I work at a rental store and everytime there is a major new release there is always one guy, out of the 100s of people who rent, that can’t get it to play on their player. It seems to be someone different each time and they range from understanding to a$$. Our employee handbook states that for there is always the chance that a DVD will simply not work on certain players. We used to sell a DVD board game that had a list of incompatible DVD players on the back.
I was just wondering why this is. I would love to be able to give a better answer to customers when this happens and if anyone has a link to an article I could show them that would be great. I’ve already printed out an article about Bluray Profile 1.0 vs Profile 2.0 since we occasionally have people complaining about that (although the vast majority of them don’t realize that they need a Bluray player to play Bluray discs to begin with).
lord_greatmane says
The reason is that there are more than 10 different copy protection schemes used by DVD studios to prevent LEGAL copying for home use. These schemes do NOT prevent pirating since the pirates break these schemes within days of their release. Every time one of the studios implements a new scheme it prevents some DVD players from playing movies that work on other equipment. It has little to do with the age of the equipment and nothing to do with the particular manufacturer of a DVD player. Some work and some don’t with any given movie and that’s just the way it is. If the studios would either back off of software copy protection as CD makers have due to the same kinds of problems, or go with hardware copy protection as they are trying to do with HDMI it would be a better situation. (Don’t get me started on the many problems with HDMI and it’s crappy copy protection.)
As usual instead of doing it the proper way they have chosen to do it the easy way and the consumer gets screwed again.
Demolition Bob says
There goes sony they made it harder again?
http://sonystrikesagain.wordpress.com/2007/03/19/hello-world/
Also seeing as how you work for a dvd or rent business shop Certain dvd’s come from certain regions and say a europe region punisher would not work for a usa region dvd player for example. most are listed by a letter then number such as R1 R5 Im sure you could find a list on google. I know you have straight forward dvds but I know some people burn Dvd’s and you can buy different formats. DVD-R, DVD+R and a couple others that you can learn about
http://www.videohelp.com/dvd
here
It’s possible companies use formats or protection agents such as sony that end up blocking some dvd players such as your customers. Also you have to pay attention to what dvd player you buy as some will not accept DVD+R or DVD-R and wont work. Hence my old boom box will not accept certain burned cd’s as all new ones will.
I hope that helps you.
p.s. i found this
http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers
DB
Chris B says
The reason is that DVD,s have different region codes for different parts of the world.
There can also be problems with Blu-Ray players! You have to upgrade firmware on older Blu-Ray players to play the latest disks.
You can download updates from the INTERNET, copy to a DVD then load into your Blu-Ray player to update.