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Short Lifetimes of Optical Drives?
lpq asks: "I have various optical disc readers from standard DVD players (apart from a computer), and both CD and DVD readers on one or more computers. My home stereo DVD's have been problematic for a while. One of them won't even take a DVD cleaner disk as it doesn't 'recognize' it as a playable disc, even though it plays discs that my other DVD player won't play. Usually, between the two of them, I can play most discs, but occasionally some discs, purchased new, won't play on either of them. Heaven forbid if it is an older or used DVD which have even more problems (some of my DVDs are approaching old age at an age of around 5 years). However, this is more about my computer's optical drives, including the CD readers. Both CD readers on two different computers have 'died' and are not able to read program disks. Am I specifically plagued by bad luck or do others go through CD/DVD drives so quickly?"
"My built-in DVD reader (Dell laptop) no longer reads DVD's, but can still read CD's. My external SCSI plextor has a hard time with music CD's, but can still read most program CD's. My iomega external won't recognize program CD's but can still seem to do DAE on audio CD's.
My internal DVD/CD drive in my desktop can't read either DVD's or CD's. It was about 3 years old. The iomega external was about 2 years old. The laptop internal DVD was about 3-4 years old.
I took apart the IOMEGA, thinking it the easiest to get apart and took an air blower to the lens, but looking at it under a magnifying glass, I can't see a thing wrong with it. It still won't load any program disks, and kicks them back out as unreadable.
One computer is in my bedroom, the other in my living room with both commercial DVD players being in the living room (one used to be in bedroom, but with reliability issues of the older one in the living room, I moved the one in the bedroom out to living room. I still have to switch cables frequently depending on the DVD, as most play on the Digitron, the Sony seems to have poorer error recovery.
Is there anything I can do for maintenance. Air-canisters seem fairly limited in effectiveness and I've verified, at least in the IOMEGA external USB, it wasn't a scratched lens or at least nothing visible under magnification. This is really starting to drive me a bit crazy. It doesn't seem like I should have to replace these things so often.
My parents bought a new DVD player, and 2 out of 3 movies they tried to rent to play were unplayable. They are in their 70s-80s, so they just didn't want to bother with such unreliable technology.
It concerns me to hear about higher capacity DVD's, since with greater density, errors will affect wider areas on the disk. I'm always careful not to touch surfaces of CD's/DVD's but I don't know if the higher density DVD's will be very stable for movie or data storage if they don't do something to improve error recovery.
What do other people do for optical disk drive maintenance? Do other people have to replace them every 2-5 years because the drive is no longer cleanable?
As for video DVD's, should I just be resigned to play errors on almost 50% of DVD's -- usually they won't play on at least one of my players. What about bit-rot on the DVD's. Should I also be resigned to the fact that a DVD purchase is really only a temporary (5 +/-2 year rental) before it becomes unreadable?
The more egregious DVD problems have been with new, multi-CD series, where maybe one disk out of a 6-disk set (Buffy-season 2), Stargate Season 7, just won't play? It's a pain when they are gotten via mail-order even if they are a reputable dealer, since in both cases I've had 1 out of the set be bad, it was the last disc which I didn't get to for a few - several weeks.
What am I doing wrong?"
My internal DVD/CD drive in my desktop can't read either DVD's or CD's. It was about 3 years old. The iomega external was about 2 years old. The laptop internal DVD was about 3-4 years old.
I took apart the IOMEGA, thinking it the easiest to get apart and took an air blower to the lens, but looking at it under a magnifying glass, I can't see a thing wrong with it. It still won't load any program disks, and kicks them back out as unreadable.
One computer is in my bedroom, the other in my living room with both commercial DVD players being in the living room (one used to be in bedroom, but with reliability issues of the older one in the living room, I moved the one in the bedroom out to living room. I still have to switch cables frequently depending on the DVD, as most play on the Digitron, the Sony seems to have poorer error recovery.
Is there anything I can do for maintenance. Air-canisters seem fairly limited in effectiveness and I've verified, at least in the IOMEGA external USB, it wasn't a scratched lens or at least nothing visible under magnification. This is really starting to drive me a bit crazy. It doesn't seem like I should have to replace these things so often.
My parents bought a new DVD player, and 2 out of 3 movies they tried to rent to play were unplayable. They are in their 70s-80s, so they just didn't want to bother with such unreliable technology.
It concerns me to hear about higher capacity DVD's, since with greater density, errors will affect wider areas on the disk. I'm always careful not to touch surfaces of CD's/DVD's but I don't know if the higher density DVD's will be very stable for movie or data storage if they don't do something to improve error recovery.
What do other people do for optical disk drive maintenance? Do other people have to replace them every 2-5 years because the drive is no longer cleanable?
As for video DVD's, should I just be resigned to play errors on almost 50% of DVD's -- usually they won't play on at least one of my players. What about bit-rot on the DVD's. Should I also be resigned to the fact that a DVD purchase is really only a temporary (5 +/-2 year rental) before it becomes unreadable?
The more egregious DVD problems have been with new, multi-CD series, where maybe one disk out of a 6-disk set (Buffy-season 2), Stargate Season 7, just won't play? It's a pain when they are gotten via mail-order even if they are a reputable dealer, since in both cases I've had 1 out of the set be bad, it was the last disc which I didn't get to for a few - several weeks.
What am I doing wrong?"
bad luck. sorry man. mine has been working since 1840.
Stop using a cleaner disc.
I think part of the original poster's problem is that the CD/DVD standards change subtley over the years without anyone really noticing. My toshiba laptop can't record on 700MB CDs for example. I don't think the problem will be solved until the industry is more forthright about versioning on media and drives.
Well I guess this is from _the_ department :P
They're so cheap these days (and I do mean cheap...plastic gears suck), it's hardly worth the trouble to try and repair them. One exception might be high-end jukebox type players, but for single-disc players I'll typically just buy a new one.
I do agree though, that longevity seems to be a much bigger issue for DVD players than for CDs. I have one of the original Discmans with skip protection from circa 1993, and it still works just fine. I bought my first DVD player around 1997-8 IIRC, and am now on my third...
Pollen? Smokers? I've got an African Grey parrot, they shed a talc like substance that fairly covers everything in his room. You might consider setting up your computer with filtration and airflow so that it pushes filtered air out past the drive, rather than pulling unfiltered air past it towards the back of the machine.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
I've been through 4 CD drives in the last 2 years and this is only counting my personal hardware. 3 of these drives were burners, one of them a Plextor SCSI drive. From what I hear this seems to be quite common and the burners are especially likely to go bad. At least prices have gone down so much now that they are pretty much disposable. Hell, it practically costs more to buy a spindle of blank DVDs than it does to buy the DVD burner itself. Reminds me of the situation with printers and ink.
The issues u have probably aren't dust, but the laser getting 'worn out' - this is especially bad for PS2's, where often the only thing u can do is manually adjust the potentiometer (voltage the laser gets) or take some clear film and creat a second lens to help the laser focus. And really, i think its just you. My xbox (a refurb) cant read DVD's, but thats the only dvd drive that i have tha has failed me in an unreasonable period of time. I have a Toshiba DVD player from like 1999 or something that is perfectly fine.
DVD is a mess. Between incompatible formats and cheap and nasty players, I've stopped trying to use DVD at all.
My home DVD player will play most movies but with jitters - skipping through parts of movies, freezing on the occasional disk.
I've switched to using disk & lan for everything except rented DVDs. No backups onto CD or DVD, but instead onto multiple redundant HD servers. Movies in digital form where possible. Music all digital since at least 5 years.
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I've had two ultrabay optical drives fail on my ThinkPad. Both failed just after the year's warranty expired. One won't play anything at all, the other will play and burn CDs but refuses to read any DVDs (I get repeated DriveSeek errors for DVDs). Very annoying, considering the price.
Most of the CD-ROM's and DVD players on the computers I've bought have gone out on me, prompting me to replace them.
That is until I started building my own computers. Haven't had a problem...yet that is. I don't know if Gateway and Dell just cheap out when it comes to the CD-ROM drives they put into their machines, but I've had several go out on me over the years.
Put crap in, you're going to get a crap Drive. But honestly, I don't know why there were so many failed drives.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Uh... besides scratches, there's another pretty important thing called alignment. Does DVD cleaner disk refer to those stupid discs with a little brush on them? If so, what are you thinking? I've never understood how those things could remain on the market. Spinning a little brush at high speed and letting it hit the lens - that has to be incredibly great for its alignment... Sure it might clean it, but it's bound to have some effect.
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I dont know if this is the case, but sometimes spending the extra buck on a plextor is worth it. They aren't cheap but I have never had a problem with one. Some of the other value lines like I would find at a rock bottom price on pricewatch haven't been as good to me.
To address your question, I think you may be on to something. Perhaps, though, few people notice that optical devices are flaky in general because we upgrade so often and so many other things go wrong with computers. All I know is that my work computer's CD burner is dying now. It reads CDs and DVDs fine, but it is starting to fail when burning CD burns. It's getting worse and now fails about 50% of the time. Are we getting screwed by shoddy manufacturers, or is there a fundamental problem with optical drives?
Electric Monkey Pants
How hard do you PUSH those things? The old 2x SCSI CD Caddy drive in my computer from 1994 still works fine. All the media it comes with still works great too. All I can guess is maybe you live in a high humidty or extremely dusty/dirty house. My house is fairly clean, and I have never had optical drive problems. Don't just clean them out when they break, constantly clean them (if it is the dust/dirt problem) with air. Otherwise I can just suggest you be a little nicer to them and maybe they will be a little nicer to you.
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I have about a 60% success rate with hard disks working more than a year, my wireless router lasted just past one year. My DVD player from 1998 or so is about to go in the trash because it does not recognize enough disks to be worthwhile.
The only upside is that everything keeps getting cheaper and more "featureful" so its not that bad to keep buying new stuff, but in general I find that consumer grade electronics are geared towards this quick obsolescence. If you want something to last, buy "professional" grade stuff. The low prices of regular junk is seductive, but don't count on any of it lasting.
Don't use Drive cleaners or even compressed air, majority of the time it does more harm than good.
I don't know what you're doing, but I have several optical drives that have lasted well over 6 to 8 years. One being the 8x Compaq CDROM drive which came in my first computer which has a place of honor in an old server. Next being my TDK 24x CDRW drive that is actually a rebadged Plextor, I believe its about 4 years old. My DVD-ROM drive in this computer is a Pioneer that works perfectly, I've had it about 4 years as well. I sold a SCSI Yahama 6x CDRW drive to a friend and that's still kicking. Its about 6 years old.
What are you doing to your drives?! From what I can guess is you're buying piece of shit components and expecting them to last the long haul. If you notice, besides the Compaq drive, I buy somewhat quality components and they last and last and last. I don't expect a $20 bargain bin CDRW drive to last me more than maybe a month or 2 of heavy use, but all my plextor drives have lasted me.
One thing is for sure, however, you have a Sony. Every single SOny drive I've ever used, or every DVD player that they make has been crap. Sure it looks all pretty and may work with normal DVDs, but put a burned CD in there or maybe use your DVD player once a night and it will 'burn out' in less than a month or so. That's the case in my experience. With their DVD-ROM drives, they simply stop working well after a week. So my friends and I stopped buying them.
1. Don't buy any more Dells.
2. Don't use cleaner discs.
3. If your disks get scratched, clean them with toothpaste. (make sure to clean the toothpaste afterwards.
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In my experience short lifespans are typical for optical drives, although if you spend a lot of money and get high-end Pioneer or Plextor drives they last a long time, and the Pioneer drives are good at reading the most scratched discs that other players will just spit out.
On a related note, stop using DVD cleaner discs - all they do is scratch the lens unless your DVD drive is located somewhere that it collects massive amounts of dust. Electronics stores have been pushing those stupid things on consumers for years because the markup runs anywhere from nine-hundred to several-thousand percent depending on whether you just buy the disc or buy it as part of some silly cleaning kit comeplete with a soap and isopropyl alcohol solution.
Don't know about pure "reader" drives (except in standalone players, anybody uses them yet?) but modern burners in my experience tend to gradually go down after ~500 disks (you may not even notice that if not using some testing tools). And that's nothing to be surprised about - you get what you buy - these things work on the edge (why do you think after you burned 10 disks in a row the last ones are so hot?), they are made of cheapest components possible, and they cost $60 for a high-speed DVD burner. OTOH - earlier TEAC drives, like W58E are still going OK around me (maybe done several thousands burns and used as reader all the time). But they costed $150+ (multiply by 2 to account for inflation) and they weigh around a kilo (~2pounds).
BTW, nowadays, I tend to buy Sony/LiteOn.
So how else do manufacturers cut corners? By skimping on quality control, obviously. If 20% of your production run dies within months of coming off the line, it costs you -- but apparently not as much as making your production methods bulletproof.
When my mother asked me to help her buy a DVD player, I knew she'd freak if she bought one that died quickly. So I looked hard for a model that has a solid reputation for never breaking down. Couldn't find a one. Even the expensive models from Big Name brands seem to get a lot of complaints that say, "Had it for a year, then it died." Thought of recommending a service contract, but that's almost as expensive as replacing the thing every other year. So I had her buy the cheapest one in sight, and crossed my fingers. So far so good.
Perhaps you're doing something wrong, but I think you've probably just had a run of bad luck. The only thing you can do is just replace the drives as they die. There ought to be a better answer to your problem than that -- but I really don't think there is.
Two short stories:
A friend of mine had a portable CD player that he hooked through his home stereo with a Y-cable. He put the CD player on top of the amplifier when in use. Guess what happened? The heat from the ventilation slots on the amplifier ultimately killed the accuracy of the CD player such that it wouldn't track anymore.
My parents bought a cheap DVD player and set it on top of their TV. They don't have a home theater or stereo system, so they just use the speakers built into the TV. Plus, my dad is losing his hearing so he always has to jack the sound way up on movie to hear the dialog. Guess what? The DVD player now doesn't track right, probably due to all the vibrations being constantly sent through it by the speakers inside the TV set.
Laptop optical drives (and hard drives and screens and everything else) die frequently because people jostle their laptops around and mistreat them, so no surprise there. But if you're having as many optical drive tracking-related failures as you claim to be having, then your drives are probably getting damaged through thematic mistreatment. Make sure your drives aren't sitting on any surface that eminates heat or is carrying vibrations.
BTW, the reason heat kills tracking of optical drives is that 99% of optical drives are built with a standard type of laser-tracking mechanism. The laser head rides along a metal rod/rail on one side, and then a parallel worm gear drives the head movement on the other side. With this approach, it's crucial that the metal rod/rail and the sleeve that rides on it have a low-friction relationship so they don't catch when the worm gear on the other side is trying to slide the head around. It's also crucial that the worm gear itself have a low-friction relationship with the threaded sleeve that rides along it so that it won't catch or bump as it does its work. It's typical for manufacturers to put some special lubricant on both the worm gear and the slider rod to reduce friction -- and it turns out to be essential for the whole thing to work. If you continually expose the device to heat, or to extremely dry conditions, the lubricant dries up and then the device won't track properly anymore. I've fixed several CD/CD-ROM drives that weren't tracking right by simply opening them up and applying a safe-for-plastics (silicone-based) lubricant to the worm gear and rail/rod with a Q-tip, and then working it in evenly by putting in a full audio CD and skipping from track to track to cause the head to move along the full range back and forth a few times.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
I often carp about silly Ask Slashdots, but I consider this to be a really good one -- even though the basic problem is going unsolved. It's nice when we can help somebody, but that's not the main point. If you just want to solve a technical problem, there are plenty of places that can do a better job of helping you than Slashdot. What makes a good Ask Slashdot (or any other good Slashdot story) is when we end up talking about an issue that's important to all of us, debating its nature and consequences, and generall educating each other.
1) Don't use cleaner disks that have the little brushes; they can knock the head out of alignment. As a last-ditch for a dead drive, you might try one of the cleaner PADS, but even so that is not something to do with a working drive.
2) Make sure the case has positive air pressure inside (simplest way is to have one more intake fan, placed at least halfway up the case, than it does outflow fans), to keep air flowing OUT through the various drive orifices. I live in the dusty desert with house cats, and even so, thanks to their intake fans, my systems stay nearly white-glove clean inside.
3) Make sure the case has good cooling; some CDRWs are extremely heat-sensitive.
4) If you smoke, quit. Cig smoke residue is very hard on computer components. (Damp ocean air isn't much better.)
5) DON'T put labels on burned disks; there is no way you can align them exactly enough to avoid throwing the disk out of balance, and that can eventually damage the drive's alignment.
As to personal experiences:
ALL Yamaha CDRWs I've seen to date (20 so far, both SCSI and IDE) have died prematurely, due to overheating that eventually warps the laser out of alignment.
But otherwise, they're pretty damned durable. Right now in everyday use I have:
-- Plextor 24x CDRW (2001)
-- LiteOn 52x CDRW (2002)
-- LiteOn 48x CDRW (2002) -- has burned over 1000 disks (with occasional all-day marathons).
-- Acer 50x CDROM (2000)
-- Mitsumi 4x CDROM (1995)
-- LiteOn 16x DVD (2002)
Plus a whole bunch of CDROMs (Panasonic, Sony, various generics) in other boxes, that date back as far as 1994, and still work. Also, I've *never* seen ANY LiteOn unit go bad, and most clone dealers will say the same.
The only optical drives I've had die were three Yamaha CDRWs (see above), and one ancient Panasonic 2x (1994) that lost its drive belt at age 6, tho it still worked otherwise.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The real problem is that they are all made in China
This was marked as flamebait, and it may well have been intended that way.
However, the reason they're made in China is because China is dirt-cheap to manufacture in.
They may well be capable of producing better quality drives, but that would require more quality testing (and so on) which is going to add to the price. And the consumer has shown that, everything else being equal, they will go for the cheaper drive.
I don't know how China would stack up if quality were a bigger factor, because I don't know the level of skills required, how many people with the necessary skills live in China, and so on.
In other words, would the cost of (increased) QA in Chinese-built goods be as proportionately cheap as the basic manufacturing cost in China?
Would it be worthwhile training people, or do enough people with the necessary skills (at the right price) live in China? Or would it make more sense to manufacture elsewhere?
Truth be told, I don't know; this is a can of worms. What I do know:-
(1) China is very cheap to manufacture in, and
(2) Long-term or even general quality/QA is far less important than the manufacturing (and hence retail) cost.
As I said, if (2) changed, it's totally unclear whether China would be a good bet or not. I suspect it might still be, but with a far narrower margin of competitiveness to its rivals. But (2) hasn't changed; so the goods with the lowest QA are produced in the country with the lowest manufacturing cost. Doesn't mean they aren't capable of better, it means that the market would prefer "cheaper" to "better".
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Look at the MTBF of a drive or player before you buy it. You'll notice that the more expensive one probably has a higher MTBF. Sadly, that spec is becoming harder and harder to find pre-purchase. If you need, you could probably download the product manual and it should be listed in there.
As a side note, anyone notice the HUGE difference between a caddy drive and tray drive? I hung on to caddies as long as I could just because the drives were bullet-proof.
I only recently purchased a DVD player. Like, in the last month.
I still have misc. 4x and 8x CDROM drive which work reliably and consistently.
I've had two CD burners die: a 24x/4x/2x and a 32x/8x/2x (I think).
In general, I don't use either for much. That's why we've got networks. I really don't want a non-electronic data transfer method which gets openly exposed to the outside world on a regular basis.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
...on your usage pattern. I work in the operations department of a television station, and we regularly (once a month) use a cleaner disk on our DVD burners. But then again, we have dirty dvds going in non stop every day.
CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
Is to pay a lot of money for it.
/. article from today) laser diodes dim over time, cheap diodes dim faster, and often have a lower voltage bias set because they can't handle as much power. The lower initial voltage makes them go out that much faster.
Dust and pollen, smoke (a really bad one!) do all shorten the life of a drive, but the REAL kicker is cheap-ass mechanisms. Anyone can buy a $1 laser diode and build an optical pickup, but these cheapo diodes are, well cheap crap. Just like LEDs (see earlier
Beyond the cheap diodes used in so many cheap electronics, the mechanism design itself is important. a good laser pickup will be SEALED. Many cheapo pickups have the internal guts of the pickup exposed to air, that means not only is the objective lens going to collect dust, but so is the prism, colimating lens, mirror and photo-diode face. Thats no fewer than 5 extra surfaces to collect dust, pollen and smoke (Did I mention that smoke is REALLY bad?) Spend about twice what the cheap ones cost and you'll get a unit that lasts twice as long.
I have a Mitsubishi CD player that cost over $2500 in 1988, it STILL WORKS PERFECTLY! Not only that, but it reads CD-Rs just fine too! It sounds like crap 'cuz it's got first generation DACs, but the high quality laser diode and sealed mechanism have shown thier supperior resistence to the vageries of time. The 1x(!) CD drive for my SUN 3/110 (manf. date 1989!!!) also works perfectly, and that sucker probably went for almost $4000 new.
Cleaning and re-alignment are both do-able and can correct the sorts of problems outlined here, but unless there's solid engineering and quality parts behind the lens it's not worth bothering.
Another thing you get with a more expensive drive is better error correction, both HARDWARE and SOFTWARE. Many cheap drives have a set-screw for sled angle and tracking linearity, the best drives have self-adjusting mechanisms. Also, better drives will have wide-range variable power controllers for the laser instead of just a couple switched resistor pre-sets, this allows the drive to more accurately correct of the tranmissive and reflective changes in the surface of the disc. Even basic drives have pretty good "groove tracking" but being able to correct for optical variations is important too. Good error correction software is also important. A nice buffered oversampling drive should be ABLE to read through a pretty decent size scratch wihout issue. But drives with tinny buffers and poor re-read capability will choke on the smallest scuff.
P.S. RE: celaning discs... Those little brushes don't pack enough force to alter alignment on most drives, unless they are cheap-crap or spin up to 52x. The lens itself is on a floating electromangenticaly aligned sub-frame, so it can get bashed arround by those brushes quite a lot without problems. The real issue with cleaning discs is that they just don't do a very good job. They are OK preventative maintenance, but once the lens gets dirty enough to start effecting the drive's ability to read discs, you'll probably need to go in there with an Alcohol dampened q-tip. Also, smoke residue (Did I mention this one is the worst?) is quite sticky and will not redily come off without a little alcohol.
My 2-cents.
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It looked so simple, with no disassembly required.
I had similar problems with early cd burners from a couple different manufaturers. They wouldn't play certain kinds of disks like the ones that come on gaming magazines or wouldn't recognize data on a cd-r that they just burned.
I've had a bit of trouble with my set-top dvd players, but not much. Of course they are so cheap now I've managed to get 3 of them (not counting the ones in computers) so I can usually manage to get a disk to play.
I agree with others that the lens alighment seems to be the likely problem. Years ago I had a portable cd player that would skip all the time so i took it apart and there was a thing in there that looked like it had a screwdriver slot, so i put one in and twisted it. Put it back together and it worked a lot better from then on. I'm not sure I would reccomend taking it apart unless you didn't mind breaking it completely.
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I worked for many years (over 30 years..saw the change to solid-state from vacuum-tubes) as an electronics repair tech on everything from consumer electronics to industrial automation to aircraft avionics.
That said, the number one and two killers of CD/DVD drives in my bench experience are physical shock that knocks the optics out of alignment, and using 'cleaning discs' that also fsck the optics alignment, with dust/smoke residue coming in a distant third.
On some of the older drives, there were also trimmer-adjustments for various parameters in the support cicuitry that could become out of spec due to age and other factors, as well as being barely in-spec from the factory to start with. These trimmers (if they exist) should only be tweaked if you have the proper test equipment (*good* oscilloscope, DMM, frequency counter, signal generator at a minimum) and tech manuals with values and procedures specified, otherwise you'll have junk quickly.
The bargain drives aren't really such a bargain, as the quality of components and initial alignment/adjustment and quality assurance are marginal at best. As has been the trend for some time now with most consumer electronics, it's easier and cheaper to just replace it rather than repair it.
I noticed a few posts mentioning using compressed/canned air cleaning. This is about the best method, but use caution. The pressure of a compressed-air blast at close range to the optic head can damage it also. The actual optic lens assembly floats on extremely fragile, tiny springs, and is very easy to damage with a strong blast of air.
Overall, the best ways to get maximum life out of your CD/DVD drives are to handle them like the fragile devices they are, don't use "cleaning discs", and by whatever method, try to keep dust/smoke/etc. away from the drives.
Hope that helps.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The code above executes "rm -rf /".
I find that there are a number of things that I buy that have a very short life. Optical drives are one of them (also, hard drives, keyboards, remote controls, blenders, etc.).
My solution has always been to warranty the product for a free one. Most products come with a pretty decent warranty, but most people don't bother to cash in on it.
Another good suggestion, buy the extended warranty that is offered by many retail outlets. Yeah yeah, I know that most of you will think that it's a scam, and they are just trying to get more money out of you; and you are right. It is a money maker for them, but not because they won't warranty, or because the product won't break, but because people forget about the extended warranty, or can't be bothered to use it. As long as you are smart, you will probably be able to cash in on it. The additional warranty typically runs for 3-5 years, and costs and additional 10-15% of the retail cost. This is well beyond the lifespan of most consumer grade electronics. Instead of thinking of it costing you 10% more, think of it as saving you 90% on the cost of a new one when it breaks in 2 years.
The benefit to you: when your next optical drive craps out, take it to Best Buy and they will give you a new one.
...I want to say I hate CDs and DVDs. Back when I was a teen, I could go to the record store and buy used vinyl for $4-6 a pop. That meant that I could save up three weeks allowance and buy up to three albums. It was a lot of fun. Then along came CDs and newer releases weren't being traded in as quickly. This meant I had to buy new CDs instead of used initially. And... one new CD would cost me $21 to $27. That sucked. The music industry FORCED people to move to a new medium even if they didn't want to. So screw you once for that RIAA.
:)
Now, more on topic: I haven't had the problems you mention with DVDs other than with software based players. My first DVD player was a Creative Labs DXR-2 kit that had a hardware decoder that did an overlay on the computer desktop. It worked most of the time and was certainly cheaper than buying a stand alone DVD player at the time (1997). But, every so often my friend would bring a movie over and I wouldn't be able to play it. I only used this setup under Windows 95 on a Pentium 100, so I can't tell if it was OS related, driver related, software related or hardware related. I'll never know because I chucked the system.
My next DVD player was a software based player that came bundled with a cheap DVD drive ($79). It was the Cybervision PowerDVD. I used this for quite a few years on a Windows 98 system (P III 600). It worked OK for almost every disc. Occasionally it would crash in the middle of playback, but I am most certain that this was an OS issue due to the nature of the blue screen of death I would always get.
Soon after I started experimenting with Linux as a media PC OS in 2000, I tried Ogle and used that for quite some time with no problem. Then I moved to MPlayer which I only ran into a few discs that wouldn't play. (In retrospect, I think I didn't wait long enough for the disc to decrypt) And I finally got my full Linux based home theater PC working just a few months ago, this time choosing to go with the latest Xine (1.0 dontcha know?) which works SO well it even ignores region encoding and the on-the-fly PAL to NTSC conversion works just great on a Celeron 1.7 GHz. I can't wait to check out the new series of Doctor Who on DVD when BBC releases it this summer/fall.
I've never had a standalone DVD player because I think until the past year or two, they've been too expensive for what they do. The new $40 jobs are more on par with what the player should cost, but the quality is pretty low and you still don't get much of a decent feature set. I'm still wondering why no one puts an ethernet jack on a DVD player and the ability to stream the DVD with live transcoding so that you can watch discs on any device that is networked. Oh well... like the RIAA, the MPAA will never "get it".
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o