DVD not playing

[zcacogp]

Chaps,

Quickie.

I was given a DVD the other day. (Discovery H&L entitled "A car is born - Pilgrim Sumo 5.7 litre V8 Super-Car.")

I don't have a DVD player to play DVD's on the TV, but do have a DVD player on my PC. So I loaded it in, and it played to 1/2 way through and froze. And has done so at the same point every subsequent time as well. Most annoying.

BUT I tried it in a friend's DVD player last night and it worked fine (so I got to see the end of it!)

Why did it stop playing on my machine? It always plays up to the same point, and then won't play anything afterwards. (Subsequent "chapters" refuse to play as well.) The drive is a Samsung DVD reader, CD RW "Combo", about 18 months old, and the software is PowerDVD, which came with it.

Any ideas?


Oli.

[Zad]

Hmm, maybe for some reason the reader can only read 1 layer of the DVD? Lots of manufactured DVDs are dual layer now.

Mike

[zcacogp]

Mike, thanks for the post.

I doubt it, as it has played other DVD's without problems before. (Of significant length - films etc.)

If it could only read one side, what sort of play time would that give?


Oli.

[Zad]

Difficult to say to be honest as they can vary the encoding rate. A friend of mine has had various problems with DVDs (almost all from BBC Enterprises) either refusing to play or playing half-way-ish and then stalling on his PC but playing ok on a standalone player. I suppose it could be some obscure player BIOS bug, or some infuriating copy protection they use on the disc.

Mike

[zcacogp]

Zad said:

Difficult to say to be honest as they can vary the encoding rate. A friend of mine has had various problems with DVDs (almost all from BBC Enterprises) either refusing to play or playing half-way-ish and then stalling on his PC but playing ok on a standalone player. I suppose it could be some obscure player BIOS bug, or some infuriating copy protection they use on the disc. Mike

Mike,

Thanks again. It sounds very like your friend is having similar problems to me.

If he ever gets an answer, yet me know!


Oli.