# DVD player question - shouldn't they save your place? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 1, 2016, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvd-player-question-shouldnt-they-save-your-place/744801 "2016-02-01T00:56:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2016, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvd-player-question-shouldnt-they-save-your-place/744801/1 "2016-02-01T00:56:00Z")
Just got a new Blu-Ray player and it’s doing something strange. It doesn’t save my place. I got my first DVD player about 15 years ago. If I was watching a movie and stopped in the middle, turned it off completely (but still plugged in) and started it up again at a later time it would resume from where I left off. This new player doesn’t seem to do that. It always starts as if the disc was being put in for the first time. Is this normal? Or do I need to tweak settings somewhere? ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2016, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvd-player-question-shouldnt-they-save-your-place/744801/2 "2016-02-01T01:06:50Z")
If you had to guess, would you say this was a cheap, middle-of-the-road, or high-end blu-ray player? If you got a terrific deal on a brand you’ve never seen before, they might have cut a few corners to break even. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2016, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvd-player-question-shouldnt-they-save-your-place/744801/3 "2016-02-01T01:13:49Z")
We did this within the last 6-8 months & there were some good answers. Try searching. I am clueless about DVDs. What I recall reading in the thread is there are two different internal file formats that are commonly used to record Blu-rays. For one of them there’s no way to restart in the middle. For the other there is. So how the player behaves depends on the disc. Or something like that. [hijack]Did you survive working the blizzard OK? I was on days off for the whole mess. Then everybody who was IROPS was scrambling to make up before month-end so I coasted on reserve to the end of the month. Yaay me! [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![GreenElf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@GreenElf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenElf)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2016, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvd-player-question-shouldnt-they-save-your-place/744801/4 "2016-02-01T03:36:50Z")
Sometimes they can be quirky. My portable DVD player saves in place if I directly turn it off but restarts at the beginning if I press the stop button before turning it off. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2016, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvd-player-question-shouldnt-they-save-your-place/744801/5 "2016-02-01T17:49:41Z")
Yup, my first DVD player would not only save your place when you stopped, it would save your place on discs you removed as well, so that you could restart from the place you left off any time you put the disc back into the player (not sure how many discs it would remember like that, last 20 comes to mind for some reason). If you actually _wanted_ to start from the beginning, you had to hit the stop button twice to force it to forget the last location. Blu-Ray discs, though, seem to like doing a “fresh boot” every time you start the player up, which is kinda sad. It’s another example of new technology losing functionality. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2016, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvd-player-question-shouldnt-they-save-your-place/744801/6 "2016-02-01T18:51:06Z")
Here’s **Peremensoe’s** answer from a previous thread: > [@Blu-ray players can't "resume"?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blu-ray-players-cant-resume/739739/6): > > The problem is with the subset of Bluray discs that play the movie through their integrated Java software, rather than through the player’s own hardware. If this really annoys you, watch out for any discs indicated as “BD-J,” “Bonus View,” or “BD Live.” Having both a player and a disc that supports Java gives you some fancy extra features, like video commentary in a picture-in-picture. But it also prevents the player hardware from saving a simple resume-point like it does for DVD and non-Java Bluray. You may be able to save a bookmark from the menu instead. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2016, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvd-player-question-shouldnt-they-save-your-place/744801/7 "2016-02-01T18:57:34Z")
I have an older but high-end Pioneer Blu-Ray player. It saves my place on DVDs. It does not for Blu-Ray discs. Don’t know how that fits with post #6. I have played dozens of Blu-Ray discs and never once has it been able to save the place. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Mapp](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miss_mapp/32/369_2.png) [@Miss\_Mapp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Mapp)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2016, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvd-player-question-shouldnt-they-save-your-place/744801/8 "2016-02-01T20:22:57Z")
Some do and some don’t. My current Region 1 player (which only plays DVD from the US) doesn’t remember a thing, but I did have previous ones that would start again at the point where we’d stopped. My Region Free player (which plays DVD from all over the world) on the other hand, is very cool; I can stop a DVD and pop it out, play other DVDs, and then put the first DVD back in, and it picks up right where we left off. I haven’t tested how long it remembers, but I’ve come back to a movie weeks later and the player still knows where it stopped the last time I played it. ---
**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2016, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dvd-player-question-shouldnt-they-save-your-place/744801/9 "2016-02-01T22:43:22Z")
> [@Max\_Torque](#): > > Blu-Ray discs, though, seem to like doing a “fresh boot” every time you start the player up, which is kinda sad. It’s another example of new technology losing functionality. Ugh, that really grinds my gears. I think most people would consider me politically liberal. But if there’s one thing I’m really freakin’ conservative about, it’s this sort of thing. I’m so sick of products and technology being “improved” to the point that they don’t work anymore. I wish we were more incremental and careful in this area. I feel like William F. Buckley, standing athwart the progress of technology saying… well, not stop, but SLOW DOWN!!!