I recently bought the Sledge Hammer! Season 1 DVD set. I enjoyed the first couple of episodes, but then my DVD player refused to play anything after the third episode.
I assumed it was a defective disk, so I returned it to the store and got another one. Same problem.
The symptoms are: When I select the first, second, or third episode from the second menu, it plays normally, but if I try to choose anything after the third, the machine just freezes. I can usually hit the menu or stop button and get back to normal. But I can’t get to those later episodes. Using the “chapter up” button doesn’t work. They’re just not available. The same thing on all the disks in the set.
So I came to the conclusion that the DVD player (actually it’s a recorder-- RCA DRC 8000N) was malfunctioning. I checked out another DVD (Simpsons Season 1) and it seemed to do the same thing, only on the chapter selection, not the episode selection (which on that disk is on the second menu).
I was about to take it to the repair shop, but as I was carrying it out to the car, I thought that maybe I should just check and make sure the problem happens consistently on more than just the two or three disks I had tried. (Especially since the shop had said they had a backlog of 3-4 weeks!)
Sure enough, when I get it back inside, I can’t find any other disks that do the same thing. Several movies and other TV series disks work fine, and show no sign of the problem. (I haven’t had a chance to try the Sledge Hammer disks on another player yet.)
So could it be that the Sledge Hammer disks (at least the batch at my Best Buy store) were defective? Or perhaps weren’t authored properly? Are there incompatibilities in authoring software that could cause this?
I don’t think there’s much point in exchanging the disks at the Best Buy again. Should I complain to the distributor/manufacturer? Or will they just blame my machine?
I have two DVDs that act oddly. Death Race 2000 flips to the chapter selection after the end of each chapter. The Postman (don’t laugh, I got it with 3 other DVDs at a damn good deal) always shows captions. I can’t turn them off.
I have 3 DVD players in the house (two of one model, one of another) and I get the same thing on each.
Yeah, bad discs are out there. And yes, you can call the manufacturer and they’ll probably blame your machine - much like how your ISP always blames the modem manufacturer or Microsoft - but they usually will replace the discs anyway.
I have the Sledgehammer set, too. It seems to be rather flakily programmed. I didn’t have your exact problem, though. Mine tends to default to the commentary tracks for some reason. It also does some other strange things that escape my memory at the moment, but still manages to be watchable.
Mine default to the commentary, too. I didn’t get around to mentioning that.
If you remember what problems you had with Sledge Hammer, that might help me if I decide to contact the manufacturer. In the meantime, I’m still planning to try them on another player.
just a suggestion (might not be worth anything, but figured Id mention it anyway) check to see what sort of anti copying security the dvd’s use. Ive heard of various problems related to that. Playback being unreliable, odd, inoperable due to antipiracy techniques interfering with player operation. If the DVDs are newly manufactured this might be a cause.
I don’t know if it is still a major problem, but there used to be long lists of DVD players that wouldn’t play certain DVDs. The issue was the firmware (software) in the DVD player that interpreted the programs contained on the DVD. There were enough fuzzy areas in the specifications for DVDs, outright bugs in player software and poorly authored DVDs, that this was a common problem. Many times it could be fixed by upgrading the firmware in the player to a newer version. Some DVDs were noted for causing problems because the programs on the DVD actually used all of the features that were supposed to be supported by any DVD player that conformed to the DVD specification. This would uncover any bugs in the DVD player firmware.