I just moved and haven't had the chance to start watching my Buffy S5 set until recently. I just finished watching "The Replacement" on Disc 1 a few minutes ago and found a problem and was wondering if it was unique to my disc or if it was inherent to the transfer. Towards the last few minutes of the episode when Buffy starts to fight Toth at Xander's new apartment, Toth flips her. When she is coming down to the ground, I notice a quick flash and when I frame by frame it, I find that there is a flash frame of what looks to be an interlace problem. I see half the lines and then it is gone. Through this scene it happens 2 or 3 more times and then once during the last scene at Xander's basement apartment. Other than the annoying flashes, the disc does seems fine and keeps playing. I am watching it on a Malata 520 all region player, but I have not had even 1 problem before now watching R1 discs on it, including Angel S3 which I just finished. If it is just my copy, I am going to call Fox and try and get a replacement disc, so any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I didn't have any problem with my Buffy Season 5 discs. But I do have problem with my Buffy Season 3 disc 5. It's a problem around 31 minute mark in the episode called 'Earshot'. I think it's around layer change so maybe my Onkyo DVD player had some problem with it. It plays fine on my Sony DVD player.

Sorry that I couldn't help you with your problem.

It seems that it might have been an isolated incident. I put it into a R1 player and it didn't seem to have the problem, so then I retried it in my all region player. It didn't seem to do it that time. So I guess I will just have to keep an eye on it and see if any other problems develop. Thanks for reading.

It sounds like it's a problem with the transfer, and not your disc.

For whatever reason, the Buffy DVDs aren't properly flagged, or something, and it results in those combing problems. On my discs/player/television, it's particularly bad in some episodes -- esp. when I pause on certain frames. It looks like there are two frames that are being combined into one, and they flicker back and forth.

What you're seeing is called a combing artifact. It's a result of the interlaced signal stored on the DVD not being properly deinterlaced by the DVD player. Some DVD players are better at this than others, and in fact the same DVD player may pick up the proper 3:2 cadence if you try it again even if it doesn't get it right every time.

I assume you're watching this on a progressive scan TV, but even if not the same problem will occur on the Malata. The Malata has a weird design where it deinterlaces the signal every time and then reinterlaces it if you don't have a progressive scan TV. There's really no need to do that. A normal DVD player will just output the interlaced signal as it appears on the disc.