Of the 100+ DVD titles I've bought in the past year or so, only one had been defective and needed replacement. But, I bought 4 new releases on Tuesday (1/6/04), and 3 of the 4 were defective!

I sat down to watch "Postman Always Rings Twice" (WB, 1946) last night and the video would freeze, pixilate, and then either jump ahead to later in the scene or jump back to the menu. No visible surface defects or damage, but defective nonetheless. Disappointed that I didn't get to watch it when I planned to, and I'll be returning it to the retailer for a replacement.

Also bought "Frasier S2" (Paramount), "Cheers S2" (Paramount) and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (WB, 1932) on the same day. Took the shrinkwrap off, and both the "Frasier S2" and the "Cheers S2" sets had disks that had surface gouges on the playable area near the center hole (Disk 1 of Frasier and Disk 3 of Cheers). Those are going back for replacements, too.

Sampled the Dr. J and Mr. H disk and it seemed okay, though didn't watch through the whole disk yet (plus it's two-sided).

Now that companies are outputting more DVDs, are they cutting back on quality??

I bought the 2-disc "Alien" and "Aliens" at Best Buy. Brought them home and, after inspecting them, each film's Disc 1 had tiny surface scratches that criss-crossed each other all over. I haven't watched either film yet, but I'm not taking any chances, especially since I've been reading about how many people are having problems with the "Alien" films and all the skipping. Pain in the ass.

I exchanged the defective "Postman Always Rings Twice" today for a new copy, and this one has the SAME problem! Is anyone else experiencing similar problems with this new release?

I may try to exchange it at a different location to see if getting from a different batch will be increase my chances of a non-defective disk.

Dang! That's not good.

Perhaps I should wait to get this anticipated classic until it's verified this is just an isolated difficulty.

gcbma ..... It's skipping and "acting up" in the EXACT same places as the previous defective disc?? (Weird if so.....especially if the disc surface is clean with no visible scratches/marks.)

What section of the movie is this happening at? Picked up the movie the other day, will check it out to see if I have the same problem

welcome to the party, pal. this has been going on for a few years.
also, you dont mention what players you are using. there are issues with certian models of players and certian discs. it could be possible. try on 2 or 3 players, dvd-rom, x-box...whatever. confirm the problem on as many players as possible.

sorry if you have already done this.

thanks for the heads-up, though. I'm about ready to pick this up.

Had no problems whatsoever with the movie or the extras on my rather old Sony DVP S7000.

The symptoms on the two different disks are identical, but the placements of the freezes/pixilations/skips/jumps are different in this disk than on the first. The surface of the disk is pristine, so it's not a scratch or dust issue.

On the first disk I tried, the problem was everywhere: within the first minute or two of the introduction and scene 18 of the main feature were the two areas that I repeated the experiments on (i.e., turning off the DVD player to possibly clear out any buffers, etc.). On this second disk, the freeze/pixilation/skip/jump is most pronounced in the original movie trailer, but there is some towards the end of Richard Jewels introduction.

I'll try it on another machine later if I get the opportunity.

As for the type of machine I'm using, the defects are showng up on an Onkyo DVD player less than a year old.

I also picked this movie up, but haven't checked out the disc yet so don't know if it is a widespread event. Will try to tomorrow.

I'm on my third disk today, and my fingers are crossed. Curious if this problem was only on a certain batch of disks or if others elsewhere are experiencing any problems with it.

No problems with my disc of this film.

Finally got around to watching it and no problems here.

Argh! This third disk doesn't play either! "The Postman Rings Twice" DVD must either be incompatible with Onkyo DVD players or the small batch that got sent to my local Tower Records are all defective. I don't have problems playing any of the other 125+ DVDs I have. So frustrating. Not sure what my options are at this point. I'll have to see what Tower says tomorrow.

I think it is your player. From my own experience I found some players will not play a certain disc, but another will play it flawlessly. That's one reason I find it essential to own several different brands of DVD players. In case I run into a situation like you mention I simply try a different DVD player. Most of the time it will work with one of them.