Djangoman

Have you ever experienced this: you found some of your DVDs which were OK the 1st time you played them, but suddenly after quite some time you decided to revisit them...

You found that either the disc skipped, or even can't play at all? Remember that these discs were played maybe only once or twice then kept safely in your cabinet / drawer ...

If you have, how do you restore / fix it?

Giles

bought the French import of Peter Greenaway shorts awhile back only to discover just recently that the disc that has his feature length film: The Falls unplayable on my player - now I'm stuck with a defective disc -

Forum Troll

The only defective I ever had was my "The Man With The Golden Gun" DVD. It freezes at the layer switch on some players and DVD-ROM drives. But it's the original pressing and is OOP, so I never replaced it.

ignition

Over 800 DVDs and 6 years collecting... not a single defective DVD.

StuddThunders

My "Wild Things" DVD freezes when you try to select a chapter.

So now you know what I was trying to do.

gutwrencher

It's delamination(dvd rot) some of the time. It's happened less and less though, as far as my library is concerned. A few were due to poor manufacturing. It's not much of an issue any longer.

Maybe it's your player.

And it would help to list the title(s) you are talking about.

Mr. Cinema

not yet.

Djangoman

If it's my player, but I just watched some movies, no problem at all.

DVD rot? Is this kind of problem sticks its ugly nose only after several playback? Because when I played the disc 1st time when I bought it some times ago, it plays just fine from beginnign to end, incl. the extra features. It's Mask of Zorro R3. Physically I see no scratch, smudge, or crack at all.

Other disc that experienced similar probelm is my R1 Bridge at Remagen. It played just fine when I bought it, I even played it twice-3 times during 1 year, but recently when I revisit it, I found in certain minutes it skipped. Physically, suddenly I saw some dents on the disc surface.

Any suggestion how to fix the problem? I'm not in US - if I have to replace I have to import. Mask of Zorro currently only availabel in full frame in my country...

Al Padrino

I've only had issues with flippers. The Universal Casino SE was the most recent burn. My Dracula Legacy disc freezes up near the end of the spanish version, too. Outside of that, the only problem I've had with a disc that proved to be universal (no pun intended) was the Superman movie.

Over the years, I've had discs that would freeze up, but worked on other players or would be fine if I took it out and put it back in again. Lately, I've been getting the latter problem a lot, but I attribute it more to me still having my first DVD player from 2000 than anything else.

Brian Shannon

I don't have that many but I have been buying sine 1998 and have never had a defective disc.

Leechboy

My Devil's Advocate I bought in 99 no longer plays past the layer change.

Djangoman

Here's more info I recently got. As I told you, my R3 Mask of Zorro SE played just fine when I bought it. Then after quite some time when I played it, the disc keep on skipping / jumping. My player is Pioneer 676A, possibly equivalent to 575A.

But then I tried to play this in an old Shinco portable DVD player 1810. Surprisingly It played along fine at the spots where my Pioneer skipped, but eventually in subsequent chapters it also display skipping, although not as frequent as Pioneer. But still, this shows my disc is definitely not all right / doesn't play smoothly.

Can anyone give idea what actually happen to my disc? How could it happen? AFAIK I only lent it once and the borrower didn't complain, and it was about 6 months ago approximately. Is it possible that a player may ruin my disc? But actually I wrote a thread questioning about it and majority here said it's impossible.

Is there any way to fix this disc?

The Shinco player is not region free so I can't try my Bridge at remagen disc there.

Dr. Calamari

My copy of Oldboy that I got from Amazon a few months ago (November 2005) seizes up at Chapter break 13, and will go no further. I've tried it on other machines, and the same problem occurs every time, so the disc is defective I've concluded. I haven't contacted Amazon about this because I threw away the return label when I opened the box they shipped it in, plus I've never had to return anything I got from them.

Anyone else have this or a similar problem?

Dazed

My Jurrasic Park - Lost World started to freeze near the layer change after a while.

rw2516

Only problems I had were early Anchor Bay discs. Frankenstein Created Woman wouldn't play at all. Special features side of Prehistoric Women wouldn't play. The very first issues of Dawn of the Dead and Halloween had a blank audio track as the default, only way to get the sound was to browse through the tracks with the remote till you landed on it.

John Sy

Defective disks: The Pianist, The Others, Godfather II, Scary Movie, Road Trip (but I can make it play by skipping through some of the stuff in front). There are probably others that I don't know about.

mookiemeister

It happened to me once before with my Princess Bride Special Edition DVD. First time, it played fine. After about a year later I wanted to watch the movie again, but the DVD wouldn't play anymore. I looked at the disc surface but couldn't find anything wrong. There are no scratches on it. So I just end up buying another copy.

mattx5

I bought my Batman Begins SE about a month ago and on the first playing, the first scene was locking up/skipping. I was set to return it, but decided to give it another shot and it played fine all the way through. I'm just crossing my fingers that next time I decide to watch it, it doesn't screw up on me, since my return period is finished.

rbbrbndsmlfnny

try boiling the discs.
usually, the very bottom thin layer does not press properly, which causes the skipping.
when you boil it, it just burns off the very bottom layer, but there are still a few other layers of protection.
i have heard many magazines and companies encourage it, and i swear by the technique.

Christi P

You might want to contact Amazon and ask about their return policy. Because of Christmas shopping, some things bought in Nov and Dec are returnable through Jan. 31.

When you sign into 'Your Account', there is a 'returns' button you can click on.

And you don't need the return label. You do need the shipping invoice that was inside the package, although I am not sure if it is required or not.

Djangoman

How to do this?

My Sweet NeoCon

Been collecting since 1998 and have never had a defective disc...of course I "thought" I had some DISC issues at first. My first players were a Phillips and then a Toshiba Nuon a few years later. Once I got rid of those hunk - a - junks and went Pioneer, not one freeze up, pixelation, etc.

My Phillips was criminal in one moment reading a disc then not. It usually happened with single layer dvds and not dual layered.

Toshiba did nothing but pixelate and have audio sync problems. I almost gave up on the media thanks to these two shitty brands until I decided to give Pioneer a shot.

TNAJason

I recently had a bad streak run with Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
1st disc,the disc art was over the side of the dvd,and on the actual playing part too.
2nd disc,the disc was scratched to hell
3rd disc,good lord a disc in a Widescreen case,on a dvd marked Widescreen,its FOOLScreen
4th disc,works perfectly.
I've had others but that was the most annoying and recent.

Nebiroth

LOL! Sorry, but no, this is just wrong.

DVD's simply aren't made that way. The outer layers are made of polycarbonate plastic, and to heat the disc up enough to "burn one off" would completely destroy the disc. The bottom layer is in fact the thickest of all. Sandwiched between the outer layers are the metallic data layer(s).

Boiling the disc most likely removes dirt that has become ingrained inside scratches. Once this is removed, the laser can then read the data layer - imperfectly, but well enough for DVD error correction to allow the disc to play properly.

You can try it - since if the disc won't play there's little to lose - but I very much doubt if boiling a disc is going to fix a disc in which the data layer has become unreadable. This is usually due to deterioration of that layer, most often by a manufacture error - either with an unforseen chemical reaction with something (the inks used to print the picture side of the disc maybe), or a physical problem that has allowed air to get to the metal layer, oxidising it.

The problem with the Anchor Bay discs mentioned above was down to a bad lacquer used to coat the data layer, which caused the metal to oxidise over a period of time to an (unreadable) dark bronze colour.

Djangoman

Oh OK - but still, how to boil a disc? Need step by step guidance. I'd rather take the risk than just being idle grumbling about the defective discs. They're old discs anyway.