Brendan Hughes

Got a brand new Samsung DVD player to go with a Samsung LCD TV.

When I play certain DVDs, I think non-shop ones (but I have a sneaky feeling it's happened with shop ones as well), sometimes it doesn't play them well. One was a copy given by a friend, and that constantly played very jerky, with sections of the screen dividing into small 1cm blocks, soundtrack pausing, etc. 10mins of film took almost 30mins to play.

For another, it got halfway through the film without problem, then the above started happening and it wouldn't play the other half. It was always the same - we'd stop it, eject, put it back in, jump to the appropriate scene, and it would start again (and in any scene after that one).

I imagine the first might be to do with copy protection, and the second might be to do with Dual Layer DVD - it can't read the second layer.

Can anyone here explain simply what is the problem? I'd be a bit annoyed at copy protection, for obvious reasons, but if it's going to do that even on a mate's wedding video that I'm on, then it's going too far.

(I could post on AVforums, but they have 8 fora just for DVD players - I'd get lost )

Thanks

EddScott

My last two Sony players have done the same thing. The first one got slowly worse and stopped altogether and the current one will play legit dvds but most copies it won't. Our daughters £20 Aldi special in her bedroom runs just about anything we put in it.

As for why, I don't know. It won't play any of my **** either

Reality

The shiny side goes down

TopBanana

Take it back and get a different sort

Brendan Hughes

Less of your driving advice thanks, what about my DVD player?

Reality

It's fcuked - take it back / buy another one

The Zohan

dirty lens mate!Clean it. I take mine to bits and do it with Isopol alcohol and a cotton bud.

You can get lens cleaneing disks but never used one.

stilover

Heat.

I had the same problem with my Samsung DVD player. I had it on top of my Video, in the enclosed Glass stand.
I now take it out of the stand and rest it on the floor. Perfect playing every time.
My Xbox takes up the other shelf, that's why the DVD player was on top of the video.

If it still happens, stop the dvd, eject it, but leave the door open. Go and make youself a cup of tea, then restart watching from where you left of. Cooling it down works for mine.

Brendan Hughes

Damn. Thanks for the last two constructive posts, but I'm surprised. I don't see why it's a dirty lens if the thing is straight out of the box, and it really can't be heat as there is no other heat source nearby - it's on a table slightly in front of the screen, there's nothing else near it. (And that means it'll be hell when it gets to June/July!)

I was originally expecting a simple answer like "ah, that's copy protection, it always happens" but now I'll keep watching this thread and possibly take it back if it seems it's a defect of sorts.

The Zohan

Just here to help mate
Oh, if nearly new then i would suspect faulty or even a poor lens or lazer. The lazers performance can tail off as they get older which is why it is even more important the lens is clean

It usually happens on older machines, my Tosh is now 11 months old and has not played a few disk recently so i will be doing the business with it at the weekend.

colin1uk

u need to unblock your dvd. ie region codes try this.

http://www.dvdexploder.com/multihacks

Brendan Hughes

Oops, sorry if I sounded ungrateful Paul Just frustrated!

As above third idea reinforces!

Markus

I doubt it's region encoding, as usually the DVD player would not play the DVD at all. Certainly the Denon player I have here that is coded to R1 will state that you can't play a disk from a different region if I insert an R2 dvd.

colin1uk

it may not be mate. but at least if u unlock it, u can watch the **** u borrowed off somone down at the pub last nite.

GaryCat

I had a Samsung too with the same problem. It was very sensitive to dirty discs and also would pixelize if it got too hot - make sure it had ventilation around it.