Silly question... why do dvd's play on some players but not others?! (1 Viewer)

[Kevin Sharp]

I thought my CASABLANCA disc had died this weekend. On a Panasonic player, it broke into pixels & "blockies" (at the same place repeatedly). No dirt or fingerprints on the disc surface.
I was all ready to start on a WAMO rant, and then...
I tried it on my Toshiba player & had NO problem.
What gives???

 

[PeteD]

I'm sure someone else could explain better but I'll take a stab.

Trouble is as far as consumer electronics go, DVD players are closer to Computers, than to Alarm clocks.

Each player has a different transport, different decoders, firware revisions -different everything. likewise your PC probably has different stuff than your neighbours.

Sad but true, likely you might be able to run an application that always gives your neighbour an error.

The term "software" when used to describe DVD's is rather apt. Each disc can have a different way of doing things and has alot to do I suspect with the authoring software itself.

Now, I'm not talking about scratches and stuff, but predictable bugs. I went through 2 copies of Diamonds Are Forever, and it always freezes at the exact same spot on my Pioneer, but my PS2 playes it fine.

I don't think I really answered your question though...

Anyone else?

P.

 

[Jeff]

You wouldn't by chance have a Panasonic A105, A110 or A310, would you?

 

[Roger Mathus]

Even if you don't see any surface contamination, try a gentle cleaning of the disc. Some players seem to be more sensitive than others to surface film that can develop from outgassing from the package materials.

 

[Neil Joseph]

I would like to know why some earlier Toshiba players had audio dropouts with certain receivers when other DVD players had no problems with the same receiver. I find this odd since Toshiba was one of the developers of the DVD format.

 

[Mick Wright]

I've had three Panasonic players, the A105, A110, and the A320. Each one would pixelate like you describe on at least two or three titles, for seeminly no reason. All three died after less than one year of service. No more panasonic players for me.

 

[bill lopez]

The best thing to do is just buy the Top Of the Line model.

 

[Chad Parks]

Agreed, those old Panasonic players are famous for that. Mine did it occasionally, but it wasn't as bad as others had experienced.

The one annoying quirk my A110 had was that it would SOMETIMES skip a chapter at the layer change.