On the article itself: indeed sometimes I enjoyed the directors commentaries as much as the films or shows themselves. In particular Requiem for a Dream, where the director's commentary adds a lot of context.
As I mentioned, I have accumulated several DVD players over the years (different brands, even a blue ray), and all of them exhibit this characteristic.
The only commentary I've enjoyed are the Eddie Mueller ones commenting on film noir. I'll watch the movie, then re-watch it with Eddie. Good stuff!
With streaming, on the other hand, I have intermittent hangs and stuttering every few weeks, and navigating the video is worse than with physical discs (no chapter stops, skipping forward/backwards often takes longer to resync/rebuffer the stream), switching subtitles and audio language takes more steps, and other inconveniences.