Update List with information from #59 to #75...

Manzana,

I have replied to your Hotmail e-mail, however when I attempt to send a PM here I get this error:

Paul Arnette, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

1. Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
2. If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation.

Any ideas?

Thanks.
--
Paul

I have to add my frustration with an Xmas present - Knight Rider Season 2 definitely needs to be in bold. I'm having trouble playing the middle episodes on both sides of Discs 2 & 3. I haven't contacted Universal yet, but am eager to find out the best way to insure a replacement copy without defects.

The defect is primary freezing, pixelation, skipping, and an error message "This DVD may be dirty or scratched..." when they are - from the outside anyway - without flaw.

Hngu che'shi.

I hear you. Out of curiosity, what are you switching your time and money to? Books?

I sympathise, but to be fair most of those aren't inherent problems with DVD - they're nearly all down to the way the things are being made in one way or another. Everything from poor authoring, use of bad quality masters, bad disc manufacturing, shoddy disc holders and rotten packaging.

I have a lot of DVD's and am very happy with nearly all of them.

Have to say though, that quite a few are second tries, the first ones being scratched or damaged, and a few are no longer in the awful packaging they came in (like you say, grip-of-death spindles etc).

We shouldn't have to do this. Would people be happy with the car industry if the brakes only sort of worked, or if the paint fell off when it rained, or turning the wheel sometimes made the thing swerve the wrong way?

I think not!

If you get the right kind of dvd player that can handle these "faulty" discs, then there is no problems or hassle. They're out there. I'm sure there are plenty of dvd players that will play most discs flawlessly. I've luckily not encountered any playback problems. So I still consider dvds to be great to own and watch.

Mr. Cinema,

What kind of DVD player do you have? I have a Pioneer DV-59AVi, no slouch, but it does seem to be more sensitive than lower priced players. However, when it doesn't have to playback crappy discs the picture is awesome.

It's an Onkyo DV-CP702 6-disc changer. Circuit City has it.

I've had it for 14 months and it has never messed up. Handles all the dvd-18's with no problems whatsoever.

I have a Pioneer DV-563A, which looks much better than other players I have used on my RPTV. But like Paul says, once in a while it will have a problem with a disc that my cheaper players won't have a problem playing. But even those occurrences are rare-not counting Uni's DVD-18's.

I do agree that cd manufacturers seem to do alot better job producing their product. I've encountered maybe 1 scratched disc when buying cds, but many when it comes to dvd. Though the last couple of months, I've been lucky to not have gotten any with scratches.

Well DVD's are a lot more complex than CD's, and more difficult to manufacture.

It might be luck that you've never had a problem playing DVD-18's on that player. I've seen a lot of posts from folks who have said "I've got lots of Uni DVD-18's and my player has played them fine", only to post a while later they've been hit with an unplayable disc.

I really don't think this is a player issue, though probably some players do handle discs with high error rates better than others.Cheaper players will often go on regardless, while expensive ones throw up their arms in horror and surrender!

I don't think I've ever had a disc my trusty (old!) Pioneer 717 won't play, but I haven't got any Uni DVD-18's yet.

True, so why do the studios even bother with a DVD-18? I don't get this.

Also, it shouldn't hard to manufacture spindles that don't have the grip of death. Looney Tunes Vol. 2, Akira tin, etc. Makes me wish that DVDs just came in simple jewel cases like CDs.

I have a theory on this, and, no, it is not the 'kick back' theory I read somewhere before. Why use DVD-18s? Shelf-space. That is the only logical thing I can think of if, as some people say, producing two DVD-9s is less expensive than one DVD-18. Do not discount the importance of shelf-space to studios. If it matters a lot to the Best Buys of the world, you can bet it matters to Universal. Less shelf-space, more product.

Anyway, that's just my theory...

If we're just talking about movie releases and not TV, then a thin double amaray case should end the shelf space talk.

Most 2-disc dvd sets take up the exact same amount of shelf space as a 1-disc dvd.

Maybe the design of the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray cases are the result of the studios wanting more shelf space.

I think if it was only about minimizing shelf space, Universal would have started using double thinpaks instead of continuing with their crappy DVD-18s.

As I (and Paul) can attest to, different copies of the same DVD-18 can have very different error rates. One consistency I've found is that Nero CD-DVD Speed quality scans show which discs are good, bad, or borderline. I've seen many Universal DVD-18s get error spikes (usually near the layer changes) into what is bordering on "bad", so my opinion is a fair number of DVD-18s are "borderline". So the ability of the DVD player to handle the discs is the primary difference whether a borderline disc plays OK or not. I know DVD-ROM drives slow down and keep retrying when they encounter errors, but some DVD players may not. Another big factor is alignment. A brand new aligned player will do better than one someone has used for years and is probably drifting out of alignment.

There are several things we'll probably never know (such as why Universal does this)... I wonder if they error check these DVD-18s and they just barely make specs or if the bad ones we've been seeing were never tested?

Also, I've never yet found any good web sites on DVD-18 manufacturing. I've found some general web sites with pictures of the layers, but nothing as detailed as I'd like of each step along the assembly line. Does anyone know of any good resources?

In addition, I've never found a secret "decoder ring" of how to tell which DVD plant made a disc by looking at its inner hub. I know this is possible (from the laserdisc days), but it seems this information is being tightly guarded for some reason in the case of DVDs whereas it seemed freely available for LDs. Has anyone ever found a DVD mint mark site? I'd love to be able to identify specific plants rather than guess or rely on country of origin stickers on the back.

Can someone post more information about the Nero CD-DVD Speed quality scanner/software thing? Whatever it is, it sounds like just the thing I need. Sometimes, I put off watching a particular movie for some time after buying it. I guess I should just learn to buy when I'm in the mood for a particular movie, but as consumers we shouldn't have to worry about quality control and that kind of defeats the "collecting" aspect of it anyway. Thanks.

http://www.cdspeed2000.com

It's a free program. But you need a DVD-ROM/recorder that supports PI/PIF scanning if you want to check the error rate on a disc.

And if you want to learn how to use it, start here: http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=96285

Club CD Freaks is the best resource for error scanning info. If error scanning is your #1 priority you'll probably need to buy a BenQ DW1655 for about $50, but you can read the various threads if you want for varying opinions on other drives.

I had an update for this thread. Columbo Season 3 should definitely be bolded. I went through a half dozen sets before giving up and all had freeze ups. The Mrs. Columbo bonus episode is the worst, but the freeze ups also happened randomly in other episodes.

However, Columbo Season 1 and 2 were single sided DVD-9s and probably shouldn't be on the list unless Universal has changed this with later printings.

I also discovered last night that my problem disc of the Bela Lugosi Collection did not freeze up in my new Denon 2910. It had previously not worked properly during The Raven in my Sony players. I am going to check Orgazmo today and see if the Denon can get past the bad spot on that one as well. I got rid of all of my other problem discs so I don't have any other ones to test.

darkside,

Thanks for the contribution. I will make the changes noted.

Sheesh, I must be lucky but I've never had a problem with my DVD-18 discs.

In your DVD-18s list I did not see the Rockford Files: Season One bolded; I'm having trouble with disc 3 [freezing].

I found your post specifically because I'm trying to learn what recourse we consumers have to commercial discs we buy that don't work; now I'm going to back-track on this thread to learn more.

JB

Picked up Quincy Seasons 1&2 (its one set with both seasons on 3 discs) and Abbott and Costello Volume 4 from the Sam Goody clearance this weekend. Both sets are DVD-18s or DVD14s.

I watched A&C on my Sony 725p and I got skipping midway through A&C Meet Mr Hyde. I tried it in my Denon and got no skipping at all. I ended up watching the whole A&C set on my Denon and the first disc of Quincy with no skips so some players (others have mentioned Panasonic) can definitely handle these discs without skipping or freezing.

The weirdest thing is the second disc of the A&C set is a double sided disc, but has no data at all on the second side. They fit everything on side one. Talk about a waste. They could have easily made it a DVD 9 and at least saved one possible bad disc for people to worry about.

Bolded Rockford Files and added Quincy.

I've seen this on the Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Epic Series set as well. Truly odd, but I've given up trying to figure Universal out.