Sony! Crash and Burn!

[Nimby]

Am I alone in having endless problems playing Sony DVD hire films?

I find the DVD stops early in the titles and wont go any further.
Then I try every button on the remote and nothing happens.
So I have to eject and try again. Five or six times.
Finally the film starts and I have a chance to set audio, language and subtitles.
Can I get the Main Menu? No. I get pirate warnings and then trailers.
The menu button won't work. So it's back to eject and start all over again.

On Spiderman 3 it took the usual 15 minutes to get the film to play at all!
Then the trailers came on again and some childish Penguin cartoon crap started with a deafening roar in my rear channels and no dialogue!
I was lucky to have any speakers left by the time I reached the master volume control!

I paid £4 to watch this film! I have no problems at all with any other company except Sony.

I'm running a NAD T533 DVDP not some £30 box from the supermarket!

[nwgarratt]

Some DVD players have problems playing Sony/Columbia Tristar DVD's with their own copy protection on them. It tends to be only cheaper makes that can have problems and the discs don't atcually load. I wouldn't thought a NAD one would be affected.

Have you got any other Sony's such as Casino Royale or Ghost Rider?

Also, have you ever tried to play Disney (Buena Vista) ones?

[Nimby]

I don't usually buy films because I never want to see them again.
So I am the very last person on earth who would ever want to copy a DVD for that very reason.
Yet Sony penalises me for trying to watch a product only once for which I have paid my hard-earned money.

It always takes many attempts to watch Sony hire films but I have no problem at all with any other.

It completely ruins the watching experience!

Should I sue Sony or take this to the Trading Standards Office?

There should be a large label on every pack:
WARNING: SONY PRODUCT: THIS FILM IS NOT OF MERCHANTABLE QUALITY!

[LV426]

Can't say I've ever noticed any problems with my range of players - 3x Pioneer, 1x Panasonic.

However, it still defeats me why the studios insist on wasting their cash paying for copy protection and region coding. It's a pretty easy matter to circumvent these things so anyone wanting to really rip them off (by making pirates and selling them) can and do do so with ease. All a bit pointless, especially if it messes up some peoples' players.

[nwgarratt]

You are only the second person I have come across that has this problem but the problem is real. I have have three Sony players and they work fine but there was an instance of a Sony player in the US that wouldn't load the discs.

Here is the article. It does sound like your problem and also affected Toshiba and Harman Kardon.

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/Sony-DV...rotection.html

[Nimby]

Since i still have the hired copy of Spiderman3 I tried it in my DVD drive.
Real Player couldn't play it because of a failed copy protection key exchange.

Would it not be reasonable that I want to watch a hired DVD on my computer?

[nwgarratt]

Real player isn't very good with DVD's. Try something like Media Player Classic. It works with my all my DVD's including Sony.

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/...er_Classic.htm

[Nimby]

Originally Posted by nwgarratt

Real player isn't very good with DVD's. Try something like Media Player Classic. It works with my all my DVD's including Sony.

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/...er_Classic.htm

Thanks. I just tried your free download and it played the Sony disk. It seems unhappy with the Menu and started with the piracy warnings and trailers again just like my NAD. But I was able to quickly recover the film.

I just wasted a lot of time downloading the latest Real Player to find it bragging that it will play anything. Which is total BS because it still won't play this Sony DVD. The lengthy download made not the slightest difference.

MS Media Player asked me to reset my screen resolution and colour but still couldn't play the DVD. After following a false trail or two I discovered I had to pay for an independent DVD player.

This still leaves me with the Sony unmerchantable quality disk problem with my NAD DVDP.

It will be a while before I upgrade to an HD player.

Thanks for your help. I feel a very large signature coming on!

[nwgarratt]

Sony DVD's do have that annoying piracy ad before the menus. Some DVD players can't skip them.

You can go straight to the film in MPC if you know the title number. At the top is the word navigate. Select that then Jump To. A list of the titles appear and can be selected. A lot of the time the film title is the first one including Spidey 3.

I don't know if it my computer but the only problem I have in MPC with the menus is the button highlight doesn't line up. I have to press the mouse button slightly above the button I want. This happens with all DVD's.

[Nimby]

I had the same problem with the cursor on the MPC menu.
Not the end of the world since I shall rarely want to watch films this way.