Page 1 of Does DVD Menu Design matter?

I`ve been looking through some reviews, and several times noticed adverse comments about a static menu, with no movement.

Does this really matter?

I`m more concerned with how easy it is to navigate a menu system. Those moving pictures can look nice, but if you have to watch the sequence every time you pass through a menu page it soon can be frustrating.

I think most menus are a bit over the top personally. I much prefer a static one over a pointlessly animated one. I think it can ditract slightly from the atmosphere of the movie sometimes aswell. I think the beginning of a movie is sometimes the most important part and the menus can spoil it in my opinion. Perhaps I`m a purist, but I`d prefer a DVD to automatically play the movie from a blank screen startup when i put it in the machine rather than being forced to go through an elaborate menu.

I don`t mind either way but one thing that I find really annoying is when not all menu options work with my player. I have the bitstream version of The Panic Room and I can`t select the DTS option. Argh!

"Perhaps I`m a purist, but I`d prefer a DVD to automatically play the movie from a blank screen startup when i put it in the machine rather than being forced to go through an elaborate menu."

I agree with you on this - it`s much more intuitive. Most early DVD releases behaved like this, but at some point (about 2 years ago) you started getting discs which jumped to the menu on start-up. Do studios really think the menu is more important than the movie?

Mike

animated menus that are done well are great take we were soldiers, it uses DD5.1 in the menus too, and the way those chopper scream into the screen is awesome.

when I compare this to the R1 true romance well I will say no more.

DVD menus are repeating the website design mistakes of the 1990`s. It is a simple matter of User Interface Design.

Unwieldy navigation, confusing images, repeated cut scenes and multiple menu leves. These might be a novelty first time around but the user quickly tires of them. Seen memento? Its a nightmare.

the blair witch menu is awful...can never get it to work properly...

some effort should be put into menu`s...they don`t necessarily have to be animated but they should look nice. better than that of mortal kombat annihilation anyway...

Yup, aminated menus just make things slower to get around - just as annoying is where clips are played between menu jumps (eg Black Books - otherwise a nice menu system - easy to jump between episodes and chapters within episodes, too).
Good comment with the comparisons with web sites.

...Oooh just thought of another - playing trailers before the movie starts and stopping you getting past them easily. Thought I`d avoided trailers when the VHS was dumped!!!!

This item was edited on Monday, 30th September 2002, 14:28

and sometimes it can actually give away parts of the story in the menu.
i watched LOTR with someone who had avoided all the trailers and the commercials before seeing the movie (like i did too) but did`nt manage to see it on the cinema.
as i went to select the sound setup menu....a quick scene cut of the first meeting of the fellowship!
granted, it may seem extremely unimportant to most, but i just want to be able to enjoy the atmosphere created by the movies beginning rather than have to watch a menu scene that hasn`t any association with the director, producers etc. and been made by some independant company.

oh yeah, and the memento R1 menu is bewildering to say the least but relevant to the structure and atmos of the film.

This item was edited on Monday, 30th September 2002, 19:07