Well, I've discovered something that you might want to try.

I had a few double sided discs that played okay when I first got them but on viewing them recently, I was getting picture breakup (e.g. The Butterfly Effect). Other discs had no such problems.

So I tried one of those DVD Lens Cleaners. You know the ones - which have the little microfibre brushes coming off the disc - and now the discs play perfectly!

As I understand it, double sided discs can suffer more from crosstalk and so forth between the layers (because there is more of them), so I suspect that DVD-14s and DVD-18s require more 'work' on the part of the laser to read the disc. Ergo, a little bit of dirt on the lens makes read errors far more likely on these discs than the more conventional single-sided discs.

Whatever the case, the Lens Cleaners are cheap to buy so it's worth trying.

Thanks for the info. I have one of those for my CD player. I'll try it out on my DVD players, if need be.

Thanks for the tip. I seem to recall that someone having problems with the Universal Lugosi disc managed to get it to work after cleaning both the disc and the player.