Sudden "Playback prohibited by area limitations." problem

[ph1losophe]

First off I wish to say "hallo" to everyone, as I am a new member here. Secondly, I hope I am posting this in the correct section.

Problem: I am using a Sony DVP-NC80V DVD Player to play my DVD's. This player, up until a few days ago, played all the burned DVD's we played on the unit. For some odd reason, all of a sudden it will no longer play my burned DVD's. It gives me an error: "Playback prohibited by area limitations." I find it hard to believe that all the DVD's I have recently aquired are in PAL format. I believe it is a problem with the way I am burning the .ISO & .IMG files. For images I use DVD Decrypter. For DVD's in folders (.VOB) I use Roxio. I have never had a problem with my burned DVD's playing on this unit...EVER, so I figure the problem lies somewhere in the burning process. I am not using cheap media to burn. I use DVD+R's and the DVDR is set to Region 1, and most of the DVD's I burn are the correct region OR region free.

I am simply out of ideas, and any help would be greatly appreciated. And, oddly enough all of the recently burned DVD's play on our other player which is a cheap Emerson player.

Thanks in advance for any help, and sorry for such a long post. -JL

[freebird73717]

Player could possibly be ready to die. I had a Norcent 330 that worked great then all at once it quit playing burned cd's , shortly thereafter it quit playing burned dvd's. Didn't take long and it quit playing anything.

Could also be authoring/burning process or media or a combination of the two. If you know someone that has a burner ask to borrow a burned disc. If the player plays that then it is your process. If not then it is more than likely the player biting the dust.

If you edit your post title to something more specific like "Sony DVP-NC80V DVD Player quit playing burned dvds" you will get more responses. A lot of people don't even open a thread with a vague title like "Need some help...".

I hope I have been some help to you!
Good luck.

[mats.hogberg]

Welcome to VideoHelp.
Please use a more descriptive title to your topic. I've changed it for you this once.

Try to choose a subject that describes your topic.
Please do not use topic subjects like Help me!!! or Problems.

You can (=should) read them all here.

/Mats

[guns1inger]

It's not the burning process. It sounds like the Sony thinks they are PAL, which is easy enough to check. Just open a VOB from one of the discs and look at the resolution or frame rate.

I suspect, like Freebird, that the player is having problems. Try cleaning the lens.

[Nelson37]

Don't attempt to believe anything, hard or not. Determine what the facts are.

The error seems to be referencing region coding, not specifically PAL or NTSC.

Try playing back previously successful disks. Trying to figure out an error from a bunch of new disks requires a lot of assumptions, such as that they are valid in the first place. Depending on source, it is quite possible they are screwed up in some way.

Now if a disk that was KNOWN to play successfully in the past shows the same error, there is solid evidence some problem has become on the player. No guesses involved.

Just noted the playback testing on another DVD player. Is this player Region free? If not, then either the media is not liked by the bad player, or it is most likely dying. If the other player is in fact Region free, then your latest batch of source disks could simply all be from the wrong region.

As for the burning process, unless you have changed software, only possible changes are burner quality from age and media. Software which made compatible disks before, and still apparently does for at least one player, is not likely to degrade in a manner to give such a specific error.

[guns1inger]

Sony players give that error message for PAL/NTSC format incompatibility as well. It is something Sony never fixed, and always causes confusion.

[Noahtuck]

Sony players give that error message for PAL/NTSC format incompatibility as well. It is something Sony never fixed, and always causes confusion.

Exactly!!
I still have a sony player that display's that exact message ONLY for PAL disc's, nothing to do with the region coding of the disc, seeing as there is no region coding on PAL disc's 8)

And seeing as the OP say's

played all the burned DVD's we played on the unit

So it's very doubtful it's a "region coding" problem

And once again,

It sounds like the Sony thinks they are PAL, which is easy enough to check. Just open a VOB from one of the discs and look at the resolution or frame rate.

The easy way to tell 8)

You can do this with any software player, avicodec, gspot, DVD Decrypter, ect.
Then you will know for sure......

[guns1inger]

PAL - Region 2 or 4 at the very least

[Noahtuck]

If you're referring to my statement ?
I have ripped all my region 2 & 4 PAL disc's to dvdr with no region coding & the unit displays that message.
I don't remember what it said for the original disc's as i did it to test a bunch of players to see if they would play/convert pal format disc's to NTSC.

One of my older pioneers would then play them after copying them but had the usual B&W rolling syndrome

[guns1inger]

I wrote my reply before your edits where posted. I assumed that you had removed region codes during ripping. It is a stupid, meaningless, generic error message from Sony players, and should never have got past the original usability tests.

[TBoneit]

Sony's seem to throw that error on any PAL disc no matter what region. One thing about a Sony DVD player it will adhere to the Specs for where it was sold. In the USA NTSC playback only. Open one of the VOBs with Gspot and see the fps is. 25 is PAL and will never play in a Sony.
On the Sony changer a PAL disc will give that error and go to the next disc.

[ph1losophe]

Wow, thanks for the responses. This has all been very helpful. I've gathered two things... 1.) If the Sony was mine and not hers, I'd throw that piece of crap off the balcony. & 2.) I must have just stumbled upon a few bad DVD's or PAL's b/c I just burned one and it's working fine. Thanks for all your help.

@Mats .. Thanks for the topic edit, and sorry about that, won't happen again. =)