Bluray menus vs dvd

[vortexx]

Originally Posted by jeffm2016

I know this may be unrealistically possible but I hate how the dvds had great menus and now they are boring on bluray. Is there anyway to rip the dvd menu and place the hd movie in them to a digital file?

Or other solution.

I really liked having the menus and tons of extras (that didn’t make it to bluray in many cases) and would love anyway to merge them into one file to have or burn back to a recordable disk.

It can be done but you would need to separate all the elements from the bluray and DVD onto your computer. Then you're pretty much going to be authoring a bluray almost from scratch. I've authored dvds with menus and submenus etc for movies that were getting released. It's quite time consuming and not fun. I would just keep both versions if I were you as it can take days to do and then you have to be your own beta tester and play everything to see if it all works. Not fun.

[WJB]

My favourites from the DVD era were the truly incredible menus from the James Bond special edition DVDs in 1999-2000. They seem to have been designed by someone with a genuine love for the films, and an understanding of what made them special to fans.

That was a truly magical time for film collectors! (Other than SD picture, lossy sound, etc etc etc).

[LMFAObros]

BD is simpler but more generic, while DVD was more complicated and had more going on.

[smithb]

Originally Posted by LMFAObros

BD is simpler but more generic, while DVD was more complicated and had more going on.

That may be the way it appears now, but it isn't how it started out. Blu-ray was designed around providing more flexibility and complexity to menus then DVD ever could. Blu-ray players come bundled with a Java runtime that basically provides a full programming language to design menus from, while DVD is based on a much more limited framework of capabilities.

What became apparent quickly with the early blu-ray menus were slow loading times and incompatibilities in how the Java runtime's were implemented, requiring more regular player updates. BD-Live didn't help matters since that also slowed things down in trying to access the internet for other goodies. I remember early blu-rays trying to pack in all kinds of additional gadgets.

Over time, players became faster and studios realized consumers didn't want all the flash if it meant taking forever to get to the movie. I'd say smarter heads prevailed and we now have simpler and faster loading menus, even though blu-ray can support so much more.

[BillieCassin]

Originally Posted by smithb

That may be the way it appears now, but it isn't how it started out.

Very insightful post - that's pretty much exactly what happened.

And I do agree - we've ended up on the better end of it now, with simple menus. It just isn't worth all the issues BD-Java and such bring, for something that should be so simple.

It is funny thinking back about all the BD-Live stuff. Anyone remember the LOST "University" lessons you could sign up for and stream? LOL.

I'd also add, the biggest reasons studios got behind pushing connectivity between Blu-ray players and the internet were actually to do with security. That's why for the most part BD-Live was mostly under-developed fluff. Let's not forget about the fears we used to have about how buried in the Blu-ray format is the ability to lock out any disc from any player updated to reject it. It's all still there, just a relic of when they were more worried about bootleg physical media vs. digital piracy.

[Gacivory]

I personally never cared for the menu. I just have it one for as long as it takes for me to click the selection I want. As long as it’s easy to read I’m fine.