Certain dvds will not play-on any computer,via any dvd player,usin

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Quite simply put, I know of at least two movies, brand new, manufactured
releases, not ripped and burned, that will not play on any of the five
computers in my house which use XP.
I have three completely separate dvd drives hooked up to one of these
computers, one of which is less than a month old, and read and writes
dvd-dls, and none will recognize these discs.
I have tried returning them and getting different copies, but no other disc
of the same movie will be recognized, either more or less.
Two computers have SP2, three have SP1. None will play these discs;
according to other places I've asked for help, this is a OS problem.
I have no idea what the problem can be... drivers and playback software are
all updated as far as possible, and windows has retrieved all the updates it
supposedly needs.
 
How old are the DVD roms? Do they have the latest firmware?

| Quite simply put, I know of at least two movies, brand new, manufactured
| releases, not ripped and burned, that will not play on any of the five
| computers in my house which use XP.
| I have three completely separate dvd drives hooked up to one of these
| computers, one of which is less than a month old, and read and writes
| dvd-dls, and none will recognize these discs.
| I have tried returning them and getting different copies, but no other
disc
| of the same movie will be recognized, either more or less.
| Two computers have SP2, three have SP1. None will play these discs;
| according to other places I've asked for help, this is a OS problem.
| I have no idea what the problem can be... drivers and playback software
are
| all updated as far as possible, and windows has retrieved all the updates
it
| supposedly needs.
 
LaraPhoenix said:
Quite simply put, I know of at least two movies, brand new, manufactured
releases, not ripped and burned, that will not play on any of the five
computers in my house which use XP.
I have three completely separate dvd drives hooked up to one of these
computers, one of which is less than a month old, and read and writes
dvd-dls, and none will recognize these discs.
Click to expand...

What exactly do you mean by "does not recognise them"? Does Explorer or
Disk Management show no disc inserted?
I have tried returning them and getting different copies, but no other
disc
of the same movie will be recognized, either more or less.
Two computers have SP2, three have SP1. None will play these discs;
according to other places I've asked for help, this is a OS problem.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily.
I have no idea what the problem can be... drivers and playback software
are
all updated as far as possible, and windows has retrieved all the updates
it
supposedly needs.
Click to expand...

Does it actually have software that can play these discs? You may very
well need 3rd party software to do this, for example:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/bridgman02april15.mspx

http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/products/main_1_ENU.html

HTH
-pk
 
One, no, none of the players are set to foreign regions; all are region 1,
and all the discs are region 1.
The firmware on each is the latest version- that has not been created by a
third party. (I.E., there exist private party created firmware updates, but I
am hesitant to try them)
Explorer does not recognize them. The disc player spins and spins, but
eventually just gives up. Even after it finishes spinning, explorer does not
find a disc.
"Please insert a disc into the drive."

I have never used Media Player to play dvds; I prefer WinDvd, which is fully
updated and has no problem with much more recent discs- cf, Hot Fuzz, just
released last week.

I have a dvd collection of over five hundred titles, and these all work in
all these players, it is just these two which utterly refuse to work.

Like I said before, these are brand new manufactured releases, not rips. And
no matter how many different versions of the discs I get, I can never play
them. That's the part that really boogles my mind.
I could understand if they were bootlegs, or used, or just one bad disc.
But.....?
 
LaraPhoenix said:
One, no, none of the players are set to foreign regions; all are region 1,
and all the discs are region 1.
The firmware on each is the latest version- that has not been created by a
third party. (I.E., there exist private party created firmware updates,
but I
am hesitant to try them)
Explorer does not recognize them. The disc player spins and spins, but
eventually just gives up. Even after it finishes spinning, explorer does
not
find a disc.
"Please insert a disc into the drive."
Click to expand...

These discs are apparently not being read by the drives, at the hardware
level, below the OS.
I have never used Media Player to play dvds; I prefer WinDvd, which is
fully
updated and has no problem with much more recent discs- cf, Hot Fuzz, just
released last week.

I have a dvd collection of over five hundred titles, and these all work in
all these players, it is just these two which utterly refuse to work.
Click to expand...

OK, I was not clear on whether other discs worked in these drives.
Like I said before, these are brand new manufactured releases, not rips.
And
no matter how many different versions of the discs I get, I can never play
them. That's the part that really boogles my mind.
Click to expand...

That would more likely indicate a manufacturing flaw or "feature". You're
probably taking samples from one production run. When you say "version",
do you really mean that you took the disc back to the store and got another
*copy*? These should be identical, all came off the same line within a
few minutes of each other from the same master. Manufacturing defects
often affect entire runs, not single units, especially with products like
this.
I could understand if they were bootlegs, or used, or just one bad disc.
But.....?
Click to expand...

But several discs which behave differently from others on several players,
but are consistent within one production run, indicate either a flaw with
the mastering/manufacturing process or some sort of unadvertised data
protection scheme. It does not indicate a problem with your PCs or
Windows, particularly when other discs are read.

As a final test, try one in a Mac, just to see if it's recognised there. If
it isn't, you can be absolutely sure it has nothing to do with XP or your
PCs.

Would suggest that you contact the reseller, distributor, manufacturer.
As noted elsewhere, for a disc to carry the DVD logo, it must play in all
types of DVD players. And as a tip, physical mail can get better results,
as there are legal requirements regarding delivery that simply don't apply
to email.

HTH
-pk
 
Like I said before, these are brand new manufactured releases, not rips. And
no matter how many different versions of the discs I get, I can never play
them.
Click to expand...

There have been stories of some manufacturers using shady tricks to try
to prevent bootleg copying.
From the manufacturers point of view the perfect DVD is one that would
play in any player that contained only read capabilities whilst failing
to play in any device which contains copying abilities.
The closest they can get to this is "Works in most DVD players; fails in
most PCs".
SONY had a celebrated case where one of its discs actually caused PC
systems to fail (it was a variant on a virus); they ended up in court
over that.

Perhaps you have an example of this. Have you searched the internet for
details on your title? You wouldn't be alone.
 
Here's where it gets weird: one of the dvds is Street Fighter, which I
believe, was released on dvd before the whole dvd piracy mania; and the other
is Tomorrow Never Dies. I've searched and the doesn't seemed to be any word
on a defective run of these discs.
Now, after my second failed attempt at owning Tomorrow never dies, I rented
it from Blockbuster- and it worked perfectly fine!

As you can guess, I've been reticent to try buying these online, since the
ones I get from Bestbuy and such don't wanna work. But if it is what you say
it might be, a defective release, the ones I get offline- say from Amazon or
something- might be from a different release and might work?

I don't know.
But when Casino Royale, with all its anti-piracy stuff, runs fine, I would
like to assume it's the discs and not my hardware/ OS.

Thanks!
 
One last thing- I finally did manage to get control of a dvd player - not a
dvd drive - and try to run street fighter on it. It would not find it there,
either. It kept trying to load, then displayed - on the tv - a message: no
media present. So I don't think it's copy-protection causing this.
I mean, I don't KNOW, but I think it isn't.
 
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