DVD compatability issues....

[Schrecken_Licht]

This past Christmas I purchased a DVD (of an old, hard to find movie) as a present for a friend, however, when he got it home it would not play on his DVD player. He said he got some kind of error from his player. I had bought the DVD on Ebay, and for a moment I thought I'd been had, even though the seller had excellent feedback.

I meant to contact the seller, but I had a lot going on around that time and he and I both forgot about it. So, I told him to bring the DVD with him when he came over again. I put the DVD in my computer DVD reader and it pops up the message "please insert a DVD into E:drive" . In other words, neither my friend's DVD player nor my computer can read this disk.

I had never heard of compatibility issues with DVDs from one country to the other until a couple weeks ago I read about Obama giving UK Prime Minister Brown a DVD collection, only to find that they were not compatible with the DVD players in the UK. So since this EBay seller was from the UK, I think that's what my problem is - not that I've been had but that this UK DVD won't play on my US DVD player. Gee, fool I am to think that all electronic media has been standardized worldwide....I thought this sort of thing had been resolved when VHS won out over Beta back in the early 80's!

So, since it's been way too long to take this issue up with the seller, do I have any options of being able to recover the movie that's on this DVD? Is there some sort of software that would allow me to transfer the film to my hard drive and then burn it to a DVD that will play in a US player? Or is it just not worth it? I spent less than $20 on the movie, incl. shipping, BTW. But it makes me mad that my friend couldn't enjoy his present + this movie is super hard to find and the only sellers selling it on DVD were in the UK.

 

[CoZZm0_AU]

What region is the DVD ? Its probably PAL instead of NTSC for a start which will cause a problem for your stand alone player. Usually regional coding issues and PAL/NTSC format issues aren't a problem on a PC though unless the drive is locked.

 

[nikokapo]

Try downloading DVD Shrink and make a full copy of it.

If not then let us know which movie you're talking about and I'll try to find it for you

 

[dr-ebert]

Gee, fool I am to think that all electronic media has been standardized worldwide....I thought this sort of thing had been resolved when VHS won out over Beta back in the early 80's!

Each DVD, and DVD Player, has something called a "region code". This was enforced by the big players in the movie field, like Sony. The purpose is simply to milk each market for maximum profit.

Did I say each player? Actually, many chinese ones ignore region codes. So the DVD makers created new DVDs that would "query" the player and refuse to play if they didn't get the correct response. So now there are players you can set to whichever code you want, as often as you want (the original standard allowed 5 changes, then the player would "lock" the last one forever). Note that this applies to both HW and SW players. Having an unlocked DVD-drive doesn't help you if WMP gets locked. Of course there's ways around that too...

However, your problem sounds more like the DVD isn't readable at all - I would expect some message if it's a region code issue. Is it a normal "pressed" DVD, or maybe a DVD-R or DVD-RW? Try cleaning it, especially in the center region where the table of contents is(carefully).

 

[nvmextc]

I get out of region DVD's all the time, to run them in your region you just need a program like DVDshrink or CloneDVD to copy it and the copy will be in the region specified in the settings. Also you can reprogramme the region on your player, but I don't like to do that. You can find mroe about that in google.

 

[Schrecken_Licht]

I asked my friend what error message he got from his DVD player and he said it said something like "disk not available".

Looking at the disk it looks just like a factory made DVD - there is no part on the back where it looks like someone burned it on a computer or something, like a pirated DVD. The label also looks factory-made - not a stick on like a home made DVD. Everything about it looks like a legit DVD... :-/
It also the name of some distributor company based in the UK on the packaging.

I don't know how old or what brand my friend's machine is, but I do know that my computer is close to 4 years old, give or take, so I'm thinking that may be part of my problem.

Last summer an acquaintance from Australia sent me a CD-ROM with slides he shot of an event we both attended. I had the same grief with this disk - my computer just could not read it. The guy sent my friend an identical disk and she had a heck of a time trying to find a computer that could read it. She finally found a fairly new computer at work that could read the disk.

I can try to use that DVD Shrink but not sure if that will help if my computer can't read the disk to begin with. Do you think if I get a new DVD burner (something I plan on getting anyway as my computer only has a DVD reader) that might be able to read it?

BTW the film is "Faster Pussycat - Kill! Kill! Kill!" My friend collects films featuring Sharon Tate, who was murdered by the Manson gang back in the late 60's. Apparently she had a small part in this film.

 

[dr-ebert]

Pressed DVDs are bright silver (from the aluminium layer), DVD-Rs are darkish purple (from the azo dye).

The computers age should not matter (mine's 6 years old now), but the age of the DVD drive might, especially if it's a burner that was used frequently - the lasers don't last forever (I killed my original DVD-writer by using cheap media from ebay). If that's the case, try it on a PC with a reasonably new DVD drive.

As long as your PC can't even read the disk, there isn't much you can do.

As mentioned, one or a few well (or rather badly) placed scratches near the center hole can destroy the TOC (table of contents) and render the whole disk unreadable and useless.

 

[Tech_Junkie]

You have a bad disk period. Your PC ROM should of read it no matter what region its set for. Unless its Blu-Ray or HD DVD.

BTW DVD Shrink does not correct the time lag between conversion of PAL and NTSC. There is a whole list of things you need to do to get a quality, correct conversion.  

If you want to copy a DVD just open the DVD in MY COMPUTER, cut and paste all the files to your PC, then use the DATA BURN option in your burner program to burn it on an equal sized disk. If you use the COPY option it will not work.