Interesting, I've had the opposite experience. As long as I've let the DVD get to main menu, once it's reached that screen, pressing play will play the feature. Sometimes the feature will have ads, copyright or FBI notices at the beginning, but the feature does play.

Now, if you try to press play before the main menu appears, that's a whole different story. Many DVDs will play ads before even reaching the main menu. That's something I abhor. Yes, I wish I could just insert the disc and press play immediately without having to wait for it to reach the main menu.

I wonder if there is a universal hack that could be applied that would let a piece of DVD playing app or player firmware do that: Skip straight to the feature, on every DVD, before even trying to put up a menu or an ad. That would be awesome.