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Technology problem

NobbyNobbs

Gazerbeam's Protege
NobbyNobbs
Joined
Apr 2, 2006
Messages
5,617
I am completely flummoxed by this, and just about ready to accept the idea of gremlins, pixies, and elves.

Last night, Mrs. Nobby and I sat down to watch something we got from Netflix (I'm not telling what; we still haven't seen it and don't want spoilers). I popped the DVD in...and the player said "No disc". Hmm. Popped it out, back in, same problem. Tried it on the Playstation 2. "Disc read error". Tried it on my roommate's PS2. Same deal.

Tried a different disc in each machine. Tried a couple different discs in each machine. No go.

Tried on the DVD player we have upstairs---no problem.

This happened once before, some months ago. I don't remember what we did...I seem to think the the problem resolved itself after some time. The gremlins got tired and went home.

What the A^#$A&$^ is going on?
 
My best guess would be scratches and/or dirt on the disc; players can be quite variable in their ability to recover from errors. You can try to carefully clean the disc - water, alcohol, gentle soaps are OK. Wipe radially (from the centre out or edge in - don't go in circles).

The other possibility, although remote, is region coding; your profile doesn't say where you are, but if you're outside of North America you might get a disc with a region not allowed by your players. Highly unlikely (and given that you mention NetFlix, I'd guess you are in NA). Even then, I'd guess you would get something other than 'no disc'.
 
I would have to agree with grmcdorman, that it is most likely due to scratches or dirt on the disc. Those NetFlix get an awful lot of rough handling. A couple of questions that might help you pin it down. Which is the newest DVD player in the house? Is the upstairs player a portable model, possibly having greater stabilization and more over sampling?

You say you tried a couple of different disc in each machine. Were they all NetFlix discs that you have not watched yet?
 
Happens to me when I burn something onto a new disc - so it's not dust or scratches. These play on the older DVD player.
 
The disk appeared scratch-free. What's more, the player wouldn't play the disk that we had been watching the night before.

Perhaps my electronics system has just decided I've seen enough movies and played enough games for now.
 
The CD player in my car has a problem reading burnt (burned?) music CD's.

I've found that if I put a burnt (burned?) CD in when it is cold, the player will find it and play ok. If I wait and put the disc in when it's warmed up inside the car, the player often has problems finding the disc.

My guess (that is all this is, BTW) is it's to do with the temperature compensation of the bias circuit for the Laser diode used to read the surface of the disc. As the temperature increases, the current through the diode is reduced and the light output from the diode drops. On burnt CD's the amount of signal getting back to the photodiode array is less than from a regular CD, and with the reduced output from the Laser because of increased temperature, the error rate gets high enough to make finding the disc difficult.

This may have something to do with the problems you're experiencing, though the region error that Mongrel mentioned sounds highly plausible too.
 
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Never mind. Shoulda read the entire OP before posting my bad advice. Couldn't think of any alternate bad advice to take its place.
 
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Do PS2s and DVD players have lenses on them like early CD players did? I've seen that problem several times with portable CD players - they have a lens over top of whatever it is that reads the disc (presumably to keep it from getting junk in it).

If so, it's possible that you've got dirty lenses. You used to see cleaning CDs that had a little piece of felt on them to buff the lens.
 
NobbyNobbs said:
The disk appeared scratch-free. What's more, the player wouldn't play the disk that we had been watching the night before.

Perhaps my electronics system has just decided I've seen enough movies and played enough games for now.
Click to expand...

When this has happened to me with CDs, it meant the laser on the player was about to fail.
 
I had this problem with a CD player. I'd put 3 CDs in the changer, and the player would cycle through them all, saying "No disk." I solved the problem by punching the thing so hard that one of the CDs broke inside, and jammed it up so the changer wouldn't open any more. I had to pry the top off to get the CD out. Lucky for me, I'd made a copy of the busted CD, so the CD case isn't going to waste.

The radio still works, though.
 
The obvious question is how old is the player? Electronics don't last forever, and intermittent faults are often how you know they're on their way out. Some players just act plain weird the whole time. My DVD player will play pretty much anything you can get inside it, but it refuses to recognise certain brands of blank CD. Also, you mention the disc looked fine, but a common problem is the laser lens being dirty. It's almost impossible to check this is most machines, but a cleaning disc will usually get results, especially in older machines. Since dirt and dust can easily get dislodged, or just burn off, this can easily cause a player to suddenly start working again.

Probably just gremlins though. Try not to get them wet.
 
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