[mythtv-users] Many new dvd's not working

[bhaskins]

Glenn Sommer wrote:
> 2010/7/10 Brian Wood <beww at beww.org>:
>   
>> On Saturday, July 10, 2010 08:37:48 am Simon Hobson wrote:
>>     
>>> Brian J. Murrell wrote:
>>>       
>>>>  > I
>>>>         
>>>>>  suspect it's some new stupid copy protection scheme that simply makes
>>>>>  life miserable for people legitimately renting or buying movies...
>>>>>           
>>>> Indeed.  FWUI, they master the DVDs in violation of the DVD standards
>>>> just enough to trip up DVD-ROM drives (and software) but not enough to
>>>> trip up bona fide DVD players.  If my understanding is correct, I'm not
>>>> sure why DVD-ROM drives/software can't just be more like DVD players,
>>>> but TBH, I don't really understand the details.
>>>>
>>>>  > Is there a workaround?
>>>>
>>>> The only workaround I know of (which I am not advocating) is to stop
>>>> renting/buying DVDs and obtain your material elsewhere where it's not
>>>> encumbered by this stupidity.
>>>>         
>>> Better still, take it back as faulty and demand a refund.
>>>
>>> Is there any "test suite" available that we could run against a disk
>>> to verify it conforms to the rule book for DVDs ? If so, then run
>>> that, and if it's non-compliant I'd also complain to Trading
>>> Standards that the supposed DVDs are not "as described" - a key
>>> requirement in UK consumer law.
>>>
>>> The key thing is that "just not buying them" won't hurt anyone
>>> because the volumes we'd not buy wouldn't even be a rounding error in
>>> the statistics. But returns cost the whole chain dear, and if we
>>> could get just one prosecution under consumer protection law for
>>> mislabelled "DVD"s then it would raise the profile of what's going
>>> on. Especially if there was a concerted effort to target one large
>>> chain (such as Walmart in the US) such that they decided it wasn't
>>> profitable to stock the output from one studio - now that would get
>>> the studio's attention.
>>>       
>> A problem with some of these recent "protection" schemes is that they have significant "collateral damage", many
>> "legitimate" DVD players won't play the new disks. They count on the fact that most people won't figure out what's
>> happening, and perhaps blame their "old" player.
>>
>> If people started to return players to the store, complaining that they won't play certain disks, that might get
>> "Walmart's" attention even more than disk returns.
>>
>> But handling a return on a disk that has a profit margin of pennies is a losing proposition for a retailer, a great "stone
>> in the shoe". Good idea.
>>
>>     
>
> I've seen this issue in several DVDs rented in blockbuster! 
Did you try, and were you able to get your rental fee refunded?
I have only rented about three DVDs so far this year and they
happened to play on even my oldest systems without any problems.
I did complain! about the poor sound quality on one of them ( Avitar ).
> :(
> The ONLY workaround I've found is to use VLC on a Windows machine...
> For some odd reason, that seems less sensible to the "broken" DVD
> formats... :(
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