Forced To Watch Trailers On New Movies

Back in the summer Future Shop had a sale on the extended BlueRay versions of the Lord Of the Rings. Given that they were basically 50% off and that I know I eventually wanted to buy a BlueRay player, I decided to buy a set.

Now that I’m back in Canada, I went out and finally bought a BlueRay player. I sat down over the Christmas break to watch a few of them, and I can say without a doubt that the quality of the films in excellent.

But what seems absolutely incredible to me is how each disc has 5 or 6 crappy trailers that you are forced to watch whenever you put one of the discs in. The disc menu button doesn’t seem to work while these are playing, so the only way to bypass them seems to be to keep pressing the chapter-forward button until you eventually finish all the trailers. These aren’t trailers for great movies, but rather crappy ones (in my opinion) that most people probably wouldn’t probably go and see anyways.

I understand revenue models where advertising is necessary, but surely since I’ve purchased these discs for my collection there’s no need to blanket them with ads. Given the timeless classic nature of the movies, having five or six trailers for crappy non-timeless classics is just plain stupid. Not only will I never see those movies, but they will be completely irrelevant in about six months, if not already.

I’m seeing this more and more. Another example is the paid version of Words with Friends. When I upgraded from the free version, I assumed that since I paid I wouldn’t be exposed to anymore ads. But even in the pro version there’s noticeable real-estate taken up on the main screen for advertisements for more free versions of different games. It just seems cheap, like putting a bunch of advertisements on the front page of a commercial website.

This seems like a no-brainer to me. If you are giving something away for free, then by all means throw some advertisements in there. But if you’re asking someone to pay, I really don’t know how you can justify tarnishing the experience with a bunch of cheap advertisements.