The only unskippable content on DVDs that I get are the FBI warnings. All the other stuff is skippable by using the next button.

Depends on the disc manufacturer. I have some that you cannot just skip past with the Menu or Next buttons, and have to FForward through. Frickin' annoying.

We have a couple of those. That's when we break for pee/drink-refills/snack-scavenging/MMO-updating... ;)

Yeah. I've gotten that too, and I agree. Sometimes, you can't even fforward.

And some DVDs have a misfeature (Red Dwarf, Doctor Who, and Torchwood in Region 1 at least) where if I turn off the player in the menu, which is a reasonable place to turn off the player, when I turn it on again and try to play something, it goes through the whole process with the FBI warning and intro stuff again and I have to navigate to the menu again. Then it will work. I thought maybe that was my player being tetchy, but I've got a second player now, and they both do it. Different brands.

We get around that by starting to play something and turning the machine off while it is playing. That works most of the time.

there are a couple of kids' DVD's that we've gotten that the ads for other shows are unskippable. You can FF over them, but if I do, I have someone screaming that they wanted to watch that Dora ad. *shoots self in head*

Thankfully, they've kicked Dora's sorry butt to the curb in favor of "Dinosaur Train," "Super Why," and "Between the Lions."

They forgot the "you wouldn't steal a car" threatening anti-piracy ads so brilliantly parodied on the IT Crowd here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg

You just wait...soon, they will have an hour of Unrelated Ads on DVDs, just like they do in movie theaters...

Have you heard about the latest deals the studios are doing with rental companies? Warner Bros made a deal with Netflix and Redbox that rental copies can't be distributed to customers until 28 days after the release date, theoretically so they can boost retail sales of DVDs. Rumors are flying about other studios following suit, with all the rental companies.

Granted, Netflix got some concessions on the deal - more copies of the discs (which is something they've been trying to get for a while now, since the subscriber base has grown so much) and more titles in the Watch Instantly library - but it's still a great big middle finger to people who want to legitimately watch the new release movies. The studios think that restricting disc availability like this will encourage more people to buy instead of rent, but if people had that kind of disposable income, they'd be buying them NOW. This will just spawn more pirated copies floating around for the people who don't want to wait 28 days to rent.

Bingo. If we want new, we can buy them for $5 each (still in theaters! heheh) at the swap meet on the other side of town. Our 'Hulk' has Korean subtitles and a small shadow head in the corner. :D

Otherwise we're randomly getting them later on netflix. Or just not bothering in most cases. Our Hollywood Video shut down so, yeah. Not many other options in the area.

Disney's pretty awful with the unskippable previews.