The Lost Art of DVD Menus: When Discs Were Interactive Playgrounds
Beauty in DVD Menus
DVD menus were once a selling point, evolving from simple lists to elaborate interactive experiences. From Disney's FastPlay to Scooby-Doo 2's playable games and Doctor Who's TARDIS-themed interfaces, these menus pushed the format's limited tech to its creative limits. This retrospective explores the design, technical constraints, and nostalgic charm of an era when companies invested heavily in disc-based interactivity.
Due to the limitations of DVDs, the entire game is relatively simple in terms of mechanics; however, it is obvious a lot of effort was put into it to make it feel comprehensive, and it really plays to the strengths of the medium with lots of little clips and sections.
- gwbas1c
> Modern DVDs and Blu-ray menus alike are often little more than an image or video with a generic menu atop it. It is understandable. Physical media as a whole is less popular with the mass adoption of streaming services;
I disagree; it's because we prefer disks with very simple menus, and care very little about the special features.
Let's think about the alternatives:
VHS: No menus; it would just start the ^%$^# movie (or would have trailers that were easy to fast forward through.)
Streaming: Standard menu no matter what you're watching, and then just starts the ^%$#^$ movie.
FWIW: Netflix, Disney+, and YouTube are all much "faster" than my BluRay player when it comes to getting to the actual content.
Regarding the special features: They were very cool on late 1990s and early 2000s disks, because most of them were promotional bits that would air on TV to promote the movie. They quickly devolved to be more like home movies filmed on the set where the cast and crew would just slap each others' backs for an hour. Useful maybe if you were cast or crew reminiscing, but otherwise rather boring compared to a planned interview or documentary.
- alt227
I remember watching the DVD of Memento, and using the secret DVD menu button combination to enable watching the film backwards scene by scene. I remember thinking that was amazing and we were entering a new era of creative movie distribution. Shame that sort of thing didnt really catch on.
- teddyh
The feeling I get with DVD menus is that I sometimes feel like watching some classic movie, and so I put on the DVD. But then the DVD menu already shows all the classic scenes and characters, so when I finally have navigated all the menus and started the movie, I no longer want to watch the movie. The DVD menu clips have completely refreshed my memory of what the movie was like, so I can no longer re-watch it with satisfaction.
(Re-post: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41801993>)
- kalleboo
Back in High School me and my friends made a zombie movie over summer vacation, and I had so much fun making overly-complicated DVD menus for it using a pirated copy of DVD Studio Pro.
Full of stylized video transitions, menu selections that were fully graphical (not using the 2-bit overlays, DVD Studio Pro supported Photoshop layers), pointless special features (gotta fill out that list on the back of the box), poorly-translated subtitle tracks, and easter eggs in various menus when you hit a special button combination on your remote.
It was a really fun format to mess around with!
- SeaGully
I've been collecting DVD menus. I maybe have somewhere in the vicinity of 250 on my computer. Some are quite large (>1GB) because the menus themselves have videos that need to play to operate and some are like quite long movies. I use a method which strips out any actual video content (the movie and any special features), so if you click on an item which would take you to a video it craps out, but otherwise the menus do completely work most of the time. It just depends on the structure of the DVD (I _think_ it is basically whether some of the menu images or videos are encoded in the movie vob file itself? I haven't gotten around exploring the actual structure of the ifo/vob files).
I find DVDs to be an interesting technology all the way down to the often absurd special features they have (my favorite? On the Tango & Cash DVD they have actor biographies in which they mispell Jack Palance's birthname).
- VCFundedGenYer
I specifically remember Shrek 1's DVD menu was a work of art and nearly a complete multimedia experience on its own.
It's ironic that the author chose the much simpler/inferior Shrek 2 DVD menu to showcase.
- asveikau
I hated DVD menus. I preferred discs that would pop directly into the movie.
The menus were often slow and buggy, and sometimes broke on specific players.
Some discs would also try to block skipping ads.
- waltbosz
I remember the first Harry Potter DVD had its special features hidden in a sort of maze game that presumably used the DVD menu system. It was an interesting idea, but I found it too difficult to navigate/play. One part I remember was you had to tap the bricks outside The Leaky Cauldron in a special order to enter Diagon Alley and then what happened I don't recall.
I also had this idea for a home work out DVD that would give you different "random" workouts based on the timing of when you clicked menu options. There would be predefined playlists of different workout routines. Each video segment in the list would be a set of one kind of exercise. And the playlists would contain different collections of sets. I wonder if I could have made it work, I think DVD technology would support it.