DVD UI's

I wasn't going to write about DVD UI's, because they're all so bloody terrible, but then I watched The Incredibles (both the main feature and the special features disc) and, damn, they almost got it right. Go Pixar!

Things they did right:

1. No annoying animations that slow down menus
   
2. Everything has subtitles
   
3. Animators' commentary is fairly interesting
   

Things they messed up:

4. Special features menu is inconsistent in depth and breadth. You can't tell how many levels there are under a specific option. Are you going to another menu or directly to a featurette? Is this an interactive slide show or a movie you're about to watch?
   
5. Brad Bird is an annoying git, and is all over the damn' second disc. I suppose it's hard to not have the director involved somehow.
   

Screwing up #1 is popular, and I would not have bothered to mention it were the rest of the thing not so close to perfection. Apparently the people that design DVD menus do not use computers with GUI shells. Xerox PARC solved this problem ages ago: make files look different from folders, and while you're at it, make different kinds of files (slide show, movie, text) look different from each other. Stick a little (not too little, please) icon next to your menu entry and you're done. You can be more elegant, but this will do.

While I'm ranting, here're the lists for the Scrubs Season 2 DVD's:

Things they did right:

1. Episodes are uncut (unlike The Cosby Show ones).
   

Things they messed up:

1. Menus torture user with animation.
   
2. No subtitles for special features (including commentary)
   
3. Commentary cannot be turned on with audio channel feature of DVD player: you have to go to the special features menu to do so. As a result, there's no easy way to switch back and forth between commentary and original soundtrack. Stupid.
   
4. Not all episodes have commentary—but then again, the commentary that's there is mostly pointless.
   

#1 always makes me wonder whether the people that designed the menu actually watch DVD's.