It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

I am a big, big, big fan of The Sound of Music.  The kind of fan who has seen the film over 87 times (I stopped counting when I was about 14…).  A fact that, Kristy does not seem to hold against me, to her extreme credit.

To MY credit, I didn’t go out and buy the 45th Anniversary Blu Ray edition with bells, whistles and schniztel with noodles.  I was tempted, but I hear the 50th anniversary will come with the schnitzel, the noodles, the copper kettle, the woolen mittens, and a brown paper mystery package tied up with string (I’m hoping it will contain a kitten with whiskers).  And, since I’ve already had two different VHS versions (wore one out completely, the other partially) and the 40th anniversary DVD release, I thought I could stand to wait for the big 50.

What I failed to realize was that they also re-released the album.

The album, that, after nearly half a century, finally has my favorite track included.

For years the album to the 1965 movie didn’t have every song.  In most cases, that’s okay, but in this case, it was my favorite that was missing.  I have long had a love for the version of “Edelweiss” that appears first in the movie–as a simple duet with Captain VonTrapp (voiced by Bill Lee–in case you still didn’t realize that wasn’t Christopher Plumber) and Liesel (who really is Charmian Carr, lest the previous parenthetical had you questioning everything)–but it was never on any of the copies I had of the album (I wore out two cassettes).  The only version there was the reprise at the Festival that has the whole fam-damily, a pit orchestra with a bell player who definitely picked up the hard mallets, and half the population of Austria.  The song’s still good, but it’s not the intimate little take that I love from the earlier scene.

When I first got my DVD of the film several years back, I kept saying I would go in and rip that track to an Mp3 for myself so I could finally over-indulge in the good version.  Of course I never got around to that.

But lo, what should appear in the Amazon $5 offering list today?  Is that a different cover to the album I spy?  And, ZOMG, NEW TRACK LISTING?

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.  And he likes the good version of “Edelweiss” too.

But there’s more!  In addition to that, we also get the music to the “Laendler” and the expanded version of the “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” reprise with the opening that I never knew existed until the DVD special features and the music from the interlude…..

Christmas came early for me this year and the hills are definitely alive with the sound of the tracks I’ve been missing….

We here at My TV, My Peanut Butter are quite the fans of TV on DVD.  We were the ones who tried to tape and collect everything, so this whole better-quality-smaller-container-easily-available thing was tailor made for us.

But all this consumption has also given us some very strong opinions.  Particularly on the subject of menus and navigation.

The way a main-menu runs on a DVD, particularly one for a TV series, can make or break the experience.  Some of them have really rotten icons that don’t make it clear what you’ve highlighted so instead of playing the episode, you wind up turning on Korean subtitles.  Some of them have the world’s crappiest menu music (you can always tell when there was a dispute over rights to the music in the show).

But the worst of the worst is the lack of a “play all.”

The offender that comes to mind first on this is The X-Files (though they are by no means alone: Stargate SG1?  I’m looking right at ya).  I love my X-Files, and there’s not much about them that can tick me off, but I hate, loath and despise that when I put in those DVDs?  I have to manually select each episode, and then manually select to play it.  It’s not just the lack of ability to put it in and hit play knowing it will run for 4 eps without my having to stop ironing, it’s the fact that every single episode requires me to essentially select it twice.  And then when the episode finishes, I get dumped back to that episode’s play menu, and have to navigate to go back to the main menu to play the next episode.  Annoying. As.  Hell.

Menus aren’t the only failing though.  Other navigational screw ups can destroy an experience as well.  So right behind the lack of “play all” on the menu poorly marked chapters within an episode.  When you’re sitting down to a marathon of a series, no matter how good those credits are, but the last 6 or 7 episodes of that 20 episode season?  You’re bordering on homicidal.  In the name of the safety of yourself, and others (including the makers of the show), you pick up the remote as those credits begin again and hit to skip forward.

Except some clueless asshat put the chapter break well past the end of the credit sequence, so now you have to scramble to go back to the previous chapter where you will either have to grit your teeth through the opening, or you’ll have to use the more manual fast-forward and hope you don’t overshoot your mark.  Total drag.  Oh and Stargate?  I’m totally looking at you again.

So, to all you wonderful people who bring me TV on DVD?  Please take notes.