In the comments of my last topic, Brian brought up an interesting point: the planned obsolesence of DVD players.Is this really happening?
I've wondered if maybe the older DVD's don't read as well on the newer models, and newer discs wont always play on older models.
I've had this problem. And some others.
Currently, I have three DVD players, stacked atop each other, all wired/connected together, in what some would call my entertainment center. In this case,"Entertainment Center" being defined as a TV, holding up a cable box, holding up a DVD player/recorder, holding up another DVD player, which itself holds up yet another DVD/VHS combo.
Yeah, I got'em stacked like hotcakes at the IHOP. No fear of earth tremors in this California boy.
Why so many? And why this way?
The reason is that not all discs will play on one machine. Some new discs won't play on the oldest machine. Some newer discs wont even play on the newest (six months ago) machine. The Netflix discs are a crap shoot. Never know just what machine will play them. And the discs that just will not play on any of the higher-priced, newer machines, will always play on the oldest, cheapest machine I have. And this is the same machine that wont play hardly anything I shove into it, unless of course the disc in question has already been rejected by the other two machines.
It's maddening, I tell ya.
And don't give me any guff about my machines being dirty or dusty. They aren't. I've used those 'cleansing discs' several times over. I've tried any number of remedies.
Nothing seems to work short of stacking the machines and playing roulette whenever I want to watch a movie.
On a positive note: no matter what disc I'm using, as a team, the three have never let me down.
5 comments:
Don't expect that to get better. From what I've heard the Blu-Ray standard was half finished at release and is ever evolving. I suppose it will settle down into a real standard about the time megaultrasuper hi-def discs come out and we're all supposed to upgrade again.
so my suspicions are correct?
it's not some voo doo hex on my equipment but variations in the DVDs themselves?
I gave up on DVDs. I rent movies on my phone. At least I know they will work, even if the eye-strain factor bites.
I think you may have a voo-doo hex on your machines. We've got a $50 phillips player from wal-mart, and it plays everything I throw at it, even poorly authored home burns.
So far so good on my DVD player (Panasonic). Although... there was a huge amount of information in the directions about which DVDs would and wouldn't work, and when I use it (hem hem eventually) to record my VHS onto DVD those DVDs are only guaranteed to work on that one machine, and if I play home-ripped DVDs from other sources it might crash (permanently) my machine. It says.
Although I hesitate to ask ;) ... did you read (I mean, for real, read all of it) the instructions with any of your machines? You might solve the hows and whys, if they have the detail mine had.
I did buy a good quality machine (buy quality, weep only once). Our cheapass previous DVD player killed itself in a year of light use : P. Electronics recycling time!
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