What happen if I found a malfunctionning... (1 Viewer)

[Luc Roussel]

I received for my birthday, 4 new boxsets of my favorite series- CSI-season1,ER season1 ,The Sopranos season2 and
Gilligan`s Island season1...I will not watch them all at the same time...What can I do to prevent having a damaged disc and being too late to bring it back for an exchange????? I do not have time to go throw all the series in the next month..(Have so much to watch!!!!)
Someone had any experiences in the past???

 

[Marty M]

First of all, congratulations for receiving a nice batch of DVDs. In my experience with 300 DVDs I have never purchased a DVD that was faulty, so I think the chances of having a faulty disc are very remote. If you are concerned you might want to just pop in each disc to see if the first episode or chapter will start. If there is no problem with that, the likelyhood of any problems is probably very remote.

 

[Chris:L]

Well, that really helped him a lot.

 

[Steve...O]

Marty is right. Very often I do chapter sampling on multi disc sets. If those play ok, it is unlikely you will have problems.

In the unlikely event you have a problem that wasn't caught in the sampling process, if you tell a store it was a gift they will exchange it.

Have fun with these. I have Sopranos S2 and Gilligan S1 and they're great sets.

Steve

 

[Chris:L]

But what if you chose a chapter that doesn't have a malfuctioning in it? It doesn't mean another chapter after it doesn't have the malfunction you were looking for.

 

[Gord Lacey]

I usually look at the disc first to see if there are any scratches or other blemishes. If I don't see any then I don't worry, but if something is on the disc I'll take a look and see if there might be a problem. I've never had a problem with a disc that didn't have something visibly wrong with it in the first place.

Gord

 

[Sam Favate]

This is good advice. The only discs I ever had a problem with had blemishes or scratches (usually from being loose in the package -- hello, Warner B5 DVDs!). These had trouble playing, but can usually be fixed by cleaning (either by hand or with a SkipDoctor type of device). Only once did I ever have to return a scratched disc.

 

[JustinCleveland]

And so did that. :rolleyes

I second (or third, fourth, whatever) the chapter sampling method. Personally, with over 400 sets, I've had no bad new discs that weren't obviously scratched. Just look at the discs, check them for scratches, and run a random sampling of each disc.

 

[Scott Kimball]

I agree that you should visually inspect every disc. Scratches and scuffs that will cause a disc to have playback difficulties are usually obvious.

That said, I recently purchased Blue Underground's "The Final Countdown." Though the disc looked flawless, it hung up about 30 minutes into the movie. I exchanged the disc, and the new one works fine. Out of over 500 discs in my collection, that is the only one I've seen that had no VISIBLE defect, but wouldn't play.

So, give each disc a visual once-over, then stick them on the shelf. You'll probably be okay.

Enjoy.

-Scott

 

[EricCr]

Most of the dvds I have had problems with had scratchs on them but two box sets had no scratchs and did not work. Futurama vol. 1 the first disc looked fine but would not load on all three of my players and Friends season 1 disc 4 froze on about the second or third episode, I think that the last couple episodes must be on the second layer and it was bad. Overall have had few problems exchanging problem sets but with Friends I had received it as a gift and the store manager at best buy refused to take it for exchange without a receipt. I ended up going to another best buy and had no trouble. I now am in the habit of chapter surfing just in case.

 

[MaraKM]

Luc, I would think that if any of your discs have a serious malfunction, it would have happened to other people too. (For example - the Roswell disc 4 screw-up). So you could look for reviews of the sets you bought/received, and see if anyone has mentioned any problems you need to be on the look-out for.

Even if you do find a problem too late for an in-store return, you should be able to arrange for an exchange from the customer service dept. of the manufacturer, so you should be fine.

 

[GarySchrock]

It's also not a bad idea to at least stick the discs in and make sure they are what they say they are. On the first season of B5 after I finally assembled a non-scratched season set, I stuck the one disc in only to discover it was mislabelled, and was actually another disc from the set (I can't remember if it was disc 2 that was labelled disc 4, or the other way around). Considering the frustration of getting a pristine set, running into that was not fun.

And personally, if the discs are scratched at all, I return them. I don't even bother to check to see if they skip. I'm spending too much money on these things to put up with a sloppy packer that slides the disc across the hub. (Which is what about 90% of the scratches I find tend to be, the rest tend to be discs that fall off hubs).

 

[Mark Oates]

If a disc is going to be dodgy, it will be out towards the edge or the layer change. I find the best way to work is quickly go through the discs, checking them visually then loading each one up, making sure it will start the first episode from the menu. Then I check (say) the last or second to last episode on the disc. Chapter forward a couple of times, do a quick 2x forward and reverse (that usually shows up any disc quality problems), then move on to the next disc. Doing a collection like Gilligan will only take half-an-hour. As long as you can spare that.

 

[Terry H]

Sometimes. My ER set breaks up and freezes on at least two different episodes on two different discs. The discs were absolutely pristine...not a mark, blemish or spec of dust. Tried it on three players. The discs are bad. It really gripes me that single discs in expensive sets are not easily replaced.