Can bad rental store DVDs damage player? (1 Viewer)

[Sam Pat]

Just picked up a couple of movies from the rental store.

However, they look as though people played with them as frisbees.

On the inner ring of both discs (the little hole), there are numerous cracks and some chunks of plastic are even missing. The cracks don't extend very far out into the data portion of the disc, but I am a little concerned with what they might do to the player.

No sense risking a 200 dollar DVD player for a 6 dollar rental, right?

I'm sure others who watch rental DVDs have gotten something similar. What did you do?

Do you think there's any risk to the player by using these discs?

 

[Kevin M]

I own a few discs that I bought brand new that have a few little cracks on the inner ring/hole but I wouldn't worry about player damage unless the disc is literally warped....at least I personally haven't suffered any player damage from such "cracked" discs, rental or not..others may have different experiences.

 

[AllanN]

This is just a theory, but if there is enough of the disk missing on one side it may resonate while spinning and cause excess vibration in your player. Prolonged exposure to such out of spec vibration my cause damage to your player. Maybe someone with better knowledge of physics can prove or debunk my theory.

 

[Daniel Becker]

This is why I almost never rent DVDs.



Dan.B

 

[Johnny G]

where do you rent dvds for 6 dollars?

 

[Henry Gale]

I am a little concerned with what they might do to the player.

They might hurt its feelings.

 

[Robert Dunnill]

I'm sure others who watch rental DVDs have gotten something similar. What did you do?

I made the mistake of putting a cracked rental disc into my then-new RP-91, which threw out some kind of internal adjustment. The player was in the warranty center for a month because of that.

RD

 

[Joshua Moran]

Be careful with cracked discs. Especially if you own a DVD-Rom on your computer and watch them on that. I've read an article about the high speed CD-Roms an DVD-Roms that spin this discs at such high rpm that the disc will splinter if there are cracks in it. This happens mostly in the 52x CD-Roms. I don't think DVD-Roms spin that fast yet, but just thought I'd share that info to you. The article was in PC World a few months back.

 

[Sam Pat]

Ouch, Rob.

That settles it.

I'm not putting those things in.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

I killed the laser on my DVL-909 playing a bad disc once- after that it refused to read any DVDs at all and had to be replaced. It wasn't even a rental disc that did it. Now my cheapo Koss gets to handle the questionable discs, since it wouldn't be as big a tragedy if that thing died.

 

[Mark Hamilton]

I'v put probably 1300-1400 DVDs through their paces in my 6 year old Sony DVP-S7000 and a lot of them (rentals) were pretty thrashed up but the Sony player works as well as it did the day I bought it.