Tarnower

Today I was at Best Buy and took advantage of a good deal. If you purchase a selected DVD at $14.99, then you got a free one from another selected group. Well, I bought John Carpenter's masterful spook fest "The Fog," and was able to get the great Spanish coming-of-age road movie "Y Tu Mama Tambien" (unrated version) for free. Anyways, after I got home and opened "The Fog," I noticed some sort of white piece of gummy material on the disc surface. I carefully tried to remove it but the material left a streak behind. I bought a disc repair kit called Skip Doctor a while ago, and finally broke it out to use it. Well, after I followed the instructions exactly, the disc came out looking much worse than before I put it in the machine. It got many more tiny hairline scratches and patchy, smudgy areas. My impression of the Skip Doctor is that it may work well on discs that are in very bad condition, but if the problem is minor, it doesn't seem to help; actually made the disc look much worse. After all that, I am planning on just returning the disc tomorrow and exchange for another. Anyone else not real impressed with Skip Doctor?

ernestrp

Yep, that is what Skip Doctor does. Did you try the disc to see if it played okay first after removing the gunk? Good luck on returning it. Probably should have returned before doing anything to it and left the gunk that was on there on it.

Tarantino

I love mine! I use it mostly for CD's though.

digitalmanAZ

I've saved at least a dozen CD's and thankfully haven't had to save a DVD, yet.

Wet sanding a DVD to remove some gummy material is a bit extreme. Skip/CD/DVD Doctor is best for medium to deep scratches on the disc. Even after using the supplied buffing cloth, the disc will appear foggy from the micro-scratches. It may look worse than a brand new disc, but it will play again.

Tarnower

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

garmonbozia

Any of these scratch fixing kits are NOT meant for cosmetic purposes. They WILL NOT make the disc look better.
They are good at getting a disc that skips or won't play properly because of scratches to play again. Only use it for those purposes.

tonymontana313

I was gonna say exactly that. For minor scratches that do not affect the playing on the disc, DO NOT use the skip doctor. It will make it look worse. I have only used it on one dvd and that was only because it was skipping too much and I refuse to buy Pitch Black again. It is great for cds though. It definetely prolongs the life of a cd that has been scratched to death.

Steve Phillips

Ask Fry's. They take returned DVDs, use the skip doctor on them and re-shrink wrap them for resale.

danol

What you are seeing is a radial design which will not affect the way the disc plays, you'll see these lines made my felt and water. If you ever looked at the wheel you seen felt 360° and contrary to what the booklet said, you used plain water to keep the disc wet, before the polishing wheel goes all the way around.


I have had one for about 4 years, no problems, if you don't want to use the SkipDoctor that's your call. I and others have used hot water and Ivory Snow liquid to heat and cleanse the disc.

Jeeden

I like my skip doctor and feel it has really paid for itself with all the Previewed DVD's I buy.

A couple of notes:

for minor smudges or dust I just use the cleaning spray and the soft buffing cloth to clean the disc, no need to polish it.

for major scratches, when you do use the polisher it will make the marks on the disc, but some of them should buff out when you use the felt pad. Also, it does say in the directions that the disc will have those marks on it after you polish it, but it will not affect the play of the disc and you should only be able to see those marks when you get the glare right. If you look at the DVD "straight on" as a DVD laser would, you should not be able to see them much..if at all.

Bill Geiger

Yeah, the skip doctor does leave the little lines.. which I don't really care for but, once I buff it enough, it does get somewhat lighter but the lines still remain. However, the whole point is to get your discs working properly. I have no regrets and no one has said anything regarding any of my discs that I had cleaned. Don't waste your money on the spray bottle. Just drop some water droplets on the disc..works the same. Of course, I usually use the filtered water.

I lost my buffing cloth as well as that little pad that just straches the dvd again anyway. Take one of those cloths that you might use to dry your car with. Works perfectly. I get them at the dollar store. Bet you can't guess how much I pay!!!

dhm

Personally I would never use a Hot water on a DVD. The last thing you need is for the hot water to loosen the adhevise holding the layers together and have water seep in there.
Now thats what i call DVD ROT.

DVDave

Does anyone know where the more expensive disk resurfacers can be found? I'm under the impression that they actually refinish the scratched disk to a "new" surface. Similar to a tire retread I reckon. I'd like to get one of these personally.

Skywa|ker

Well, for me it absolutely saved my copy of Disney's 'Dinosaur'. My two-year-old son decided to see what would happen if he rubbed the disc across our hardwood floor... the result was that it was so deeply/badly scratched, my DVD player wouldn't even attempt to recognize it as DVD media.

It took a while; probably three to four hours of work, but the disc now plays fine, with no skipping or loss.

bralph

Yeah, Skip Doctor fixed my Blockbuster PPV copy of Frailty. It was well after the return period when I watched it, and it completely stopped in the middle of the movie. Ran it through Skip Doctor and it played flawlessly thereafter.