I have on several occasions gotten ticked when my DVD player freezes on one spot and falls flat on it's face due to the disk being dirty or worn out, requiring me to eject, clean, and re-insert the movie, then having to FF back to the area right after it, and sometimes the player will freeze up again because it got stuck on the messed up area during FF.
I think it's the way the player handles losing the signal from the disk. It seems as though it actually stops the laser moving and tries to re- establish focus on the same area that it can't read, ignoring your pressing of the FF or REW button, because once it "freezes" it stays frozen until you stop and/or remove the disk, reguardless of how long it sits, even if that's the only area of the disk that can't be read! If the laser were moving AT ALL it would eventually find some playable footage.
I don't mean to bash DVDs, but I remember VHS players being less picky about the playability of the tape. The only thing that would cause a tape player to stop dead in it's tracks is if
1. the tape actually ripped while it was playing
2. Some sort of malfunction, or a tape that has seen far better days, resulted in tape salad
3. someone unplugged it :D
Anything short of an "epic failure" such as tape salad would be ignored by the VHS player (but maybe not by you) and it would just keep on moving along
I think that if the player loses the signal, it should try to re-focus for a few seconds, then "bump" the laser ahead a smidge-about 30 seconds of video worth-and then try to re-focus there.
After all, as long as the disk is spinning at a constant speed, which it should be unless the player is broken, and there is anything "beyond" the anomaly that CAN be read, it should eventually be able to find it. If it is unable to find anything readable after about a minute of repeating the above routine, it will search for the next "chapter marker" and if it can't find any chapter markers anywhere beyond the "unplayable zone" which would realistically only happen if the disk had some pretty major damage or contamination, the TV screen will turn blue and say "The disk could not be read. Please clean the disk and try again." and the screen on the front of the player will say "dISC Err"
I believe that this would allow it to play very old, heavily used rental disks-even those from blockbuster-pretty much anything that hasn't been used as a frisbee or dropped in a pool-- Dickcheney6, Apr 26 2009 I too am very tired of digital devices designed with little or no thought given to the actual use of the product. Is this mandated? I would be brand loyal to any DVD player that would let me defeat the "operation prohibited by disk" coding. I ain't lettin no plastic disk boss me roun'. Makes me want to smash things. ARRRRR. What are we going to see, or hear, when the disk player goes ahead and tries to read that scratch? Is it really that bad? I mean it better be fatal because AGGGRGRG! And you can bet that going back to the beginning of the disk IS NOT GOING TO SATISFY ME. NO! I WANT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE SCRATCH YOU B1t{#e$ !!!. Prissy POS is going to find out what a real "disk error is when i drop kick it out my second story window. JUST AS SOON AS SOMEBODY MAKES A BETTER PRODUCT. I WILL NOT BUY AN EXPENSIVE HD PLAYER, I WILL STEAL MY MOVIES. I HAVE BEEN PUSHED OVER THE EDGE.-- WcW, Apr 27 2009 "I would be brand loyal to any DVD player that would let me defeat the "operation prohibited by disk" coding. I ain't lettin no plastic disk boss me roun'."
What that probably means is that if you're trying to turn on the captions, it is telling you that the disk does not have them recorded on it-not all disks have captions on them. the same goes for changing the audio track language.
If you're talking about skipping the anti-piracy warning, the disk is probably set up so that you cant skip that so that anyone thinking about copying the movie *and selling the copies* may reconsider. (it is legal to copy things FOR YOUR OWN PERSONAL USE, like maybe copying just the parts you want, etc etc.) film makers lose sales when people copy things and sell them for their own profits without sharing them with the studios, so they'll do all they can to stop it! :D
Also, it's not as though the VCR stops trying to do anything when it reaches an "anomally"on the disk. what happens that causes the VCR to get stuck is that the machine seems to stop moving the laser forward, and fruitlessly try to re-focus on the area that is scratched up. Either that, or the tracking gets thrown off somehow by "major" errors. After hopelessly trying to refocus ON THE SAME AREA that it can't focus on for a certain amount of time, the VCR says "disk error" or "please eject the disk and try again"-- Dickcheney6, Apr 28 2009 I don't care about trying to access data not on the disk, I just want want to be able to fast forward through the non-content BS that the studio wants to force me to watch. Forcing the end user to watch a "don't pirate this" advertisement that would be deleted from a pirated movie or that could at least be skipped is simply insulting. i don't care that the designers of the disk may desire me to sit through a lecture about. What next? An series of audible advertisements that i cannot mute? Consider what allowing the "disk" to dictate what functions of the player can be used says about the consumer. Would you accept a car radio that played advertisements for the newest car audio before it would let you hear the news? What about a browser that wouldn't let you change your home-page? My DVD player wasn't free, why should it be programmed to do the will of the studio rather than the command of my remote control? WHY? THERE'S NO GOOD REASON. NONE.-- WcW, Apr 28 2009 "My DVD player wasn't free, why should it be programmed to do the will of the studio rather than the command of my remote control? WHY? THERE'S NO GOOD REASON. NONE."
Yet another reason I miss VHS tapes.-- Dickcheney6, May 03 2009 Such distractions as anti-piracy warnings are there to allow us to brew a nice pot of tea before the film starts.-- Aristotle, May 03 2009 //Yet another reason I miss VHS tapes//That, and the 240 line resolution?-- AbsintheWithoutLeave, May 03 2009 "That, and the 240 line resolution?"
No-the main things that I sometimes miss about VHSs are 1. the machines didn't freeze and keep trying to read the same area that can't be read when a well-worn movie is being played
2. It didn't matter as much if they weren't kept in their cases, because they couldn't really get scratched unless the front "tape protection cover" was missing which I've never even seen happen.
One DISadvantage however is that an "epic failure" could result in tape salad, but this only really happened if your VCR was broken or, in some cases, even due to a very very worn tape-it may have gotten sticky gunk on it, either from mishandling or just because it was old, which caused it to stick to things in your VCR and make a big mess!-- Dickcheney6, May 29 2009 random, halfbakery