Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Media Movies Hardware

Can DVDs Kill DVD Players? 178

Posted by Cliff from the death-by-disc dept.
aidanpryde asks: "In the weirdest situation I've ever seen. My DVD player died on Saturday while watching the episodes of a favorite sci-fi series. I was watching disk 5 with my wife and noticed that it was getting jumpy. I took the disk out to see if it was dirty or scratched, but seeing nothing, we put the disk back in. Now the DVD player won't read anything, not the Season 5 disk, none of our other disks...nothing! So, we take the DVD player as a loss. Hardware failure happen all of the time, right? So I go downstairs with my wife on another day and try it on her DVD player in her computer. We get through one episode of the disk and it starts to jump again. We take it out, try another disk and sure enough -- nothing works. Has anyone ever run into DVD's that kill DVD players? Is there any way that I can get compensation for my dead DVD players? Is there any ideas as to why this has happened. Can I download firmware updates for the computer drive that may fix the problem?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Can DVDs Kill DVD Players? More

Can DVDs Kill DVD Players?

Comments Filter:

  • Well... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Ieshan ( 409693 )
    DVDs are smallish, those big black things are laser discs.

    Stop trying to squash them in your hardware, and everything will work out fine.

  • obvious (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 03, 2004 @10:37PM (#10155214)
    The DVD is possesed. Call a priest, and if one isn't available, burn it immediately.

    • Re:obvious (Score:5, Funny)

      by Orion ( 3967 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @12:07AM (#10155644)
      > Call a priest, and if one isn't available, burn it immediately.

      Burning a priest just because he isn't available seems a little excessive.

      Now, burning a priest just because he is a priest... that sounds much more reasonable.

  • Please place this disc for sale on ebay (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 03, 2004 @10:40PM (#10155236)
    I need it to leave around my workplace in some strategic places. Can't explain the details in a public forum, sorry.

  • firmware updates (Score:5, Informative)

    by XO ( 250276 ) <blade.eric@NospAM.gmail.com> on Friday September 03, 2004 @10:50PM (#10155293) Homepage Journal
    There are also often firmware updates for non-computer based DVD players as well.

    I know that CyberHome and Panasonic have released firmware updates for some of their players over the past, and I'd bet others have too..

    it works like:
    burn a CD with the firmware file using a computer
    put the CD into the DVD player
    press "Play".

    Hope you didn't fry it. :D
    • I may not know about what I talk, but would a software-based firmware update help with physical problems that are had by a specific disk that obviously has affected more than one player? I should not think that a firmware update would help in this case.
      Of course, I suppose that you could be joking, but I know not.
      • well, it could be possible that the SOFTWARE in the DVD player has somehow managed to get into a state where it's horked.. i suppose a normal reset would probably help that.

        And a firmware update could keep it from happening again..

        i know one of the firmware updates that i saw for a cyberhome recorder once fixed a bug that kept a machine burning coasters instead of usable discs after a certain series of things happened...

        • Re:firmware updates (Score:3, Informative)

          by MadChicken ( 36468 )
          Yeah, I have had crashes when trying to play home-brewed KDVDs [kvcd.net]. I had to unplug the machine (RCA 5240, I think). In some cases it didn't crash, but was glitchy in everything. I had to put in a real official (known good) DVD and it got better.
      • Well there are only a half-dozen or so chipset manufacturers. So, it wouldn't be that unreasonable for a bug in one device to be present in another.

        On a related note, I heard a rumor that some newer DVDs took advantage few different chipset fact and sent bad firmware updates to disable devices that were not properly licensed (i.e. region free) - take this with a big grain of salt...
    • I had to get my Zenith's firmware updated recently (XBR something ... it didn't support closed captions, stupid assholes). But they wouldn't let me do that. I had to send the whole thing in (minus remote and cords), and got it back in 3 weeks. Thank god for laptop+RCA cables -> TV.

    • There are also often firmware updates for non-computer based DVD players as well.

      Firmware incompatibilities have been around for quite a while.

      Computer based DVDs get to fudge the spec a little more. Sometimes disks will have known incompatibilities with certain players.

      Several years ago I had my Toshiba DVD player die a painful death as a result of a firmware problem on one of the Aliens disks. Someting on the DVD hosed the firware so bad, the machine needed to be sent out for repair.

      Cheers

    • Well since the device allows updating the firmware, is it possible that a bad dvd overwrote the firmware with garbage?
      • that is possible too.. although i'd hope that things that cannot be reset to factory so easily would have better security than what could be defeated by a simple bad bit or two.. :(

  • are you TEH PIRATE?? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 03, 2004 @10:51PM (#10155302)
    Have you ever traded in illegally pirated software? Did you ever copy a disk for a friend? Used Kazaa or other filesharing systems? Swapped tapes in your youth? Been to a friends house and listened to (i.e., pirated his record? Played your music too loud at red lights? Memorized parts of books you read at the library without previous authorization?

    If so, you are automatically placed on the global MPAA shitlist. Any DVD you buy automatically detects your unique fingerprints (even if you just grip by the edge, you crafty pirate), and instructs even the cheapest korean DVD player to self-destruct.

    You agreed to this on May 27, 1996 when you walked within 50 feet of our EULA in that wal-mart (you know, the one that uses the act of disagreeing with the terms and/or being unaware of them, to indicate agreement to the terms..our lawyers love that one).

    Sorry old pal. Hate to do it to you. But that's the price of being a pirate.

    **

    Note, this post was a work of fiction. However, a young MPAA intern reading this post ejaculated approximately 65% of the way through. After changing his trousers, he is on the phone with his supervisor explaining this cool new invention he read about on "The Slashdots".

  • Two possibilities... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @10:54PM (#10155317) Homepage
    I can think of only two possibilities:

    (1) A disk whose decoder disrupted your device's firmware; this may be related to your DVD's region setting, especially if it was set to "zone-free". This may have been deliberate or accidental. Does the player turn on? Do you get the big DVD screen when no disk is inserted? If so, try resetting the DVD's region settings. You may need to access a "hidden" menu; anyone have a source for how to bring up those menus handy?

    (2) Because of the way the MPEG encoding on DVDs works, some encodings may require more CPU usage than others, and on a hardware decoder like in standalone DVD players, this may actually cause the processor to overheat. While letting the unit cool down may solve the problem, too much heat might actually induce a hardware fault.
    • Thats what I was thinking.
      The players somehow became region borked.

    • Re:Two possibilities... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by autarkeia ( 152712 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @12:04AM (#10155632) Homepage
      While number one sounds like it might be feasible, number two sounds like a load of bull. While it's theoretically possible (like it's theoretically possible that you could be hit by a falling airplane wing at any moment), in practice it's rather like saying that you need to be careful about doing kernel compiles or playing Doom 3 lest your GPU or CPU overheat.

      DVD players are meant to play DVD's and have specialized DSP's that don't run ridiculously hot like a Prescott. The idea that some DVD's are "just too much for your DVD player to handle" is slightly ridiculous.

      • Having overheated a old 486 doing kernel builds, leading to random crashes, I'd have to say that it's more than theory.

        But, in this case, the region crap is more likely.

        • well a 486 wasn't designed to do a full out kernel build.. heh! my k6-2/450 used to overheat on kernel builds or rpm upgrades. turns out that there was so much crap stuck UNDER the fan, where just blowing it out with dust remover wouldn't reach, that none of the air from the fan was actually reaching the heatsink..

          completely right, though, that DVD players are built to play DVDs and are going to have hardware that should be able to deal with any disc. However, it is possible that it ran into something
        • I've also used Linux 2.6 kernel builds to test overheating issues on my laptop (Athlon 2200XP). I've had other overheating problems with other, less-strenuous apps; this was just one test. Turning it in for a warrenty repair fixed the problem.

          I've also had DVD's wreak havoc on my Apex DVD player. The first time I tried X-men2 and Planet of the Apes it choked on the menu introduction animation. My sisters have a habit of leaving it running 24/7, so turning it off for an hour or two and trying again usua
    • (1) A disk whose decoder disrupted your device's firmware; this may be related to your DVD's region setting, especially if it was set to "zone-free".

      Where I live (Switzerland), practically all DVD players sold are "zone-free". I assume this is true in most of Europe (though I haven't checked outside Switzerland - maybe someone elsewhere can comment). Obnoxious though DVD publishers are, I doubt whether one of them would be such an idiot as to do something that would piss off the ~350 million consumers in E

  • Killers on the loose (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cpsc2005 ( 629087 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @10:55PM (#10155320) Homepage
    I'd suggest carefully reading the DVD itself along with the case and any other material. If it says nothing about copy protection, or something like "This DVD smites computers" I'd immediately take it up with the studio that produced the DVD. Try to be nice, but at the same time exacting. If I were you, and there were no notices, or you can clearly prove that these DVD players were stand-alone devices, I'd take it to small claims court and get my $300 bucks back if they don't strike a reasonable deal.

    Don't take no for an answer. Manufacturers should and are held responsible for damage to property under tort law.

  • Disc balance ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by frumin ( 696489 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @11:04PM (#10155365) Homepage Journal
    The disc could be badly balanced and that's why it would shake and such. It could have damadged the drive mechanism.

    • Re:Disc balance ? (Score:5, Informative)

      by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Friday September 03, 2004 @11:21PM (#10155449) Homepage
      Something mechanical like this would be my guess. I would think it would have upset the mechanism as the parent said. Making the shaft the DVD sits on slightly crooked or off place, maybe hitting the laser or something so that it doesn't aim/focus correctly. If you're willing, open up the drive (or the drive in the stand alone player) and see if you can see anything. The disc might have scratched the lens or some such. My guess is it's something reparable like that. It may be something you can fix with an adjustment screw and a little time.

      If it is something "good" though (like scratching the lens or something), then go after the manufacturer of the disk or the place that rented it to you (if you rented it) and ask that they do something about it. They should be nice enough. If not, you may want to go through small claims court as another poster suggested. And if you keep the "killer" disc, you'll have great evidence.

      • This sounds like the "click of death" that zip drives started developing a few years back. First one drive would click and fail. Then any drive that had a disk from the clicking drive would click and fail. Turns out the read heads were ripping off, which was tearing up the disks, which would then be put in other drives and rip off the read heads, and so on.

        • Re:Disc balance ? (Score:3, Informative)

          by lythotype ( 446239 )
          You have no idea what you're talking about, do you?

          The infamous "click of death" [grc.com], was not because of "...read heads were ripping off..."

          The following quote is from the link provided above, "The clicking sound itself is nothing more than the sound of the heads being retracted from the cartridge into the drive then immediately reinserted."
        • They weren't ripping off heads, the head armature was bending. It wasn't related to the disks, either, but to the drives which themselves had problems.

    • Re:Disc balance ? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Halfbaked Plan ( 769830 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @02:09AM (#10156031)
      I tried an 'out of balance' experiment on my CDROM at the workplace once. It was the first time I had access to a 'high speed' CDROM drive (i.e. one faster than 4x). I noticed that it was noisier than any drive I'd encountered before.

      I began by putting progressively larger pieces of tape on a CDROM disk to put the disk 'out of balance' in the drive. It got progressively noisier.

      Then I taped a small metal washer on the CDROM. It spun up and made the whole CPU case shake loudly.

      I had to unplug the computer quickly and use a bent paperclip to extract the CD. It would have been embarassing to explain why the computer in my cubicle was making so much noise.
    • Bullshit. DVDs spin at a very low RPM and no disc could possibly damage the mechanism mechanically, regardless of how unbalanced it is.
      • I don't think I'd say that DVD's rotate at a "very low" RPM. At 1x speeds, a DVD rotates at about 1500 RPM at the outside edge. A computer DVD player can get up to over 10k RPM. That's pretty insane for a little plastic disk and a precision laser assembly that needs to sit very near the surface of the disk.

        I'd think that physical damage to the inside of the player is very possible, even at the low end of the speed range.
        • I don't know what the exact RPM is, but the disks aren't heavy enough to bend the shaft of the motor (which is about the only thing which could get damaged), even at 1500 RPM.

  • Yep! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 03, 2004 @11:06PM (#10155373)
    I have a copy of Shaolin Soccer that killed a
    Hitachi dvd player. I tried this copy on my Cyberhome
    player but it refuses to play (suggesting something
    wrong with disk). I got another copy of the movie
    and that copy works okay. Apparently the crap
    Hitachi player had something happen and now it won't
    read any disks.

  • Warped by heat? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Friday September 03, 2004 @11:15PM (#10155415) Journal
    If the DVD is warped, no longer very flat, it might (?) hit the lens. ???

  • Shintaro Blank DVDs (Score:4, Informative)

    by thegrassyknowl ( 762218 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @11:19PM (#10155438)
    I have seen a warning on the back of Shintaro blank DVDs that says not to use it with Pioneer (some specific models that I can't remember) drives.

    Apparantly unless you put in some after-market firmware the drive will be irrepairably damaged by burning onto these Shintaro blanks.

    Wierd!!!

  • Heard of something similar (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ondo ( 187980 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @11:47PM (#10155556)
    A similar incident was mentioned on the DVDAuthor users mailing list. Here's a link [sourceforge.net].

  • I had a similiar problem with a CD Recorder... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Orion ( 3967 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @11:49PM (#10155562)
    It was a nice Sony recorder, except for one little flaw... after you put in a scratched-enough CD, it stopped working forever.

    Here I was, trying to use cdparanoia to recover some CDs, and my drive stopped working.

    It took three RMAs before I finally convinced Sony to stop shipping me back the drive and fix the damn firmware. The next time the firmware was upgraded, and the drive gave several more years of good service (probably still works, wherever it is).

  • [Off Topic] Reminds me... (Score:4, Funny)

    by GypC ( 7592 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @11:59PM (#10155608) Homepage Journal

    ... of a NIC I once had. It was a run-of-the-mill 3Com 905. Every computer it was installed in, the motherboard burned out within 2 or 3 days. I went through 3 motherboards before I figured out it was the Cursed-NIC-From-Hell.

    I keep it around just so I can stomp on it now and then. It's quite therapeutic.

    • I had a USB2 Card that fried Video cards in a certain motherboard. Add usb card, boot, computer wouldnt boot. Remove usb2 card, motherboard complains of no video card. Replace video card and computer works until some idiot tries to add the usb2 card again!

    • I had a motherboard that caused CPUs to burn out. I went through 2 CPUs before sending the motherboard back. It was tested and found faulty. I got no compensation for my CPUs though.

      And the particular VISA I used to purchase the equipment was the only one that didn't have warantee protection.

      When it rains, it pours ;)

  • Is it contagous? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 04, 2004 @12:22AM (#10155695)
    Back in college I worked as tech support in a computer lab ...
    All of the sudden we had a rash of broken zip drives. After much aggrivation, interagation of users, and many new drives we traced the problem back to one bad zip disk that would kill the zip drive in such manner that the any disk placed in the newly busted drive would kill any drive it was put in such a manner that ...

    Effectively we had a hardware computer virus

  • I've tried a DVD too (Score:5, Funny)

    by schnits0r ( 633893 ) <nathannd&sasktel,net> on Saturday September 04, 2004 @01:21AM (#10155908) Homepage Journal
    I've tried all my DVDs and they all work fine, and I have suffered absolutely no proble#$#$%$%$#%@#%%@$%@#$%REF$%$F^............NO CARRIER.

  • Not a DVD but... (Score:2, Informative)

    by floydman ( 179924 )
    I bought the new Metallica album (St. Anger), and guess what, it ruined my CD player(which was aactually a HIFI system). i tried to read it on my PC CD player. same thing. Now the funny part is that i took it to the music store, who actaully gave me a new copy, and told me this should work with out any problems!!!!(For fuck sake, what do you mean without any problems, its a DAMN CD)

    Luckily my HIFI was still under gurantee.

    Out of the subject, but the album SUCKS big time

    • Re:Not a DVD but... (Score:5, Funny)

      by technos ( 73414 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:48AM (#10156875) Homepage Journal
      I bought a copy of a Kid Rock album a few years ago, and after opening it and playing through it once I thought it was about the worst thing I had heard since.. Well, probably since Sammy Hagar decided he needed a solo album.

      So I walk back into the Sam Goody and stood around with the case in my hand, flipping it open and closed till I got a sales drone to see me.

      me: Hi, I need to return this.
      drone: I'm sorry, but we don't take returns on opened merchandise. Store policy.
      me: I know what your store policy is. The disc is defective.
      drone: Oh, is it scratched? Sometimes that happens in the packaging process.
      me: Naw, the disc looks fine. But whenever I put it in my player, all I get out of the speakers is noise.
      drone: Wow, I've never heard of that happening.
      me: Only happens with this one disc. The copy of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours I bought here at the same time sounds great.
      drone: Hmm. I think we've still got a couple copies on the shelf, we can exchange it for another.
      me: I'd rather like to return it versus exchange it, because it was supposed to be a gift and I already had to buy an alternate gift in a hurry thanks to it throwing up through my speakers.

      After discussing the model of my player, the fact it also produced garbage when played in my car stereo, the clerk gets his manager to sign off on a refund.

      So I'm up at the register with the salesdrone and the cashier to get my money back.

      clerk: Wow, I don't think I've heard of any problems with that album.
      me: Don't ask me.
      clerk: I ought to go stick it in one of the demo players and see how bad it sounds.
      [clerk hands me my money and a new reciept]
      me: Go for it. Don't put the volume up too loud though, I'll warn you.
      [clerk pops it in a player stuck under the counter, player spins up and starts playing "Cowboy"]
      clerk: Seems to work just fine, that's weird.
      me: Funny, I paid $26 for a CD full of music, I expected music. That sounds like overmodulated static with some profanity thrown in. Not music. It's gotta be defective.
      • Well, there was your problem - you paid $26 for it!
        • Maybe, but the record companies have promoted this "music" as being very good, when it is, in fact, trash.

          The root of the problem is the fact that you're not (normally) allowed to return music after having listened to it. How are you supposed to know if it's any good if you can't listen to it beforehand?

          If I go to Wal-Mart and buy a DVD player, or a stereo, or a power tool, I can bring it home, try it out, decide I don't like it, and put it back in the box and return it for a full refund. Most stores wi
          • Man, we here in Australia must be in some kind of utopia... becuase in most CD stores you can listen to the albums before you buy them... how about that.

            No, wait... I've lived in America... and you can do it there too, so we're not the only ones.

            So... maybe you should start at least giving a cursury listen to a cd before you buy it... otherwise it's really your own fault you bought a shit cd. I could have told you that just because it was by Kid Rock for f*cks sake.
          • The root of the problem is the fact that you're not (normally) allowed to return music after having listened to it. How are you supposed to know if it's any good if you can't listen to it beforehand?

            Well, you're certainly not supposed to share files over teh interweb, because that would be piracy and evil!

          • Oh, it's much worse than that.
            You see, software vendors claim that when you buy software, it's not the media that you purchase, but the software product itself. This is the argument that they make against copying the ones and zeros that are on the media: That the media itself just carries their product.

            Then, if their software product fails to work as advertised, or causes damage to your core OS or hardware, then they limit their liability to the cost of replacement media , claiming that the media is
    • That's funny I thought that that album had done something to my hifi too as the the hihats sounded really screwed up. Then I realized it was intentional.
  • Some person inserted a CD into their laptop and it would not eject.

    He swore it was a bad cd.

    I still don't believe it.
    • Was it a mini-cd in a slot drive? :p Anyone else remember that case where someone sued apple because their iMacs didn't support those mini-cd-r's?
      • normal sized CD, slot loading powerbook.

        I don't think they ever tried CTRL+APPLE+O+F
        eject cd

        • Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)

          by phillymjs ( 234426 )
          Besides the firmware eject command, there's a very old Mac trick that may still work: Hold down the mouse button on reboot, and wait. The computer used to interpret an extended click-hold during boot that as "eject all ejectable media" or something like that. Last time I used it myself was in the late 90's, to get an external SCSI Zip drive to cough up a bad disk.

          ~Philly

  • That's okay... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Nice2Cats ( 557310 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @02:41AM (#10156121)
    Now the DVD player won't read anything, not the Season 5 disk, none of our other disks...nothing!

    That's okay. Season 6 of "Buffy" is terribly depressing anyway, and Season 7 has the worst writing of the whole show. You've seen the most important parts.

    Finished NetHack yet?

  • Some players unfreeze (Score:4, Informative)

    by doc modulo ( 568776 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:03AM (#10156763)
    after you disconnect the power cord for a while.
  • You have an apex dvd player or similar cheap comsumer electronic junk. All I can say is what did you expect?
    • Guess I hit a nerve, but the fact remains consumer electronics are for the most part these days junk. Crappy circuit boards, marginal components. I work in the industry I know.
    • Whoever modded this down - most people whose /. UID pre-dates the 6-figure mark tend to be geeks of some considerable standing... and more often than not, worth listening to (unlike me - haha)

      FWIW, past /. stories such as this one [slashdot.org] prove his point.

    • Re:Let me guess. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Grishnakh ( 216268 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @03:28PM (#10163771)
      You have an apex dvd player or similar cheap comsumer electronic junk. All I can say is what did you expect?

      Last time I checked, ALL DVD players are cheap consumer-grade junk these days. Even the "name-brand" players are made in the same Chinese factories that the cheap "no-name" players are.

      Therefore, I see this as a pretty useless comment. It's not like someone buying a Yugo, instead of a Honda or Toyota, and then complaining it breaks down too much. There isn't much choice with consumer electronics.
      • No, not all... Just the affordable ones.

        If you're willing to spend a few hundred bucks, or better yet part with a grand and a half, there are some quite nice players available, with better quality for both audio and video than you get with the run-of-the-mill players. Try a higher-end Denon, for example, like a 2900 or (better yet) a 5900.

        • Honestly, I don't see the point of spending that kind of cash on a DVD player, when no real person can tell the difference in quality between it and a normal (progressive scan capable) player. (Yes, I know idiotic "audiophiles" claim to hear better sound by putting $1000 rubber dots on their walls, but anyone who believes in that crap is a fool.)

          I can buy 30 regular DVD players for that price.

  • Is the disc warped or uneven? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by the_brat_king ( 443955 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @11:52AM (#10157623)
    If the disc is warped, uneven, or unbalanced, it will cause DVD player failure. I know this because we've been through 6 DVD players in 3 1/2 years. My wife gets children's movies for my daughter from the library, they put stickers on them (on the center hub)... when these stickers are not placed on correctly they cause the disc to wobble, this kills motors dead.

    Listen to the drive when you put a disc in, can you hear the disc spin up? If not, you've fried your motor, if so it's most likely a firmware issue. Since you've killed two DVD players though, it's more likely that the problem is the motor fried.

  • Have you tried something as simple (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Andy Dodd ( 701 ) <atd7NO@SPAMcornell.edu> on Saturday September 04, 2004 @12:24PM (#10157737) Homepage
    As powercycling the DVD player?

    Either mechanical damage was done, or possibly a misauthored disc caused the DVD players' firmware to crash. (The fact that it killed a computer's DVD player too sounds odd though...)

    If it's a misauthored disc, then simply powercycling may fix the problem. I mean a COMPLETE power cycle - unplug it, wait 2-3 minutes (sometimes more depending on what sort of memory backup features it might have), plug it back in.

    I had this problem happen shortly after getting a DVD-R drive, one of my DVDs crashed the player. I thought it was broken at first, but a complete powercycle fixed it.

  • My car stopped working! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CMiYC ( 6473 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @12:25PM (#10157744) Homepage
    The other day I was driving around in my car and it stopped running. While it was being repaired I was driving another car that stopped running too! I'm pretty sure that I'm the cause of it.

    See where I'm going with this?

    Nobody has suggested the extremely obvious possibility: both DVD drives failed. Perhaps they were going to fail for some time but they didn't start showing problems until you played a dual-layer DVD.

    Its highly unlikely anything about that disc could "damage" your DVD drives. Its far more likely that both drives were near their failure point and failed by coincidence.
  • Most likely its off balance and just ate the bearings in either the spindle or overworked the stepper for the read head..

    Were they still under warranty perhaps? Or you might get lucky and be able to swap the drives,like you can in many Apex units..

  • Heat (Score:2, Informative)

    by CmdrPorno ( 115048 )
    It sounds as if you may have used the DVD player for an extended period of time. Heat buildup may be the cause of the failure. That's no excuse, but it's the best explanation I can come up with. I know this was a huge problem with my first DVD player (Panasonic DVD-A110), but I never experienced it probably due to infrequent use.

  • Possible cause (Score:3, Funny)

    by RealErmine ( 621439 ) <commerce@@@wordhole...net> on Tuesday September 07, 2004 @01:41PM (#10179109)
    DVDs that conform to the standard spec are only encoded with a series of zeros and ones. It is possible that this disk accidently included a two, confusing the playback hardware.

Slashdot Top Deals

All seems condemned in the long run to approximate a state akin to Gaussian noise. -- James Martin

Close