OK, here's my stoopid question...

[Resident Loser]

...I purchased a Laurel and Hardy DVD at el waldo-marto...along with some others...a buck a pop...the disc plays fine until I get to "chapter nine", which is the last scene...then up to a point all he!! breaks loose...the action stops...or it goes sorta' mosaic...or it looks as though someone went nuts with a "photoshop" program.

Now, first guess is the disc...dirty??? Clean the sucker...still problems...but...and here's the strange part...not necessarily the same problem at the same point in time...maybe what was mosaic is now a still shot...what was a still shot maybe now looks "embossed"...what was watchable in previous attempts now isn't and vice-versa...that sort of thing.

I've tried to access the chapter from the disc's menu and via the players direct input via onscreen displays..I've tried FF, step-by-step and what seems to be all permutations thereof...so now I'm thinkin' player...and it's a cheep JVC unit and we got it as a freebie from a bank for doin' business with them and...then it hits me, I have Think Pad, it has player, let's give it a shoot...HOWEVER...SOS, still troubles, same kind, different kind, but the rest of the disc is okee-dokee!

So anywho, the disc is a throwawy, no biggee, but I'm perplexed...I'm familiar with the technology involved (or so I think) but I can't quite come to grips with why the problems appear, mutate, disapear and re-appear and on two different playback machines...I even went so far as to whip out the old green marker...NG BTW...

And I know there's a possibility that it's the player is a bit "off" and the disc is a bit "off" and that it's all happenstance...but I'm still curious...

jimHJJ(...still have to bring the disc to work and see what happens on my PC...)

[BMXTRIX]

Most likely a disc burning issue during manufacturing of the DVD. It may be possible for your PC to deal with whatever sludge is on that disc easier than your player, but quite likely, it won't either.

I just got Scooby Doo 2 (hey, I was bored) and the disc was scratched which made certain chapters AND the finale start blocking and freezing. I popped the disc in my home PC, and the PC had no problems reading through the scratch. Weird that it didn't have any problems, but I got to see the end of the video.

If your PC has no problems, you may be able to copy the disc onto a DVD-R and then add it to your collection.

[av_phile]

Encountered similar problems in the past. A few DVD titles I had would pixellate and freeze intermittently at or close to the last chapter. Even some CDs with 18 to 24 songs using all the disc capacity can encounter freezing on the last track. Something to do with the laser mechasims having a hard time reading the last track at the outermost areas of the media. Or it could be bad encoding that somehow botches the job at the outer tracks of the disc.

[Resident Loser]

...explanation to me...thanx...

Which raises yet another question, it's a 70 min disc...yet I have other discs that have quite a bit more playback time...it would seem there should be some standard as to the spacing of tracks and/or where the data actually starts and ends on the disc...To me it would seem that a 70 min. program would leave a bit of the disc's real estate blank...bereft of data...therefore not getting that close to the edge...or is it just that longer programs use some sort of compression and lesser(both in quantity and quality)discs just do a "real-time" thing?

jimHJJ(...perhaps I'm not quite up on the tech as I think I am...I shall investigate further...)