Film, Technology

Skipping Trailers and Warnings on Blu-ray Discs

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There has been an increase in crimes against consumers. They are being held hostage. By what? Warnings and trailers on Blu-ray discs! I don’t steal movies off the internet, I rent them via Netflix, and rental discs1 are the biggest culprit.

Yes, you can fast forward, but on my PC’s BD player2 only goes so fast, so I’m still stuck for several minutes. Worse, I often need to stop the disc and get back to work, which means closing the player since it disables the Windows Aero interface and color scheme. When I start the player again, I’m back at square one! I’ve been looking for a player that allows me to skip anything, much like VLC Media Player and Media Player Classic (the open source version) allow me to do for DVDs. Unfortunately, I’ve seen no open source BD players and the commercial ones won’t dare allow you to perform a “user prohibited action” as defined by the disc makers. How they have the balls to charge $100 for that crap I’ll never know.

But we have a savior! It’s called AnyDVD HD. It sits between your BD ROM drive and your software player software and presents the disc as decrypted. It will also disable all your warnings and trailers.3. I just installed it and put in a disc and it immediately went to the main menu. It’s exactly what I was looking for and it’s currently going for about $75, with a 3 week trial so you can check it out first. Yes, a little pricey, but still cheaper than the other software players and I’ll make up for it in time saved. The bummer is that it only works on Windows, so when I have a home theater set up with my PS3, I’ll be back to slogging through trailers, or schlepping my laptop over to the coffee table.

  1. Denoted by plain grey discs featuring only the movie title. [↩]
  2. HP MediaSmart DVD, which is just rebranded Cyberlink. [↩]
  3. Of course, you can get to the trailers through the disc menu if you like. [↩]
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4 thoughts on “Skipping Trailers and Warnings on Blu-ray Discs”

  2. Yeah, when I asked people on Facebook for suggestions, one guy said to just download them if they’re going to be a-holes about it.

    I have modified my Netflix behavior, though. I put my account on hold until there are a bunch of DVDs I want to rent, then I watch them and put the account back on hold. With their current rates, that probably saves me almost $200/year.

  3. Not disc-related, but good to know:

    use http://www.instantwatcher.com to find out what is available on Netflix streaming. They do a pretty good job of categorizing titles and alerting you to the new stuff. Netflix does this from their main app menu also, but if you’re in between subscriptions (great idea!!) the instantwatcher website is a good place to keep up with the latest offering.

  4. Pingback: The Crack Team · Canceling Netflix – And They Don’t Care

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