DVD question
 

One purchased a box set of DVD's last week, nothing untoward in that, however for some reason they refuse to play in a TV player, neither on my laptop, but on another laptop they played perfectly, this one being 2 years old approx. Why would this be ? Is there some code within said disks (tried several, same result) that only works with a certain level of up-to-datedness in the hardware. I've not experienced this before, except with a corrupted/damaged disks. Said box set is of digitally remastered old material. Any ideas ?



SHJ

One possibility could be a region incompatibility issue between the disks and the various hardware options you've tried.

FOR

They might be so, but it's a UK bought/content disk and both laptops are set to the same region and the standalone player with the TV is, I'm guessing region 2 as well ?, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...with_key-2.svg



SHJ

Maybe the person who did the re-mastering had some dodgy DVDs??

I bought one of those Branded packs of 50 DVDs once, and about 70% of them were dud. I tried all sorts of solutions, before binning the lot. I then went out and bought a replacement pack of DVDs.

I tried to use these, and again, most were dud - I found out after hours of trial and error. . I thought it must have something to do with the hardware - (Pana recorder/players, Chillblast pc and PC World lappie). It took ages for me to figure out that the second batch of DVDs were also useless.

Grrrrr.

Have you got a mate with different kit that you could take the DVDs to, in order to find out if it is your kit or the DVDs? (I wish I'd thought of that..........)

You description of the discs sounds a little odd. Are they commercial DVD-Video discs with a Region 2 symbol on the box etc?

Assuming these are normal WH Smith-type discs....I can imagine that with the multitude of combinations of hardware and software combinations that you could find on a PC/laptop, it's possible to run into problems playing the discs. But I would expect any consumer DVD player attached to a TV to play them without problem.

Do any of the players that won't play them give you any type of error message? My DVD player displays a message saying the disc has an invalid region code if I try discs bought in odd places.

If they're normal DVD-Video and won't play in a consumer DVD player I would take them back 'cos they're broke.

On the computer, have you tried any of the software that ignores some of the superfluous stuff that you might get on the discs from some companies - maybe VLC player or (my personal favourite) MPC-BE?

Lots of prior posts about this, both on pprune and esewhere. Googoo on 'dvd unlock'. Here's one result:

Free DVD Unlocking Codes: Make DVD players multi-region & get cheaper discs....

Is it anything to do with +R, -R, +RW or any of the other +,-,R,W possibilities.

I've had players that only played certain types of DVD before, looking in the instructions gave the game away.

Just checked the cover and the disks are region 2, from a well know TV company in the UK and purchased on a large online retailer. In the 'TV player' it gives an error message of 'wrong disc' and on one laptop nothing at all it just whirrs and clicks and then gets spat out automatically. On the 2nd laptop it gets accepted and plays flawlessly......:confused:


SHJ

Conventional wisdom says the laser might be marginal. Cleaning the lens may solve the problem. Else get a new player, they cost next to nothing.

I use a Philips stand-alone nine inch PD9030, opens like a laptop, rechargeable battery powered, never had a problem.

If everything else plays OK in your TV player (which is really what the discs are designed for), I would try the suspect discs in a couple more machines - try friends or even go into a shop that stocks the set and ask them to test them. If they don't work flawlessly there, send 'em back. If the discs are fine in other machines it sounds like your player is, like all of us, getting older and crotchetier!