Do you like watching the previews on videos and DVDs?

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For me, I always enjoy watching the previews of other movies whenever I watch a VHS or DVD. In fact, if it wasn't for me watching previews, I wouldn't have known about some of my favorite movies:

I wouldn't have known about "Ferngully: The Last Rainforest" if I didn't watch the previews on my "Home Alone" VHS.
I wouldn't have known about "The Thief and the Cobbler" in general if I didn't watch the previews on those "Schoolhouse Rock" videos back in elementary and middle school.

Sometimes I'll watch the previews on my anime DVDs to get an idea on which ones to watch next.

If it wasn't for my old Pinocchio tape, I wouldn't know Nightmare Before Christmas.

only when it's the DVD's where they've been manufactured with an embedded "lock" that won't allow you to use the rewind/fastforward, backward scene skip/forward scene skip, or even the menu/top menu buttons to bypass the trailers. Otherwise, I skip them all the time

I don't like that at all. If I could fix the fast forward button I would.
If the disc wasn't scrambled I'd tape just the movie part and hide the dvd with ads.
Who are the mean nasty people who make things not work right?
If someone wants us to watch ads they should buy us the movie, because...

The movies used to only have a few ads mostly for popcorn.
It used to be that if you paid to see something there were no ads,
but if you watched TV with antenna then ads paid for the show.
Some channels were public and paid for by charity and had no ads.
Some channels that you have to pay to watch used to not have ads
but now they do.
If I go to the movies I come late so the ads are almost over.
They are almost half an hour and boring.

Do people really ask these kinds of questions or is it the "movie police"?
I think its the "music police" always polling here about downloading.

I usually skip 'em.

Almost all such nonsense is bypassed by the excellent (and of course free) VLC Media Player, at VIDEOLAN-dot-ORG - it is very rare that I find a DVD it can't play properly, skipping all 'mandatory' crapola.

I would never EVER buy a DVD player that could not do this (to the best of its physical ability). If I had the power, I would snap my fingers and turn all those idiotic "YoU woULdn'T SteAL a caR, wOuLD yOu?" segments into parodies that went something like "If you had a magic machine that made exact copies of anything, you wouldn't copy a car and give them to all your friends, would you? Haha, of course you would! Enjoy your movie! "

As of about 5-10 years ago (up to today and probably at least for a few more years now), the easiest way to get a copy of a movie/album that works perfectly, i.e, has no compatibility or portability issues etc, is to pirate it. It's almost always only the legitimate 'buyers' who get snafu'd with that kind of garbage. I don't think I'm alone in thinking that the publisher's priority should be making something that WORKS, not something that's 'impossible or even difficult to pirate' (a feat they never seem to have accomplished).

I'd bet money that it'd get a positive response (and more impact on pirating) if a movie studio started offering its wares in all media (online, mobile, dvd/disc, etc), without any DRM or forced crap like the above-mentioned message, but at the start of the movie showed a simple, fast-forwardable 10-second "Hi, we put a lot of time, money and effort into making this, and we hope very much that you enjoy it, but please don't make copies for other people (or send it to them online). If you do that, it makes us less able to make gazillions of dollars so we can make more and more awesome movies for you to enjoy. Cheers." ... Okay, so that was a bit dumb but I'm thinking on my feet here. Also, I DON'T agree with this message (I believe all cultural material should be shared equally, just like we share everyday stories, and just as people share their lives and creations on YouTube), but yeah - baby steps people

I liked the previews on VHS since we didn't have the internet back then to let us know what was cool. (See: Ferngully example from OP )

P.S: Darn, I think I'm over my brackets quota (oops!)

- Gliktch

I agree previews were awesome back in the VHS days when we didnt have a choice but to watch them...especially when they were for Disney films because they kinda make the film look better than how it later turns out!

Here's a weird thing: on one of my DVDs, the first thing that comes up is a choice of countries (languages, I presumed at first). I accidentally pressed the wrong one (Arabic, I think, it was in a different writing system). It went straight to the menu, and it was all in English, not a single thing relating to Arabic. The next time I watched the film, I pressed UK, and it made me sit through the copyright warning and a trailer, before going to the menu so I could watch the film. So what's the deal here? Do countries where they speak Arabic have the kindness to let you just watch the damn film, while the UK insists on annoying us? Either way, I always just press Arabic now.

Anyway, I quite enjoy watching trailers if they're absolutely compulsory, but given the choice I'd rather just watch the film.

I do sometimes watch the trailors for films when I first see a DVD or video but after that the next time I put on the DVD I skip all the adverts and trailors. I use to hate on videos when they would give that long explanation of the age rating.

I also loved the previews on Disney VHSs, they were so much fun.

But other than that I usually just skip over the previews.

I used to detest those previews, and in fact I am glad that the vast majority of DVDs, if they have previews at all, keep them where you can only access them if you want to.

That being said, I love the Coming Soon trailers on Doctor Who DVDs, which actually do a good job of selling you on the next story coming out. Here's a selection of my favourites...

(Note, there are flashes occasionally in some trailers, so be careful if you have epilepsy)

The Rescue/The Romans...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl1Q2_KpUW0[/youtube]


The War Games...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdn_-Gftg_M[/youtube]


The Dalek War boxset, aka Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAMk7eTiIIE[/youtube]


Planet of Evil...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UUfBi5exow[/youtube]


The Deadly Assassin...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfkmUyKIY1s[/youtube]


The E-Space Trilogy...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XvMQUAFI0I[/youtube]


The Black Guardian Trilogy...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6UB1lpo1Vs[/youtube]


The Trial of a Timelord...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR9OWBCKP2w[/youtube]


Delta and the Bannermen...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-Q3jS9nsXk[/youtube]


And finally, Battlefield...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQYuCSUvnEc[/youtube]

Did you know that I (and many others) also upload VHS previews on Youtube? Here's a few of them:

The Thief and the Cobbler:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzE4f5IXKs[/youtube]

The Pebble and the Penguin:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqWGI6ab6v8[/youtube]

Scream (a horror movie):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af1Ht27sPkQ[/youtube]

Double Dragon: The Shield of Shadow Khan:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX9fGqU0LW0[/youtube]

It really irritates me that there are so many previews on the DVDs I enjoy. The Beavis and Butthead DVDs are the worst offenders. I think there are as many previews as actual episodes!

But the good thing is, I can almost always bypass previews. It's just a matter of knowing which button to press to take me to the main menu.

This is how I find out about a lot of the movies I might want to buy next.

I like previews, but I skip the ones I'm not interested in.

What I hate is when you go to the movies, pay $10 for a ticket, and then have to sit through commercials, and THEN previews, which themselves are also commercials.