Vanity: Blue-Ray Player Questions

I’ve had players that had trouble with layer-change, which in optical media is how the manufacturers cram more information onto a disc.

The drive motor for the laser inside will actually have trouble at the layer-change point, and freeze, typically at the halfway point of a movie, which is where the laser needs to physically move to continue the film.

Sometimes a disc no longer plays correctly. I have seen this happen with DVDs more than with Blu-rays, but I have had 3 Blu-rays that "went bad" and would no longer play. It is more common with DVDs.

There is a phenomenon called "DVD Rot". When this happens, the disc will often freeze at the point of the layer change. Most (but not all) DVDs are "dual layer". They are basically 2 layers glued together so as to double the storage capacity. Over time, the glue holding the two layers can begin to separate causing the disc to freeze at the point of the layer change. This does not happen to the majority of discs and it seems to happen to certain discs made at certain times at certain facilities. For example, I bought the Errol Flynn Collection Vol. 2 when it was released. Of the 5 films in the set, 4 of them freeze at the same time (the layer change). This problem is unrelated to scratched surfaces as I bought those discs new and they look pristine.

Your problem could be the player, or it could be some discs that have gone bad. As others have suggested, you need to play the problem discs in other machines to see if they play. If they do, the machine may be bad. If they don't, the discs may have succumbed to "DVD rot" or are too scratched.

I have been using Blu-ray players as my only video players for over 10 years. They play DVDs as well as any DVD player.

Thanks again for everyone’s advice. Some suspicions a few of you had were confirmed.

Since I don’t have wi-fi at home, I tried to do a firmware update for the player at another location. I could connect to the site’s “guest network” but the player was not successful in establishing a connection to the LG site under my hands.

So I went to Best Buy to have them try what they could. The staff were more interested in making it into a “return/exchange” situation than troubleshooting, so I upgraded to a Sony UBP-X700, which is a $200 model. (I could gave made a lateral move in cost to the Sony brand with another model, but opted to go up instead...)

Came home, set it up, quickly scanned the fulsome instruction manual, and off to the races with 300 and A Bridge Too Far.

Once again, 300 froze midway through. (And I was reminded that Leana Headley, who played Gorgo, Leonidas’ wife, went on to play Cersei Lannister in A Game of Thrones.) A Bridge Too Far played a bit better. Places where it skipped over before were played jerkily instead. An improvement, but still a faulty disc.

My impression of the earlier LG player has risen, as I see it’s my collection of DVDs (most of which were bought used, but playable at the time of purchase) that is really at fault. Best Buy wins Round 2!

Thanks again, everyone! Looks I’ll have to comb my collection by watching it to see what can salvaged and what can be tossed!

How old is the 300 DVD or other DVDs that freeze midway through?

Are they dual layer? REALLY old disc technology would momentarily hang as the disc transitioned from layer one to layer two and the better companies would hide the changeover in between 2 scenes while others didn’t plan for it and it could happen mid-scene.

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