Starting to hate DVDs

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2002-08-10 06:03pm

So I bought Lord of the Rings. Turns out, the first disc is scratched and smudged fresh out of the box. I didn't think much of it at the time, until the damned thing skipped and garbled no less than three times during the first hour-and-a-half alone (I was so disgusted after that I didn't bother watching the rest).

Has anyone else had similar experiences?

Mr. B · Post by **Mr. B** » 2002-08-10 06:07pm

Only with rented DVDs. But still beter than those horrible VHS tapes.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2002-08-10 06:14pm

Mr. B wrote:Only with rented DVDs. But still beter than those horrible VHS tapes.

Yeah, I don't rent DVDs, just VHS. The problem is that they're starting to phase out VHS at the major video rental stores. Meaning, you either have to endure these piece-of-shit rental DVDs or actually buy the potentially piece-of-shit, pre-scratched DVD any time you want to see some movie that you didn't see during its theatrical release because it was so poorly reviewed that you decided to "wait for the video."

Okay, sure, they have superior picture and sound quality, but who gives a shit unless they actually work?

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2002-08-10 06:14pm

I have not had a DVD bad out of the box, however, my computer DVD player picks one spot on almost every DVD I own, to crash. They play fine on my Tv which has a built in DVD player.

I have gotten a CD ROM bad right out of the box. Ive seen discs that are unreadable as is they were never burned in the first place.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2002-08-10 06:14pm

You should be able to return it if it was damaged when new.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2002-08-10 06:17pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:You should be able to return it if it was damaged when new.

Unfortunately, Best Buy doesn't let you return opened DVDs. So how in the hell are you supposed to know it's scratched unless you open it first???

Next of Kin · Post by **Next of Kin** » 2002-08-10 06:36pm

Bring the DVD back to the store. The fact that it was scratched before it was opened should get you a refund or at the very least a store credit. Be nice about it at first. They're more likely to help a patient customer

than a rude, obnoxious jerk

.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2002-08-10 06:47pm

Next of Kin wrote:Bring the DVD back to the store. The fact that it was scratched before it was opened should get you a refund or at the very least a store credit. Be nice about it at first. They're more likely to help a patient customer than a rude, obnoxious jerk .

I've found that you can attract more flies with a steaming pile of shit than you can with honey.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2002-08-10 06:50pm

Acutal to best honset depending on the type of person at the service desk you get, Phyiscal Violence can produce the best results
Rather threats of that is. One of the few times I needed something right away(And could not wait the 3 days to get it cheap with my old reseller connections) I bought a 8GB Hard-Drive from the Local Best buy came home poped it open found there where bent and broken pins in the back and no jumper(Though they are supposed to ship with them) Normaly I could just soder some new jumpers in(Very hard to do trust me) but then I did not have the time

Long story short the guy behind the counter was either still in or just out of high-school and aparently still conditioned by the idiot side of his school not to stand up for himself, well I took advantage of the situation and not only got the replacment I got a ten doller store credit because of the fact it was on sale the week before(He not quite reading the date on my recipte right apprently as it was the same day, infact just three hours later)

Next of Kin · Post by **Next of Kin** » 2002-08-10 07:00pm

8 gig hard drive?!?. I take it that this purchase was a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away?

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2002-08-10 07:32pm

Fifteen months to be precice

Tsyroc · Post by **Tsyroc** » 2002-08-11 12:12am

Darth Jehovah wrote:
Sea Skimmer wrote:You should be able to return it if it was damaged when new.
Unfortunately, Best Buy doesn't let you return opened DVDs. So how in the hell are you supposed to know it's scratched unless you open it first???

I've returned defective DVDs to Best Buy before. They don't appear to have any problem with you exchanging it for another copy. I don't know if they will give you a straight refund for opened DVDs though.

Now you want to talk a pain in the ass return something to Amazon.com. Sure they'll pay for shipping but then they charge you a $7 "restocking fee" for opened items. Of course it's opened, that's how I found out it was defective.

If you ask me, that kind of annoyance is why I think Best Buy's buy it online return it to the store thing is going to end up doing well.

Tsyroc · Post by **Tsyroc** » 2002-08-11 12:22am

I've had my own share of problems with DVDs. I have an older Panasonic DVD player and it tends to be a little bit twitchy with DVDs that aren't almost perfect.
In fact it won't play my STII TWOK DVD (although it plays on my computer DVD Rom just fine) but it will play the special features DVD.

Usually my DVD player does fine but it does notice minor glitches that my computer's DVD Rom and my parent's DVD players don't. In particular I've had
lots of problems with the two Buffy the Vampire Slayer boxed sets, so much so that it makes me a bit warry of boxed sets. It's kind of tough to run through 22 hours (or more) of video to check for defects before 30 days is up. It really sucks if you watch most of the DVDs then have to return the set because of one defective disk and then have to start over watching them all again. It kind of takes the enjoyment out of a new purchase.

On one boxed set I ended up using two sets to make one that would work for me and then returned the screwed up one.

Post by **Dalton** » 2002-08-12 04:36am

TrailerParkJawa wrote:I have not had a DVD bad out of the box, however, my computer DVD player picks one spot on almost every DVD I own, to crash. They play fine on my Tv which has a built in DVD player.

I had a similar problem until I realized that I had a timer application running in the background, in this case NSNotify, which checked email for me. The player did not like that.

Graeme Dice · Post by **Graeme Dice** » 2002-08-12 10:28am

Dalton wrote:I had a similar problem until I realized that I had a timer application running in the background, in this case NSNotify, which checked email for me. The player did not like that.

Something is so seriously wrong with my DVD drive that it locks up at exactly the same frame on certain DVDs so badly that a hard reboot is necessary. It's not my machine either, because it also locks up my friends G4 with OS X 10.1 so that he has to hard reboot.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-08-12 12:20pm

Before you get all pissed off at the DVD, try it in a good quality player, and then try to decide whether you should be pissed at the DVD or your player.

A good quality player will often track seamlessly through "unrecoverable" problems on a shitty DVD player. Panasonic and Phillips players are infamous for shitty tracking. Similarly, cheapo DVD-ROM drives (like Samsung) are barely worth the plastic they're made from, and will skip or lock up on discs with even the most minor imperfection.

I personally swear by Pioneer (both in the computer and in the stereo system). I've seen discs that lock up unrecoverably on Panasonic set-top boxes and Samsung DVD-ROM drives but play through perfectly on my Pioneers.

Tsyroc · Post by **Tsyroc** » 2002-08-12 01:13pm

Darth Wong wrote:Before you get all pissed off at the DVD, try it in a good quality player, and then try to decide whether you should be pissed at the DVD or your player.

A good quality player will often track seamlessly through "unrecoverable" problems on a shitty DVD player. Panasonic and Phillips players are infamous for shitty tracking. Similarly, cheapo DVD-ROM drives (like Samsung) are barely worth the plastic they're made from, and will skip or lock up on discs with even the most minor imperfection.

I personally swear by Pioneer (both in the computer and in the stereo system). I've seen discs that lock up unrecoverably on Panasonic set-top boxes and Samsung DVD-ROM drives but play through perfectly on my Pioneers.

That's pretty much what I do. I usually check any DVD glitches on as many players as I can. I have two and I can drop by my parent's an try things on their's as well.

I'll have to keep Pioneer in mind when I decide to replace my DVD player.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2002-08-12 01:35pm

Darth Wong wrote:Before you get all pissed off at the DVD, try it in a good quality player, and then try to decide whether you should be pissed at the DVD or your player.

A good quality player will often track seamlessly through "unrecoverable" problems on a shitty DVD player. Panasonic and Phillips players are infamous for shitty tracking. Similarly, cheapo DVD-ROM drives (like Samsung) are barely worth the plastic they're made from, and will skip or lock up on discs with even the most minor imperfection.

I personally swear by Pioneer (both in the computer and in the stereo system). I've seen discs that lock up unrecoverably on Panasonic set-top boxes and Samsung DVD-ROM drives but play through perfectly on my Pioneers.

I have a Panasonic.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2002-08-12 02:53pm

I have a cheep Magnavox and it works just fine. The only time I've had problems was with a rental DVD which was several years old at least and lightly scratched.

Post by **Dalton** » 2002-08-12 09:58pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:I have a cheep Magnavox and it works just fine. The only time I've had problems was with a rental DVD which was several years old at least and lightly scratched.

Yeah, my father bought a cheapo Magnavox and it seems to work fine. My mother has an Apex, but I think it had some problems with a copy of Rock Star from Blockbuster.

My computer's player appears to be some generic brand built by NEC. I have no idea what it is, but it was thirty bucks from a friend and works fine.

Anyway, I wholeheartedly believe that DVDs are the way to go. They are superior to VHS in every conceivable way: sound quality, picture quality, durability, longevity (if you care for them properly), and of course there's no risk of erasure since it's an imaged disc and not magnetic oxide on thin tape. And it's a whole lot easier to ruin a tape: pair of scissors, snip, byebye. And of course the DVD drive can't eat the DVD.

Hell, almost all tape formats are superior to VHS, including Beta. The only thing worse than VHS is VHS-C. I am so glad there's a nice selection of prosumer digi-8 camcorders out.

Post by **Dalton** » 2002-08-12 10:01pm

Graeme Dice wrote:Something is so seriously wrong with my DVD drive that it locks up at exactly the same frame on certain DVDs so badly that a hard reboot is necessary. It's not my machine either, because it also locks up my friends G4 with OS X 10.1 so that he has to hard reboot.

Ouch, how the hell can that happen? Buffer overflow?

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2002-08-12 10:10pm

Ahh I see your problem *points to the Apple on the Side of the Computer

Woops sorry knee jerk reaction there, I'll try not to let it happen agian

Buffer-Overflow is not likley with a DVD player, normaly they have such a small buffer(128k) that a slow loop death takes quite awhile
Have you tried turning it to just one Frame before the Lock and hitting play? If it locks up imdedtly we have one set of possible problems if not not then you have a bug in the soft-ware, update it, if you can't call the nearest toll free number(Does not matter who its to) and complain in a loud voice for as long as possible about everything under the sun
Belive me you'll feel better and chances are the update will be relased while you where railing

So confirm that for me