Some months ago I bought all the DVDs of Curb Your Enthusiasm on sale. Now that I finally opened one I find that having removed the shrink wrap I can’t open the case. It has pictures of red and green padlocks but I can’t work out what to do.
Surely this isn’t an antitheft device or am I meant to unwrap every DVD I buy in the shop so that they can unlock it for me?
It is an anti-theft device. I had one on my Casino Royale DVD, dammit. They’re supposed to remove it at the store where you bought it.
It’s a fiddly slip of plastic that’s held in place with tiny magnets. If you have strong magnets you may be able to fiddle around with it to unlock it. But I had to wrench it out using a blade, which wasn’t pretty, and potentially could’ve caused damage to the disc (or myself) if I slipped.
In the end my case was a bit twisted, but the disc was fine, but it took me about 20 minutes to do it.
Take it back to where you bought it and ask them to unlock it for you. As GuanoLad said, it’s an anti-theft device that the store should have disabled for you when you purchased it.
At work we had ones that jammed and wouldn’t unlock, and we resorted to forcing the cases open. It does usually result in a certain amount of breakage, at least to the case (fortunately, they jam infrequently, and we only usually resort to this if we’re down to the very last unit).
Take the receipt as well if you have it.
I bought a shirt at a place that uses the big tags as antitheft. Got it home and found they hadn’t removed it. I tried getting it off and succeeded, but not before damaging the shirt.
Thanks for the answers.
Of course I don’t have a receipt I bought them months ago but I will take them back and simply, in a nice way, force the staff to unlock them. Well they won’t want me smashing the cases open in front of other customers will they?
But I have to ask - why is the antitheft device INSIDE the shrinkwrap??
Who unwraps DVDs before buying them? What if they are gifts - do your giftees think they are getting your used DVDs?
I’d suggest calling ahead or something to let them know you’re bringing in a previously-purchased DVD that they need to unlock, so that they don’t think you just grabbed it in-store, since you don’t have a receipt.
It sounds like the store shrinkwrapped a used copy of the DVD, and forgot to remove the security device before doing so. Was the DVD sold as new?
Hmm, I only have the 5th season on DVD, but it’s a weird case. You have to pull down on the bottom of the packaging like a drawer, and one disc pulls out from the bottom, and the 2nd pops up from the top.
It’s this kind of case: http://www.packagedesignmag.com/issues/2005.05/spot-innov-cd-case.shtml
It operates by magnets, so it’s easy to unlock without touching the shrinkwrap. This particular device is part of the case made by the packaging company, not an addition by the store.
Now I’m curious; is this an Australian thing? Or have I just mercifully missed out on encountering these devices here in the US?
And I thought the shrink wrap WAS the anti-theft device. God knows it’s hard as hell to get off (and CDs are even worse).
I know magnets would destroy the movie on a VHS. Would they not harm the e-content of a dvd?
No, a DVD has the content scratched into a groove, exactly like an LP record of yore. It’s not magnetically stored.