Rescuing defective DVD (Matrix) with Liteon 5001

[yumagah]

Four years ago I bought the Matrix DVD, which at the time was known to be a tricky disk for DVD players to handle. My player at the time was a Raite 715 which played it with just a few skips in Chapters 16-20. As I tested more DVD players, I have learned my Matrix DVD is defective. No other player will handle it without locking up somewhere around the layer shift. And no DVD Rom drive will rip it, they all get to the shift and crash. Since the disk was years old, I couldn't return it. I contacted Warner customer relations and they basically said "tough". A replacement might be defective anyway since the title is known to have problems. But I managed to copy it.
Lucky for me the Raite has Macrovision defeat. So copying to the Liteon via S-video cable gave a picture surprisingly close to the original. A very slight loss in color intensity is the only noticeable change, even on a 30" screen. I recorded most of the movie in SP mode, then the last half hour in EP, to fit the two hour plus length on one disk. Again the loss is very slight. And now I have a single layer disk, macro free that can be duplicated perfectly with DVDDecrypter. Technology can keep us from getting screwed by a defective product!

[Poppa_Meth]

yep never ceases to amaze me just how many defective DVDs you can come across. the real problem I have with it is a DVD will come out, glitches are discovered, and a year later the company is still pressing defective discs because they don't feel like fixing the problem.