A brief heads-'Up'
Fri, Nov. 13th, 2009 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
codeman38(Yes, I already mentioned this over on ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
accessibility_fail, but I figured there might be a few people here who aren't over there...)
Any Pixar fans planning on renting their latest movie, Up, from Netflix, Redbox or Blockbuster may be in for a surprise-- and not of the pleasant sort.
The retail DVD of Up is a wonderful thing accessibility-wise. Not only is it fully closed-captioned, but there's even a descriptive audio track narrating the on-screen happenings for blind listeners.
However, Disney (the film's distributor) released a special rental-only version of the DVD to the three above-mentioned rental chains, which lacks the bonus shorts from the retail DVD, the descriptive audio track, and the captions and subtitles in all three languages.
I know. It sounds utterly unbelievable-- so I posted this DVD player screenshot of the rental version on Twitpic as proof. (And yes, the one menu item says "turn off closed captioning", but that's because I have it on by default; there's none encoded on the disc.)
To say I was disappointed when I stuck the Netflix DVD into my player and saw no captions is a vast understatement...
So, if you're dependent on captioning or want to try out the descriptive audio feature, avoid Netflix, Blockbuster and Redbox, and go to your local indie rental store instead.
Edited to add: Oh, it gets more facepalm-worthy by the minute. Twitter user TheFarmerJoe contacted Disney and got an explanation: the removal of captioning was intentional, because they viewed closed captioning as a bonus feature. I don't even think I need to mention how utterly made of EPIC FAIL this is. >_<;;
accessibility_fail, but I figured there might be a few people here who aren't over there...)Any Pixar fans planning on renting their latest movie, Up, from Netflix, Redbox or Blockbuster may be in for a surprise-- and not of the pleasant sort.
The retail DVD of Up is a wonderful thing accessibility-wise. Not only is it fully closed-captioned, but there's even a descriptive audio track narrating the on-screen happenings for blind listeners.
However, Disney (the film's distributor) released a special rental-only version of the DVD to the three above-mentioned rental chains, which lacks the bonus shorts from the retail DVD, the descriptive audio track, and the captions and subtitles in all three languages.
I know. It sounds utterly unbelievable-- so I posted this DVD player screenshot of the rental version on Twitpic as proof. (And yes, the one menu item says "turn off closed captioning", but that's because I have it on by default; there's none encoded on the disc.)
To say I was disappointed when I stuck the Netflix DVD into my player and saw no captions is a vast understatement...
So, if you're dependent on captioning or want to try out the descriptive audio feature, avoid Netflix, Blockbuster and Redbox, and go to your local indie rental store instead.
Edited to add: Oh, it gets more facepalm-worthy by the minute. Twitter user TheFarmerJoe contacted Disney and got an explanation: the removal of captioning was intentional, because they viewed closed captioning as a bonus feature. I don't even think I need to mention how utterly made of EPIC FAIL this is. >_<;;
