# Why do certain DVDs lose audio when using the "resume" feature?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-certain-dvds-lose-audio-when-using-the-resume-feature/462352>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 6, 2008, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-certain-dvds-lose-audio-when-using-the-resume-feature/462352 "2008-09-06T16:22:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\
**Post date:** [September 6, 2008, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-certain-dvds-lose-audio-when-using-the-resume-feature/462352/1 "2008-09-06T16:22:14Z")

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What happens: I’ll turn on the DVD player\* to pick up watching from the day before. The “resume” feature allows me to hit “play” a couple of times to bring me back to where I was. On most DVDs, it works perfectly, but on others, it will start playing without any audio. In order to get the sound back, I have to “re-read” the DVD and go through the menus again. Sometimes, I have to remove the DVD from the player and reload it to get the audio.

This only happens on 10% of the DVDs that I watch. The DVDs that work fine _always_ work fine, the ones that lose the audio _always_ do it. What causes this strange problem?

\*Phillips DVD711

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**Author:** ![groman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/73ab20/32.png) [@groman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/groman)\
**Post date:** [September 6, 2008, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-certain-dvds-lose-audio-when-using-the-resume-feature/462352/2 "2008-09-06T17:34:57Z")

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> [@blondebear](#):
>
> This only happens on 10% of the DVDs that I watch. The DVDs that work fine _always_ work fine, the ones that lose the audio _always_ do it. What causes this strange problem?

I would guess a bug in the firmware of the DVD player. There are many differences between DVDs, and perhaps something about that 10% of the DVDs has some property that triggers that particular problem in the firmware.

I am guessing the player goes into sleep mode overnight, and the audio playing unit cannot recover (or recovers improperly) because of a particular property of the audio track on those DVDs.

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**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\
**Post date:** [September 6, 2008, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-certain-dvds-lose-audio-when-using-the-resume-feature/462352/3 "2008-09-06T18:36:44Z")

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Same thing with my first DVD player, a Hitachi P305. And yep, it’s damned annoying.

It sometimes also made a lot of disc-spinning noise on playback, enough so I’d sometimes raise the volume to cover it up. Arrgh.

And yet I’m still holding onto it as a backup… hey, you never know.