My DVD player has no 'eject' button on the remote. This frustrates me.
The remote control has a surplus of other buttons, including ones for such functions as multiple angles1 and chapter shuffling2. However, seemingly one of the most basic of functions is absent. Whenever I mention this to folk, they fail to see the source of my frustration. "But surely you have to go over and get the DVD from the player anyway...", they say. The answer to that is yes, I do. But the overriding factor to consider in all of this is that I am inherently lazy.
With my current DVD player, I must walk over to the machine, kneel down and grope around for the eject button (cunningly unmarked) on the face of the machine. I must then wait for it to decide to eject my DVD, and then remove it from the tray. The whole process is much more complicated and time-consuming than it need be.
With an eject button on the remote control, this entire process would be much simplified. I would simply have to press the handily-placed 'eject' button on the remote I already have in my hand, and walk over to the machine while it is ejecting my disk. All that is then required is to remove the disk from the tray. Much simpler, and takes much less time than the previous scenario.
Precisely why this remarkable point of design is neglected in almost all the DVD players I have come across is somewhat perplexing. My VCR has an 'eject' button on the remote, and a mighty useful button that is. Is it perhaps that the designers of DVD players have to devote so much time to the complex intricacies of the device's inner workings that they do not have time to consider smaller, but equally useful additions?
Perhaps we shall never know. Perhaps, one day, all DVD players will have the ever-brilliant 'eject' button on their remote controls. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
1 - This is described in the manual as 'only on supporting DVDs'. Thus far I haven't found a single DVD that supports it.
2 - Precisely why one would want to shuffle the chapters in a film, I'm not entirely sure...