The famous InstaPundit makes a valid point about the inconvenience of many DVDs:
The new Simpsons’ [Third Season DVD box set] release has a selection that basically lets you play each disc from beginning to end, like a video tape, without having to deal with menus. That’s a great idea, and all DVDs should have that option, easy to implement and up front. Or maybe all DVD players should have it.
Like him, I hate sitting through fancy menu build-ups. But unfortunately his DVD player solution won’t work. There are two reasons. First, under the DVD Forum’s licensing conditions, DVD players are supposed to honour User Operation Prohibitions. Sure, some player modifications allow these to be overcome, but all this achieves is allowing you to get to the main menu quicker, or jump straight to the program … if you know where it is. And this last point is the major problem. How is the disc logically organised? The majority of DVDs have the movie in Title 1, but not all. Where there are multiple episodes of a TV show on a disc, they are each normally in their own Titles, but not necessarily starting at Title 1. Or they may be all in one Title with a further logical division. Some weird tricks can be pulled on DVDs, including putting program material into no Titles at all. Unfortunately, there’s just no way a DVD player can take over the whole show, nice as that would be.