You’ve missed the entire point of this, r_k.
DVD players are as cheap as shit now. They cost less than VCRs. You can buy the things in the fucking supermarket.
The promises of the DVD were twofold:
better resolution. delivered as promised.
greater durability. not delivered in any way shape or form.
Well, I don’t know what kind of shitty DVDs you get, but mine all play just fine. And you don’t get the hassle of having to rewind the tape; you don’t get fuzzy patches where some moron has left the tape sitting on top of their speakers; you don’t get tape stretch; your freeze frames don’t bounce all over the place.
I love DVDs.
I have yet to have a DVD unwind in my DVD player, destroying the machinery…on that basis alone, it’s a superior format. 
I buy DVDs from the places that they sell DVDs in. The DVDs don’t seem to have labels on the front saying “warning: shitty DVD”. If you have some means of detecting them, well that’s just great. Share it with us, if you will. Or are you just saying that you’ve been lucky?
I find that this conveniece is precisely offset by the inconveniece of not being able to fast-forward through the crap at the beginning of the DVD.
No, you’re right, you don’t get those problems. Instead you get a different set of problems that are just as bad.
I have a very good VCR which digitally stores the half-frames, and displays a stable image. No bounce. I also have a couple of rather expensive DVD players. From discussing their performance with other people, I conclude that they work slightly better than the ones you can buy in the supermarket.
Good for you.
I kind of agree with this rant. I rented a DVD at Blockbuster on Friday - it looked fine - a few barely perceptible scratches on the surface. It played like shit, jumping chapters constantly and dropping frames left and right. Ruined the movie. The movie was office space - my wife had never seen it. She couldn’t enjoy it (neither could I).
I went back the next night, got a refund and got another movie for free. The disc looked to be in far worse shape, but played fine.
I have a slightly older, good quality DVD player made by Samsung. If you tell me to buy a better player so it will play dodgy discs, you are also expressing a desire to blow me.
Have a nice day
The odd thing is, I’ve seen Apex players that can handle anything you throw at them and expensive Sony and Panasonic players that crap out on the same discs.
I had these kinds of problems when I first got my DVD player. I later found out, or rather it hasn’t done anything in a long time, that there was a lot of heat build up around the player. I ended up cutting big holes in the back of my entertainment center and it works fine now. Maybe you’re getting too much heat around your player?
I had some really strange problems with mine too. Sometimes it would stop in the middle of a movie and I couldn’t do anything with it, not turn off the power, open the caddie to get the disk out, crap sound and picture. After I cut a bigger hole it has all stopped.
I own over 200 DVDs. Number of bad ones I’ve bought = 0
I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve had two Sony players over the years and never had any problems.
Asterion kind of made my point. I have a Memorex dvd burner running dvd x gold software to cop dvd’s. Run the copy in the $79 Apex in the bedroom, no problem. Put in the $500 Philips home theater system, nothing. The price of the machine doesn’t mean shit in some cases.
Is it possible you’re renting pirated copies?
I’m also curious about this. Why would you include an ethnic slur in a rant about DVD quality? Are your literacy skills so feeble that insulting ethnic minorities is the pinnacle of your abilities? (Not to mention the gender bias of using “pussy” as a derogatory term in the title.) You’ve got more issues than poor DVDs.
$139 Samsung DVD player from Best Buy two years ago and I’ve had none of these problems. Geez.
(bolding mine)
I think he just forgot to capitalize, he meant “suck Major Ethnic Minority’s cock” ala SpaceBalls’ Major Asshole.
I got an Apex DVD player 2 Christmas’s (is that spelled right? I don’t need the apostrope cops after me!) ago. I rent and own tons of disks and have never had a problem with a single one.
They rock!
Oops! Forgot I was in the pit.
They fucking rock! 
<apostrophe police>Nope. Christmases. Plurals don’t take apostrophes. Not even if the word ends with an “s”, or a vowel, or is the name of a fruit or vegetable.</apostrophe police>
As regards the OP, I have a Pioneer DVD player, it is about 2 -3 years old and plays wonderfully, We rarely rent DVDs but own quite a few and we have not had a problem yet.
Ok, thanks officer! Looks like my next DVD purchase should be some elementary school English lessons.
Which I will then watch on my rocking DVD player!
Did I mention it rocks?
Renting from blockbuster and silverscreen some dvds are messed up, about 90% work perfectly. When the DVDs were bought off amazon, didn’t have a single problem. I’d guess my family owns around 30-40 DVDs, none of them have ever had an error.
Where the hell are you guys buying your DVDs?
Homebrew, I need clarification here. I thought the Pit was were you went to really rant and vent about something. Why not include vague insults? all he said was minority cock. If he’s logging in from Saudi Arabia/Iran/China this would mean white cock. Get a grip and toughen up the old skin man
Why not go to a DVD rental place that makes sure their stuff stays in good condition? Some places will impose penalties on renters who return DVDs all banged up, for instance.
Have you considered Netflix?