What's wrong with these DVDs?

Factual Questions
1

Within the last year I got two DVDs which do not play. One is Unbreakable, the other a collection of Deep Space Nine. When the DVDs are inserted into my player, they will freeze, hang for long periods of time, hiccup, and eventually crash. I will have to turn off the DVD player to get them out of the machine.

Neither works at all in my computer’s built-in DVD player, either. DVD players in my house: 0 for 2.

When I discovered that Deep Space Nine wasn’t playing I took it back and had it replaced. The replacement behaves the same way.

I took it to a friend’s house and put it in his 5-disc DVD changer: works fine.

All other DVDs work just fine in both players, and neither player has exhibited a deterioration in playability in the last year.

What’s the deal? Is this some kind of new DVD writing format which is incompletely compatible with older players? Are the DVDs themselves bad? Do I just need a new player?

2

Sounds like a problem with your DVD player. What model do you have?

And are the DVDs marked as different in any way? Superbit or anything like that?

3

It doesn’t say Superbit. The most I can find is something which says, “Dual layer format: layer transition may trigger a slight pause” on the Unbreakable DVD.

In a cursory look, I can’t find that on any other DVDs lying close to hand.

The DVD player (hooked up to the TV) says it’s an Apex AD-500B.

4

Most movie DVDs are dual-layer; all DVD-players should be able to play them. If there’s a warning on the DVD, maybe that means the DVD’s authors knew they were playing close to the edge of some spec?

5

Sunspace, I have that warning on a number of DVDs and none of them have had this issue. Or rather, I have had DVDs freeze on me, but it hasn’t been repeatable across devices, and has not seemed to be tied to the DVDs being dual-layer.

It’s really odd that the problem is common between your DVD player and your PC’s DVD drive. Have you tried cleaning your DVD player? That’s been one cause of freezing for me.

6

I used to sell DVD players. A lot of people asked why they should spend more money on a name brand like Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic instead of buying the cheaper Apex, Shinsonic, Minitek.
A lot of them didn’t believe me when I told them the cheaper players were returned more frequently because they had problems with certain DVDs.