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Can DVDs Kill DVD Players?
aidanpryde asks: "In the weirdest situation I've ever seen. My DVD player died on Saturday while watching the episodes of a favorite sci-fi series. I was watching disk 5 with my wife and noticed that it was getting jumpy. I took the disk out to see if it was dirty or scratched, but seeing nothing, we put the disk back in. Now the DVD player won't read anything, not the Season 5 disk, none of our other disks...nothing! So, we take the DVD player as a loss. Hardware failure happen all of the time, right? So I go downstairs with my wife on another day and try it on her DVD player in her computer. We get through one episode of the disk and it starts to jump again. We take it out, try another disk and sure enough -- nothing works. Has anyone ever run into DVD's that kill DVD players? Is there any way that I can get compensation for my dead DVD players? Is there any ideas as to why this has happened. Can I download firmware updates for the computer drive that may fix the problem?"
DVDs are smallish, those big black things are laser discs.
Stop trying to squash them in your hardware, and everything will work out fine.
The DVD is possesed. Call a priest, and if one isn't available, burn it immediately.
I need it to leave around my workplace in some strategic places. Can't explain the details in a public forum, sorry.
There are also often firmware updates for non-computer based DVD players as well.
:D
I know that CyberHome and Panasonic have released firmware updates for some of their players over the past, and I'd bet others have too..
it works like:
burn a CD with the firmware file using a computer
put the CD into the DVD player
press "Play".
Hope you didn't fry it.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Have you ever traded in illegally pirated software? Did you ever copy a disk for a friend? Used Kazaa or other filesharing systems? Swapped tapes in your youth? Been to a friends house and listened to (i.e., pirated his record? Played your music too loud at red lights? Memorized parts of books you read at the library without previous authorization?
If so, you are automatically placed on the global MPAA shitlist. Any DVD you buy automatically detects your unique fingerprints (even if you just grip by the edge, you crafty pirate), and instructs even the cheapest korean DVD player to self-destruct.
You agreed to this on May 27, 1996 when you walked within 50 feet of our EULA in that wal-mart (you know, the one that uses the act of disagreeing with the terms and/or being unaware of them, to indicate agreement to the terms..our lawyers love that one).
Sorry old pal. Hate to do it to you. But that's the price of being a pirate.
**
Note, this post was a work of fiction. However, a young MPAA intern reading this post ejaculated approximately 65% of the way through. After changing his trousers, he is on the phone with his supervisor explaining this cool new invention he read about on "The Slashdots".
I can think of only two possibilities:
(1) A disk whose decoder disrupted your device's firmware; this may be related to your DVD's region setting, especially if it was set to "zone-free". This may have been deliberate or accidental. Does the player turn on? Do you get the big DVD screen when no disk is inserted? If so, try resetting the DVD's region settings. You may need to access a "hidden" menu; anyone have a source for how to bring up those menus handy?
(2) Because of the way the MPEG encoding on DVDs works, some encodings may require more CPU usage than others, and on a hardware decoder like in standalone DVD players, this may actually cause the processor to overheat. While letting the unit cool down may solve the problem, too much heat might actually induce a hardware fault.
I'd suggest carefully reading the DVD itself along with the case and any other material. If it says nothing about copy protection, or something like "This DVD smites computers" I'd immediately take it up with the studio that produced the DVD. Try to be nice, but at the same time exacting. If I were you, and there were no notices, or you can clearly prove that these DVD players were stand-alone devices, I'd take it to small claims court and get my $300 bucks back if they don't strike a reasonable deal.
Don't take no for an answer. Manufacturers should and are held responsible for damage to property under tort law.
The disc could be badly balanced and that's why it would shake and such. It could have damadged the drive mechanism.
I punched a baby once.
I have a copy of Shaolin Soccer that killed a
Hitachi dvd player. I tried this copy on my Cyberhome
player but it refuses to play (suggesting something
wrong with disk). I got another copy of the movie
and that copy works okay. Apparently the crap
Hitachi player had something happen and now it won't
read any disks.
If the DVD is warped, no longer very flat, it might (?) hit the lens. ???
I have seen a warning on the back of Shintaro blank DVDs that says not to use it with Pioneer (some specific models that I can't remember) drives.
Apparantly unless you put in some after-market firmware the drive will be irrepairably damaged by burning onto these Shintaro blanks.
Wierd!!!
I drink to make other people interesting!
And the handle of the purchaser. Might be the little guy working in the rental, the one you gave a bad eye.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
It's too bad they're not on DVD yet.
A similar incident was mentioned on the DVDAuthor users mailing list. Here's a link.
It was a nice Sony recorder, except for one little flaw... after you put in a scratched-enough CD, it stopped working forever.
Here I was, trying to use cdparanoia to recover some CDs, and my drive stopped working.
It took three RMAs before I finally convinced Sony to stop shipping me back the drive and fix the damn firmware. The next time the firmware was upgraded, and the drive gave several more years of good service (probably still works, wherever it is).
... of a NIC I once had. It was a run-of-the-mill 3Com 905. Every computer it was installed in, the motherboard burned out within 2 or 3 days. I went through 3 motherboards before I figured out it was the Cursed-NIC-From-Hell.
I keep it around just so I can stomp on it now and then. It's quite therapeutic.
I know. I know. I would if I could. Fucking brilliant.
... and I'd ask to make it Insightful, not Funny, but the author is an AC, why would (s)he care! ;-)
Paul B.
Back in college I worked as tech support in a computer lab ... ...
All of the sudden we had a rash of broken zip drives. After much aggrivation, interagation of users, and many new drives we traced the problem back to one bad zip disk that would kill the zip drive in such manner that the any disk placed in the newly busted drive would kill any drive it was put in such a manner that
Effectively we had a hardware computer virus
link
I've tried all my DVDs and they all work fine, and I have suffered absolutely no proble#$#$%$%$#%@#%%@$%@#$%REF$%$F^............NO CARRIER.
-------
Support Indy Music. Buy
Isn't that the name of some thrash metal band?
I bought the new Metallica album (St. Anger), and guess what, it ruined my CD player(which was aactually a HIFI system). i tried to read it on my PC CD player. same thing. Now the funny part is that i took it to the music store, who actaully gave me a new copy, and told me this should work with out any problems!!!!(For fuck sake, what do you mean without any problems, its a DAMN CD)
Luckily my HIFI was still under gurantee.
Out of the subject, but the album SUCKS big time
The lunatic is in my head
He thinks it's a conspiracy. If he asked the manufacturer, they'd send out a black van in the night and it's the last he would see of the DVD and the DVD player.
It's gotta be the MPAA and their wily deeds. He probably has a Star Wars VCD he got from a guy in Hong Kong or something.
resigned
Some person inserted a CD into their laptop and it would not eject.
He swore it was a bad cd.
I still don't believe it.
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
That's okay. Season 6 of "Buffy" is terribly depressing anyway, and Season 7 has the worst writing of the whole show. You've seen the most important parts.
Finished NetHack yet?
Obviously! I mean the manufacturer wouldn't have any reason to lie, would they!
Was it a mini-cd in a slot drive? :p
Anyone else remember that case where someone sued apple because their iMacs didn't support those mini-cd-r's?
If these players were both the same make and model and they both died while watching the same series, the disks probaly have some flakey parts that read like update instructions to the player, they may just need reset to factory specs. Check the website for instructions on how to reset them ( mine is something like - power on - press play and stop at same time - when dvd resets, select settings ). If you can reset these, try the disks again. If they still spork up. look on the manufacturers site for updated firmware, a contact number etc.
If nothing else return them ( if they arent past warranty ) and get the cheapest player with the features you want. Maybe $40 at Wally World , Circut City etc...
after you disconnect the power cord for a while.
- -- Truth addict for life.
You have an apex dvd player or similar cheap comsumer electronic junk. All I can say is what did you expect?
Lie about what? "I played this DVD now my player is fucked" is a typical customer support issue. They want him to be happy, right?
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
If you have a dvd player that is firmware upgradable via disc, it is entirely conceivable that a rogue dvd could under the right circumstances cause you dvd player to initiate a firmware load and bork your machine.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
If the disc is warped, uneven, or unbalanced, it will cause DVD player failure. I know this because we've been through 6 DVD players in 3 1/2 years. My wife gets children's movies for my daughter from the library, they put stickers on them (on the center hub)... when these stickers are not placed on correctly they cause the disc to wobble, this kills motors dead.
Listen to the drive when you put a disc in, can you hear the disc spin up? If not, you've fried your motor, if so it's most likely a firmware issue. Since you've killed two DVD players though, it's more likely that the problem is the motor fried.
As powercycling the DVD player?
Either mechanical damage was done, or possibly a misauthored disc caused the DVD players' firmware to crash. (The fact that it killed a computer's DVD player too sounds odd though...)
If it's a misauthored disc, then simply powercycling may fix the problem. I mean a COMPLETE power cycle - unplug it, wait 2-3 minutes (sometimes more depending on what sort of memory backup features it might have), plug it back in.
I had this problem happen shortly after getting a DVD-R drive, one of my DVDs crashed the player. I thought it was broken at first, but a complete powercycle fixed it.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The other day I was driving around in my car and it stopped running. While it was being repaired I was driving another car that stopped running too! I'm pretty sure that I'm the cause of it.
See where I'm going with this?
Nobody has suggested the extremely obvious possibility: both DVD drives failed. Perhaps they were going to fail for some time but they didn't start showing problems until you played a dual-layer DVD.
Its highly unlikely anything about that disc could "damage" your DVD drives. Its far more likely that both drives were near their failure point and failed by coincidence.
They definitely are. I saw it for sale somewhere.
You can help prevent this from happening to others.
Most likely its off balance and just ate the bearings in either the spindle or overworked the stepper for the read head..
Were they still under warranty perhaps? Or you might get lucky and be able to swap the drives,like you can in many Apex units..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Due to anti-piracy efforts not all dvd's work on all players... Some dvd's even have the potential to corrupt or crash the dvd player's flashed software (It is sometimes hard to imagine that there is software running in that little box, but there is!)
:-)
DVD's that I have had problems with:
Mission Impossible 2 (killed dvd player)
Disney's Atlantis (not usable by dvd player)
Strangley enough I have also experienced dvd's that fix the dvd player! My best guess is it somehow removed segments stuck in the players flash memory that were causing the dvd player problems. Whenever my dvd player starts acting up, I pop in a copy of "Dungeons and Dragons" then getting better results on my other dvds
That is a damn good idea! - the best and most useful comment on this topic. Try it, and tell us what happens.
These chips are very common in DVD players. They use approximately 1.2 Watts. Standby power draw is 160 milli Watts. In light of these facts, you'll have to come up with a better theory than the DVD decoder chip is overheating.
But it did make me laugh to see your confusion.
Think about it.
I remember there used to be killer floppy disks you could make that would give no indication that it had just killed the floppy drive.
Could it be the same thing with this? Maybe a CD to play the video clip from "The Ring" and kill the player?
How would you go about making a CD that isn't too suspicious that would kill CD/DVD players?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I had an SVCD that stopped playing after about 10 minutes on my Apex DVD player ($50cdn). The audio was still fine, but the video reminded me of a VCR with the tracking off. To this day, it will not play that SVCD, but every other disc works fine. Also, that disc works fine on every other DVD device in the house. Bizarre.
Firmware incompatibilities have been around for quite a while.
Computer based DVDs get to fudge the spec a little more. Sometimes disks will have known incompatibilities with certain players.
Several years ago I had my Toshiba DVD player die a painful death as a result of a firmware problem on one of the Aliens disks. Someting on the DVD hosed the firware so bad, the machine needed to be sent out for repair.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
It sounds as if you may have used the DVD player for an extended period of time. Heat buildup may be the cause of the failure. That's no excuse, but it's the best explanation I can come up with. I know this was a huge problem with my first DVD player (Panasonic DVD-A110), but I never experienced it probably due to infrequent use.
Sent from my iPhone
Anyone remember the phonograph destroying records contest between the tortise and the crab?
No, they don't really give a damn if he's happy, they just want his money.
Did you ever watch Fight Club? There's a great scene where Edward Norton's character is describing his job:
JACK (V.O.)
On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Two TECHNICIANS lead Jack to the BURNT-OUT SHELL of a WRECKED AUTOMOBILE. Jack sets down his briefcase, opens it and starts to make notes on a CLIP BOARDED FORM.
JACK (V.O.)
I'm a recall coordinator. My job is to apply the formula. It's a story problem.
TECHNICIAN #1
Here's where the infant went through the windshield. Three points.
JACK (V.O.)
A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 miles per hour. The rear differential locks up.
TECHNICIAN #2
The teenager's braces around the backseat ashtray would make a good "anti-smoking" ad.
JACK (V.O.)
The car crushes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now: do we initiate a recall?
TECHNICIAN #1
The father's must've been huge. See how the fat burnt into the driver's seat with the polyester shirt? Very "modern art".
JACK (V.O.)
Take the number of vehicles in the field (A), multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement (C). A times B times C equals X...
CUT TO:
INT. AIRPLANE CABIN - MOVING DOWN RUNWAY - NIGHT
Jack is speaking to the BUSINESSWOMAN next to him.
JACK
If X is less that the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
BUSINESSWOMAN
Are there a lot of these kinds of accident?
JACK
You wouldn't believe.
BUSINESSWOMAN
Which car company do you work for?
JACK
A major one.
The same formula works for any other product. Sure, the manufacturer would prefer that the customer is happy, so long as it doesn't hurt the bottom line.
You're right, the poster should contact the manufacturers, but don't expect that the results will be quite as rosy as you seem to imply. Most likely, the DVD publisher will happily send him a new disk 5. But, assuming he does get a replacement disk, is he going to risk yet another dvd player by actually playing it?
Beyond that, it's doubtful that he'll get a new DVD player without taking them to court. Even if he goes to court, it's going to be a tough case to prove. Sure, the guy has two dead dvd players, but how can he prove they were killed by the dvd? He could play the dvd in a third dvd player in court, but what if it dooesn't kill that one? The judge isn't going to be happy waiting around while you play the dvd dozens of times hoping it eventually kills another dvd player. Even if you win, you've had to destroy another dvd player in court to do so, so now you're out three dvd players-- and I don't believe court costs are typically rewarded in small claims court, so that third dvd player comes out of your pocket regardless...
As for "Why would you ask Slashdot?", arming himself with even anecdotal evidence that other people are having the smae problem, he can drop those three magic words: "class action lawsuit". While his results are still far from guaranteed, he has at least a bit more leverage to use in his dealings.
DVDs that conform to the standard spec are only encoded with a series of zeros and ones. It is possible that this disk accidently included a two, confusing the playback hardware.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
I don't think I'd say that DVD's rotate at a "very low" RPM. At 1x speeds, a DVD rotates at about 1500 RPM at the outside edge. A computer DVD player can get up to over 10k RPM. That's pretty insane for a little plastic disk and a precision laser assembly that needs to sit very near the surface of the disk.
I'd think that physical damage to the inside of the player is very possible, even at the low end of the speed range.
Because I had trouble with them, too. I played it on one DVD, jumped, then got stuck. I couldn't even eject the disc. Then I tried to play it on another DVD palyer and the same thing happened. I'm sorry I'm being empathic (as in "girls talk empathic) (I'm a girl, are you?)instead of being useful.. And it also it stroke me as extremely curious that you didn't mention what "sci-fi" series you were watching. Anyways... Good luck.
Was anyone else reminded of the discussion in Douglas R. Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" (from 1979) about whether one could create an LP which would destroy a record player when played? As I recall, a minor arms-race developed between the Tortise and Achilles with each developing increasingly 'hardened' phonographs & 'lethal' records.
In the past, there may have been instances of floppy disks deliberately designed to damage drives. The disk would be physically damaged in a location which was not normally used (but which presumably would be accessed when copying the disk.) Accessing this part of the disk would damage the drive head. However, developers were held liable for damages (and rightly so) and this technique is not used anymore.
Vinyl phonorecords and videotapes can affect the user's player, because a critical part of the player is in contact with the media. However, this should not be an issue with DVD discs that are read with a laser beam. (At least in the past, videotapes from library collections sometimes included a warning label. The label warned that the library would not be responsible for damage caused to the user's player.)