Buffy S4 scratched discs... NOT AGAIN! (1 Viewer)

Okay, after the fiasco with S3 scratched discs (bought a set... took it home... found scratched disc... went back to Best Buy... out of stock... wait a couple days... go back... exchange for another set with scratched disc (though I had them open it in store)...

I thought, maybe the problem might hav been fixed in some way.

Today... go to Best Buy after lunch... only two copies of S4 left... shake one, no rattle... shake other, no rattle... flip coin, select package... checkout... open package in car... find scratched discs... go back in store... exchange for last remaining set... open in store... two loose discs, but none scratched... swap sets...

Anyone else have this problem with s4? If this is as widespread as before, this is costing someone a bundle.

By the way, the loose discs in both sets were Spike and Giles. Giles was scratched in the first set.

-Scott

no problem over here. My BS4 was perfect

Are the scratches very severe? Do they affect the playback of the disc?

I find minimal scratches have no effect on the playback and as such I don't care. If they do impact playback, I would be very angry.

Mine was missing Disc 5. I took it back and got a different set. I do notice that with these digi pack foldout sets that I get more floaters than should be necessary. There has to be a better way to package these things.

Ah crap. We were going to buy these online for a better-than-B&M price, but now that chances are we'll have to return it, might be worth the extra $5 to be able to walk to the nearest Best Buy and exchange. With Season 3 we went through 3 of them, all had different discs as floaters, and the Best Buy Customer Service let us mix and match until we got one complete, unscratched set.

I opened up my set with no scratches!

Got mine at CC today at lunch and got them home tonight and disc 1 & 2 are both scratched. Disc one rubbed clean but Disc two will not. Now I've got to take time again tomorrow at lunch and get them exchanged. I should have checked after going through three sets of S3 before getting a good one. Check em out before getting home.....
Jim

Just started checking out my season 4 and sure as hell, the opening credits sequence on the first 3 eps. have this horizontal video noise, it's also appearent during certain cuts or even quick action, though not as bad as the opening logos. I've only checked a few eps. on the first 3 disc's, and the others seem fine.

I did notice a minor scuff on the surface of the first disc, I don't think that's related.

Same thing happened a year ago with season 2, also purchased at Best Buy.

I'll probably watch the entire set before taking it back, in case other defects arise.

Later

My Spike was a floater too. A couple of big nasty scratches right through Beer Bad... I had to think twice about returning it, but it will be on its way back to BB tomorrow.

I had a disc one floater, but it didn't appear to be scratched at all. I'll have to finish season 3 quickly so I can get to disc 1. That shouldn't be a problem though since this series (which I never saw on the air) really breezes through. I can't imagine having to wait a week between episodes!

Jim, Are you using a progressive scan player? The horizontal noise you're referring to might be the combing issues that have plagued all 3 previous sets. I don't have s4 yet, but the 1st 3 sets were improperly flagged as "FILM" mode, and these shows are edited on VIDEO. If you have a flag reading player, (a JVC for ex...) you will have to force the player into VIDEO mode. I can't believe they still haven't fixed this problem.


:frowning: D

Well, my set went all the way from Canada to England and yet each disc was nice and secure, and all the discs and inserts were present and correct. Roll on season 5!

All my discs were in their hubs also. I haven't taken them out of the hubs to check them yet though.

My set had disks 3 & 4 scratched. 4 was not that bad, but 3 was bad enough for me to return it. Luckily the person at Best Buy let me open another box right on the spot and inspect the disks. When that box had a gash on disk 6, she let me replace it with the good one in the first box set.

All disks in both sets were secure, though the disk #3 looked like it had been rubbed against the center hub (4 lines of roughly parallel scratches).

Jeff, that may be so. But these are flagged incorrectly for FILM mode. There is a whole discussion of this in the DVD benchmark site re: prog. scan. When you have a player that is flag reading, like the JVCs and put the player in AUTO-mode which means that the player chooses which mode to use based on the info. that the disc gives it, the player plays back in FILM mode, so even though BUFFY is shot on FILM, it's edited on VIDEO which breaks the 3/2 Film cadence and therefore, you get combs on many edits and just about whenever there is a video effect. The into, credits scene is virtually unwatchable this way. Therefore, you manually force the player into VIDEO mode.
An ex. of a properly flagged shot on Film but edited on Video set would be FRIENDS. The original TREK series looks fine in FILM mode because they were edited on FILM...


From the Benchmark site....Shot on Film, Edited as Video

A fairly large amount of material these days is shot on film to get a film “look,” then transferred to video for editing and other post-production, as editing and post are much cheaper for video. Almost all episodic TV, music videos, and made-for-TV movies are done this way. This is a torture test for cadence-reading deinterlacers, as each scene will have the 3-2 cadence internally, but edits will more often than not break it, since the makers didn’t care about keeping the film cadence intact. In our test suite, we used More Tales of the City, which is a textbook example of this kind of material. However, you will find that most music videos and made-for-TV material will have the same problem. In addition, shows with lots of special effects have this problem all the time, because often the live action is shot on film and has a 3-2 pulldown pattern, but the effects are produced in a computer and have a 2-2 pulldown pattern. Overlaid titles like subtitles, show credits, dates and places (things that are shown at the bottom of the screen at the beginning of a scene like "New York City, 1856") also tend to work this way - the title generators used for TV are 2-2 coherent, and cause strange cadence glitches. We've seen problems like this on the X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and many other TV shows on DVD. Even films are not immune: the new footage on the special edition of Star Trek the Motion Picture has 2-2 special effects that screw up the cadence (and the flags)..."

I took mine back to CC and went and got another set and opened it there at the counter and disc two was loose and scratched in it. Got two more sets and the same thing. Finally the next to last set they had was ok. What a pain for me but has to be a pain for the stores to handle all these returns.
Later
Jim

Astonishingly, my copy of season four was floater-free. The first disc of season three was scratched pretty badly, though. My settop player can handle it with no problem, but my portable player stutters endlessly with it.

Just got my set today from amazon.com. No floaters, discs in perfect shape. Funny, but I've not had this problem with any of the four Buffy sets nor with Angel S1 set. Guess I'm the lucky one.

Oz is right, by the way. What is more important than this?