So I went out and got this movie (Hostel) that I was curious to see, but it won’t play on either of my PCs.
I don’t own a TV or a DVD player - I prefer movies to TV generally and for those TV shows that I do want to see, I’ll wait and get them when they come out on DVD. This system has worked fine for me until now: Hostel refuses to play on either my computer (that I built; one Samsung DVD-ROM, one Sony DVD±RW) or on my laptop from work (Dell D610). I can watch all the previews and get to the main menu, but when I hit ‘Play’, all I see is a black screen; I tried (several times, to just skip the first track, but it skips to track 26 (the last one, so I know how the movie ends). I can read the file structure of the DVD on the computer without any prblem, though the individual tracks won’t play (I don’t remember the error message). I took it over to a friend’s place and tried it there (on a DVD player/TV setup) and I didn’t get any problems. I’ve a sneaking suspicion that this has something to do with an over-zealous copy protection scheme.
Is there anything I can do to watch my movie, or do I just need to take it back and forget about watching it ?
*Hostel * is known to have substantial anti-copying mechanisms from Sony. Yes, the same Sony that secretly installs rookits. Ignore that. You’re not trying to copy it - you just want to watch it.
Take the DVD back and demand your money back because you were sold a defective disc that does not work in your DVD player.
It’s the anti-copying software. Component DVD players will treat it as an error and skip over it, but PC based drives will hiccup. There are solutions, but they involve using a DVD ripping software to remove the copy protection mechanisms and extract the file to hard disk as playable VOB files, and that would be wrong.
So if I want to watch it, I’ll have to pirate a DVD I bought and paid for? That’s a great move on Sony’s part. Sigh. I guess I’ll just return it. Fortuneatly, the place I bought it from has a pretty customer-friendly return policy.
