30 Rock Season 2 DVD set - a helpful hint!

So, what's on my mind grapes today?

Before I get to the gist of this entry, I just want to say that I don't understand why 30 Rock gets such low ratings. There's a huge online fan base. I run into 30 Rock fans everywhere. All the TV critics rave about the show. The show really cleaned up at the Emmys this year. I just don't get it...I dunno, maybe it just happens that the only people who don't watch the show are the ones who have the Nielsen boxes.

Anyway, the Season 2 DVD set just came out. It's a really well-done set. Yes, it only has about two-thirds of a season due to the writer's strike, but the extras (including "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah" in its entirety) and Easter eggs more than make up for the gap. The video quality is stunning. And the episodes are nothing short of priceless, especially "Rosemary's Baby" and "Cooter," the latter of which I excitedly told my wife, who's also a big fan but didn't get to see the episode when it aired as she was taking a class at the time, "IT WAS THE GREATEST HALF-HOUR OF TELEVISION OF MY LIFE!!"

Having said all of that, I was dismayed when my wife brought home the new box set, and disc 1 completely stalled 16 seconds into chapter 3, during the Spanish disclaimer. Couldn't stop. Couldn't get to a menu. Couldn't do anything but eject the disc. Hmmm... Tried disc 2. Same exact thing, right down to the second! uh huh. Probably some new-fangled encoding or encryption that's not compatible with the DVD player we bought as a wedding present to ourselves in 1999.

So my wife popped one of the discs in her laptop, and all worked fine, but man, I didn't want to watch a DVD on a computer -- that's why we have a DVD player and a TV, dammit! I tried ripping the episodes from the DVD and re-burning them (sans intro, promos, trailers, disclaimers, etc.), but alas I couldn't get a good burn and I was short on blank DVDs. I even tried some of those weird "unlock" codes you can get from a Yahoo! search, but none of them helped.

Just as a wild hunch, I tried this process:

1) Put the disc in the DVD player.
2) When the Universal logo and music plays, press "Stop." At this point, my DVD player warned me that resuming play at that point would be impossible; yeah, yeah, whatever.
3) I pressed a button on my remote that I never touched before in my life: "Title."

BINGO!!! Got the episode menu, and my wife and I have been enjoying season 2 of 30 Rock no longer from our TiVo box, but now from DVD, ever since.

If you have a similar problem with your copy, try those three steps.

And let me just end by saying that I love you. But not in a queer way.