Over the years we have purchased quite a few DVD players and VCRS. Of late, our DVDs will not play on some DVD players, some DVD players will only play some DVDS, some will not play any DVDs at all. Same with our VCRS … tapes recorded on one VCR will not play on another.
Yes, we know all about tracking. Been at it awhile, as I said.
Used to be, you bought a VCR, it worked fine for a couple of years, and then fell apart, so you bought another, which also worked fine. VCR tapes recorded on one VCR played just fine on another, at most you had to adjust the tracking a bit.
DVDs NEVER worked that well, in our experience, DVDs tend to play one one player and not on another, and always have been like that. (Yes, I know about regions, all our DVDS are purchased in the US.) DVD players just seem incredibly shoddy compared to VCRs, even low-end VCRs from the 1990s.
Are there VCR players and DVD players that work reliably, at least for a couple of years? Are others experiencing these sorts of problems? I’m wondering what the hell is going on here, because it’s getting to the point that we can’t use the damn things at all.
I haven’t had any DVD playback problems, but I don’t have a large DVD collection. Do your DVDs have scratches? Do you hold them along their edges and store them in their cases or are they in standard Blockbuster Video condition?
I’ve been using my current DVD player for over 5 years. It’s never refused to play a pressed disc, ever. Every once in a while it gives me some guff with something I burned, but even that’s rare.
Huh? I’ve never had a DVD player refuse to play a disc unless the disc itself was damaged (easy to check - big scratch or crack in the disc). What kinds of DVD players are you buying? Mine have been a mix of Sony and Samsung, nothing special, just usually the mid-priced ones at Target or Best Buy.
The only problem I ever had playing pressed DVDs, on any player, was an HDCP issue rather than a disc issue - I had an Xbox 360 and an older ,non-HDCP tv hooked up via HDMI. The Xbox 360 can upscale DVDs via HDMI but requires HDCP -so when I tried to play a CSSed dvd it would just give me a black screen. Burned DVDs with CSS removed played fine. The solution was to hook the xbox 360 up over component - which causes the DVDs to be output at 480p instead of being upscaled, but has no possible HDCP problems.
If that is your issue you would have to have both an upscaling DVD player of some kind plus an HDMI tv without HDCP (usually an older TV).
Edit to add - I believe the expected behavior over HDMI with no HDCP is just supposed to be 480p output, but for whatever reason that didn’t happen.
What the OP describes hasn’t been my experience. I’m currently on my second VCR and second DVD player, both of which I’ve had for somewhere around 10 years, and both of which seem to work as well as they ever have (aside from their remote controls having lost some resposiveness)—though, admittedly, they, especially the VCR, haven’t gotten everyday use of late.
WAG: Could dust be gunking up the works of your machines? Do you or someone you live with smoke? Have you tried using a head cleaner on your VCR or a laser lens cleaner on your DVD player?
a Samsung DVR VR 376
an Emerson EWD71V53KV/F7 (I think, the numbers were upside down and dimly lit)
and a Philco DVD 3315 (the other two are DVD-VHS players, the Philco is a DVD player only
My wife’s basic interest in recording is time shifting episodes of Perry Mason to an hour she can watch them. A straight up DVR would probably do the trick, but we are not interested in subscription DVRs like Tivo.
Samsung does have firmware updates for their products. But I couldn’t find the exact model number, are you sure it is correct? The closest model number I could find was DVD-VR375A
The process is very simple, you download the file, unzip it and burn it on a CD. Then you insert the CD into the DVD player and it starts the update process automatically.
But first make sure the model number is correct, else the player might get bricked.
Note that some companies, Disney in particular, will throw in a bunch of stuff into the stream of DVDs to make ripping them slightly harder. All of which is supposed to still be playable on a standard DVD player. But not everyone implements things the way they are supposed to. Companies cut corners, make mistakes, etc. all the time.
So a few DVDs (esp. newer ones) may not play on some players (esp. older ones).
Good DVD player makers recognize this problem and have software updates for their machines. Burn a special DVD, run it a certain way on your player, it’s updated.
Note that Blu-Ray players are designed to not play new discs if a hole is found in the encryption scheme and DVD makers start issuing discs with new codes on them. Then you have to have an update to your player. Conversely, a new player may not play an old disc if the code on the disc has been revoked.
If you record something on one VCR and can’t play it back on another, them’s the breaks. VCRs drift out of spec over time. If two machines drift in different directions, then you have a problem. Try recording at the fastest (shortest recording time) speed that will hold the program. A good hand cleaning of the tape paths might help if you know someone who has that skill.