DVD on speed? (No, not amphetamines!)

A couple months ago I bought a DVD player. Since it’s primarily for use on those weekends when my children are with me, and I’m not exactly a conoisseur, I went for the lower end–specifically, an Apex AD-1500. And I saw that it was good.

Until I bought the Cats DVD, and experienced something very odd (to me, at least): while The Making of Cats sounds perfectly fine, the musical itself plays very . . . very . . . slowly. To the point where I can’t bear to watch it. I checked the rest of my extensive DVD collection (3), and couldn’t tell any difference; but then, I didn’t have anything to check them against.

Since this only happens on part of one disc, I’m (fairly) certain that it’s a problem with the disc itself. Still, I’d like to make (fairly) certain before Apex’s generous 90-day warranty runs out. Which leads to my question: I know that there are discs available that allow one to check and balance the unit’s audio; is there anything available to check the drive speed?

Any and all info, suggestions, &c. muchly(!) appreciated.

Thanks,

O

all DVD players have these sort of problems. a general rule is the cheaper players (like apex) have more problems than the expensive ones. But even the $500 players will occasionally do this. BTw, I love my $99 Apex, but it acts up sometimes.

If you bought the DVD at Blockbuster or some other store, they would probably be willing to play it on one of their units to see if the disk is the problem. This would let you know whether it was your player or not.

I have a $300 DVD player, and although it has never had your particular problem, it has its own quirks. Sometimes it pixellates sections of the picture for a few seconds, and a couple of times it has refused to recognize a disk, one which my PS2 played with no problems. I think they all have some personality defects.