Anybody here know anything about DVD's and DVD players?

[skygazer]

Okay, so I'm old fashioned - I still miss newsreels. But seriously, I'm not real impressed with DVD's. They're a pain in the butt to navigate and I keep having problems with them not playing properly.

A friend gave us his old player but even though we cleaned it and we cleaned every DVD we put in it, they would almost always freeze up and refuse to play about halfway through the movie. Very annoying.

So we got a Playstation 2, figuring we could use it to both watch movies and play games. It's worked fine for a while but last night, I began acting up - the picture would start stuttering and then it just froze, eventually stopping and giving the message, "unable to read disc."

So I took the disc out, cleaned it, cleaned the machine with a cleaner disc that was recommended to me at Radio Shack - still no luck.

Does this happen to everyone or am I just phenomenally unlucky with these things? Is there something I'm doing wrong? Something I'm not doing that I should?

Video I could work - help me out here, please.

[cleofus1]

1. i remember years ago

how DVDs were touted at the next best thing...how much better they would be that tape...ha!...as far as I'm concerned i will never go back...only because of the amount of space i save collecting disc...but i degress....dvd's are very hinky...and so are the damn DVD players...yes u are probably unlucky re: tapes and players...just be advised...the slightest defect on the disk can cause problems....from a thumbprint to the slightest scratch...and DVD players can be very delicate things...they are not meant to be moved around...and the laser can be misaligned and or the lens can become dirty...


over the past 7 years I've bought 7 DVD players...the ones that have lasted the longest were the newest and cheapest ones one Toshiba and one sony...both under one hundred dollars...

gofigure...

[RoyGBiv]

2. Question ...

You mention DVDs, but what kind of DVDs are you putting in there? IOW, are these DVDs you purchased, made, or rented?

One negative aspect of a DVD is that it is that the very thing that makes them superior to a tape is also what makes them somewhat fragile. If one is scratched or otherwise damaged, the DVD player may be unable to read it. This is a big problem with rentals. People who rent the things either don't give a crap or aren't aware the way they handle the discs can damage them. The convenience store chain for which I worked at one point offered DVD rentals. Damage was a huge problem. The average shelf life of a popular DVD was about a month, or ten rentals. If that DVD was rented by one of our customers who seemed to go out of his way to damage it, the disc was dead immediately upon return.

IOW, scratches. You must handle a DVD by the edges. Even if you clean the DVD itself, the scratches will not be removed, no matter what claims the cleaning product makes. You can't "erase" physical damage. What's worse is that this physical damage to a disc can actually damage your player depending on its type, and it's not a cleaning issue. Again, it's a physical damage issue.

I don't know if that's the problem you're experiencing, but your description fits perfectly the problems I have with rentals or DVDs that have been handled by someone who doesn't take care with them. (I recently loaned an out-of-print movie to a co-worker that was immaculate when I gave it to him, and when he returned it, it looked like he'd taken sandpaper to the surface. It's a dead disc now, and I'm pissed, but I digress.)

[dhuss]

3. I have one thing

The first about the old player sounds like it can't read dual-layer disc's (which most all are now). there's nothing you can really do about this besides buy single-layer disc's or a new player.

I'm not sure what's up with the playstation, without knowing more info it'd be hard to tell.

D.H.