a slightly lighter/darker shade of the same color, transforming the the entire process of menu selection from Point and Click to Squint and Guess.
And there’s more to hate. Much, much more:
- Waiting through a cutesy/melodramatic/interminable intro whenever you pop in the DVD.
- Having to navigate back to the main menu to get to the next episode in a TV series collection, instead of just pressing a next button.
- Going to the freaking Language Option screen to turn on the commentary track. How is that a language option?
- Having to remember that you can’t actually use numbers to navigate to scenes in the scene selection screen, despite the fact that the scenes are numbered.
And on and on and on. To my mind, the whole DVD UI mess is a prime example of the triumph of artistic design over common sense and human factors. It’s what happens when you let the art department call the shots. It’s also a testament to the power of inertia. Somewhere back in the depths of DVD history some intern decided that the best place to turn on commentary was the language options screen, and it’s been settled policy ever since.
We need a revolution. We need Lord Jobs or Demiurge Ives to step in and throttle this sad mutant creature and create something new and rational and beautiful, from scratch. It can be done.
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