El Kabong

I have a few thousand dvds, around 80 Blurays & 50 HD-DVDs & I've never had so many problems with discs as I am with the HD-DVDs. and it's mostly all high profile big releases that are exclusive to the format. I have the Toshiba A2 updated to 1.5 & have had problems yesterday with Good Shepherd getting the scrambled audio, followed by complete freeze up where I have to unplug the player. And now I'm watching Children Of Men & it's doing the exact same thing. And both started doing it with about 30 minutes left. I had the same problem with Hollywoodland from Netflix, but assumed it was a messed up Netflix disc. And every time I pause Miami Vice for a few minutes, the player also freezes & has to be unplugged. are these just bad discs (if so, I've gotten more bad Hds than all others combined over the last few years), a player problem, or what? I just love paying almost double the dvd price & having to hope I'll actually be able to watch the whole movie. These are all Universal releases also. They're the only idiots exclusive to HD-DVD & they're apparently the worst at actually making them. So I guess I need to contact Amazon & see if I can send Children Of Men back with Good Shepherd.

Ph8te

This has been discussed before and the titles you mention have been known to have problems. it seems there was a QC problem with those discs and that Universal i sending out replacements that should work. The only thing is that you dont know what stock Amazon has good or bad.......Universal has only started to have problems and since there has been no official statement we can only guess on the matter. Some people have used the boiling disc method to get the discs to work and some have used other various methods using water and soap.
The problem seems to be the discs as the problems are random as some people have no issues playing the discs at all. You are not alone in this but to generalize you statement that its JUST HD DVD is wrong IMO. People have had just as many issues with BR discs and DVDs. I can see this thread getting out of hand quickly though as the flames and fanboys on both sides come out.

El Kabong

Well for me, it IS just HD-DVDs that have been giving me problems. Dvds were probably 20/4,000, Blurays 0/80 & HD-DVDs 4/50. Not a great ratio. Seeing how they're all HD 30/DVD9 combos from Universal that have problems should I assume Smoking Aces will do the same tomorrow? And if Universal knows about it, why are they still putting out brand new releases with the same problem? Should I return the discs to them directly rather than Amazon?

ScottsDvds

I have over a hundred HD-DVDs and the only problems I've had was on my HD-A1 with Mission Impossible and The Sopranos Disc 2 freezing a couple times. I haven't had any problems with my HD-XA1, which I use now. I also have an X-BOX HD-DVD drive, but never use it, so I can't comment on that.

Ph8te

I would return them to Amazon if you want a quick turnaround Universal if you want the newest stock.....You can continue to return to amazon until you get a good copy and have a 1 day turnaround. Also, we are still dealing with a format that is still growing and have to expect that there will be "bumps" in the road as things are ironed out. I wasn't expecting perfection right away it would be nice but it isn't realistic. Believe me I know how frustrating it is, and you can assume what you will about upcoming titles, in the end I jsut take it as growing pains and will stick with it until it gets fixed.

fryinpan1

I have not read about any problems with Smoking Aces. It seems to play fine.

Mr. Cinema

The Matrix had playback issues on players when it was released on dvd. On BD, The Descent and Speed both had playback issues on certain players. Same for HD DVD. It's new technology. They've perfected dvd replication to where it is error free, but with these formats out for only a year, it may take a bit longer.

jackson walker

I have had zero problems with my Blu-rays.

Vipper II

Be careful about what you say - this isn't AVS.

stingermck

Smokin' Aces played fine for me the first time, and couldnt be read last night on the 2nd play. Found a thread at AVS with people having the same problem

darkside

I haven't bought any of those titles yet, but having dealt with playback nightmares with Universal's DVD-18s I feel you pain. Universal has never seemed to care about quality control.

bunnydojo

Putting 2 and 2 together, the problem appears to affect only HD DVD combo discs (at a rate of between 1/20 and 1/10). Call Universal, they'll send a mailer for you to return it in and send back a new disc. If you ordered from Amazon, you can get a refund or return easily as well. It's one of the dangers of a new format, but a "regular" HD DVD vs a "regular" Blu-Ray will show you that they're pretty much the same as far as playback issues go. Look for the Blood Diamond in a couple of months to see which is superior content-wise.

Josh Z

Anyone who followed their DVD releases will remember that Universal also had a ton of problems getting dual-sided DVD-18 discs to work properly. The Casino SE, for example, was widely reported to have issues in many brands of DVD player.

I've tried washing and yes even boiling my copy of Children of Men, to no avail. It will only load in my XA2 intermittently with no rhyme or reason, and the disc has never played through Chapter 14 without freezing and giving me an error message. The Good Shepherd refuses to load at all.

El Kabong

So, I can't call Universal idiots for not being able to properly manufacture a format that they alone are keeping afloat? Since I've been a member here 7 years longer than you, I think I'll ignore your sage advice. And as my join date shows, I've been around since the beginning of dvd as well & remember the problems with The Matrix, etc. But then there were around 50 different players they had to deal with, while there are only about 8 HD players right now. Plus those were incompatability problems & these are bad disc manufacturing problems. And those problems were few & far between. It's pretty bad when I have the same problem with 2 brand new movies in a row. And from what the other guy said, Smoking Aces may make it 3. The dvd problems (Matrix, Jurassic Park, Meaning Of Life, Back To The Future) were all scattered by a few years, whereas it seems every week Universal has a new release combo, there's a problem. maybe they should postpone their releases instead of selling defective discs.

DVDKrayzie

If you email amazon they will overnight you the discs for free (it's what I did). After doing that twice I decided to try the boiling trick. I got a pan, filled it with water, heated it on the stove then dropped the disc in for about 10 seconds. They all play fine now and amazon didnt even ask for the discs back.

PerryD

I'm another person having trouble with many HD-DVDs. Some are definitely related to my player (HD-A1) where almost every movie will stutter a few times during the movie. Some appear to be disc related like when Children of Men hung my player near the end of the movie (I had to flip over to the SD-DVD side to finish the movie). It's really frustrating especially when I'm watching with friends and/or family. I haven't had any problems with Blu-Ray once I disabled the network connection. I would love an easy fix for my HD-DVD problems.

El Kabong

I had to switch to the SD side to watch the end of Children Of Men too. I forgot to do it for Shepherd though. And both movies conveniantly started to have problems right at good parts too. If I boil the discs, will it be noticeable? I'd hate for it not to work, then have Amazon or Universal say they won't take them back because they were cooked.

Supermallet

A. It's a new format, with more complexities than DVD. Children of Men works 100% fine on my HD-A1, so maybe you should complain to Toshiba about the HD-A2.

B. Warner Bros, Paramount, and The Weinstein company are all releasing on HD DVD.

Longevity doesn't give you the right to say whatever you want. Look at digitalfreak.

2 discs does not make an epidemic. And again, one of those problem discs works perfectly on my A1, and I got it on the day of release. As others have mentioned, BD and DVD had problems with a couple of discs, too, so stop singling out HD DVD.

bee_01

I own a Toshiba HD-A1 and a PS3. I've stopped buying HD DVD's because of random skips and pauses, and use the HD-A1 exclusively for upconversion of DVDs now. I'll revisit HD DVD again once they figure out how to make working players/discs.

JackBurton

I have never had any hd dvd playback problems whatsoever with my 360 add-on, including all of the titles mentioned.

Adam Tyner

It's a manufacturing problem. Different runs of the same disc can have certain variances, and different players of the same model can similarly vary.

The original post did sound like an attack on Universal's incompetence for being the largest studio to exclusively support HD DVD (they're not the only HD DVD exclusive studio, though), even if that wasn't exactly what was intended.

El Kabong

supermallet, you must have gotten lucky because with the number of people having the same problems & Universal knowing of the problem, I don't think it's just this player. And it was more than 2. It's at least 4 or 5, and possibly every HD30/DVD9 combo. And those other companies haven't been making faulty discs, so what's your point? And isn't this a forum for discussion & opinions? I can't voice my displeasure at Universal for making ALL of the problem discs? When UNIVERSAL misframed one scene of Back To The Future everyone wanted their heads, and this is worse. Every website had info for returning BTTF & Meaning Of Life, but I haven't seen any official acknowledgement of this at all- probably to avoid bad press for a new format. I didn't have any problems with my 360 add-on either, but I traded it in before any of these came out. I know some people had problems with the 360 & Children Of Men.

lizard

With the A1 one can just hold down the power button for eight seconds to force a shutdown, same as with most PCs. No need to unplug it. I would guess that the A2 will work the same way.

applesandrice

I have yet to come across a single disc which my A1 can't play. Having said that, maybe some of you folks with defective discs could ship them to me for, uhm . . . verification.

darkside

When many of us started reporting the errors on Universal's DVD-18s a couple of years back we got negative feedback as well. You would have many people reporting problems with a certain disc, but one guy would proclaim his disc played perfectly so the rest of us must be insane. It is sad when you pay such a premium for HD DVD combos that Universal can't be bothered to manufacture them correctly. Also its tough because the errors may not always pop up in exactly the same place so its hard to pinpoint a good disc quickly.

It is frustrating and with my bad experience with DVD-18s it was definitely something I was concerned with on dual sided, dual layered HD discs. That fact it is mostly the Universal discs causing the problems really is no shock.

I would send back the bad discs and keep sending them back until you get ones that work properly.