Cant play Little Miss Sunshine DVD

[Amish Electrician]

I have the original DVD of Little Miss Sunshine & I cant even play it in my computer DVD let alone rip it.
I have a Pioneer 104 DVD drive. When I put the disk in it just flashes like its trying to read it then nothing drive says no disk.

[aedipuss]

try running having anydvd or dvdfab decrypter running before inserting the dvd. some of the new copy protection schemes are nasty and can prevent the dvd from playing on a computer.

[classfour]

1. Try another new release DVD. See if it reads

2. Little Miss Sunshine: LiteON read fine, no issues
USING RipIT4ME version 1.6.3.0

3. Read both sides of the disc, PS (fullscreen) and WS (widescreen), no issues w R4ME

4. Unlike Attack Force - this one is not sending up flags anywhere that I see.

5. Dirty Disc - Scratched Disc - Clean the first, take the second one back to the store.

[jman98]

That is a fairly old model. Have you considered the possibility that is just wearing out? I have a PC with a 6 year old DVD drive and it's showing it's age. I rarely use it as I have another PC, but it's starting to have problems reading re-writable media in particular. If I used it more, I'd just go ahead and replace it but for now it's just functional enough with limited use that I'm not real inclined to replace it until it gives me more problems.

Little Miss Sunshine was released on 20th Century Fox and to the best of my knowlege Fox isn't known for using some of the more heinous copy protection schemes on DVD, so I'd tend to blame your drive.

[Amish Electrician]

Well I got it. Turns out the DVD they used is a +DVDR and my player only reads -DVDR I guess its time to upgrade but I just hate to retire stuff that works 99% of the time.

[aedipuss]

original discs are dvd-rom and are readable by any burner.

[Amish Electrician]

original discs are dvd-rom and are readable by any burner.

I would agree but this disk is not from big studios its an independent film so I think that's why its different.

[solarfox]

original discs are dvd-rom and are readable by any burner.

I would agree but this disk is not from big studios its an independent film so I think that's why its different.

Er... The DVD release of Little Miss Sunshine is being distributed by 20th Century Fox; how much bigger of a studio do you want?

No retail-store DVD releases are issued on DVD-R/+R media. Ever.

First, the recordable-media route simply isn't cost-efficient (or time-efficient, either) for anything that's going to be made in mass-market quantities -- in fact, once you get over quantities of about 300 or so, replication (i.e. stamped/pressed discs) is cheaper than duplication (recordable-media discs), and becomes increasingly more so the higher in quantity you go. (In fact, most places won't even do duplication for orders of more than 3,000 units; they'll steer you to replication instead.)

Second, DVD-/+R media doesn't allow for CSS encryption, since it lacks the area of the disc where the CSS key would be stored on a replicated DVD-Video disc.

Third: according to Amazon, the DVD release of Little Miss Sunshine contains three audio tracks (English 5.1, Spanish 2.0, and a directors' commentary), plus trailers, four alternate endings, and a music video, with a running time of 101 minutes for the main feature, and is a double-sided disc containing the widescreen version on one side and the pan-and-scan version on the other. This fact alone makes it impossible for the movie to have been released on recordable-DVD discs since, as far as I know, they don't even make double-sided, dual-layer recordable media.

Therefore -- either the program you used to try to ID the disc is mis-identifying it for some strange reason (perhaps related to whatever copy-lock method they're using on it), or you got gypped; someone stole the original disc and put a copy in its place.

[Amish Electrician]

^^^Well I bow to your vast knowledge of all things DVD.
1. The DVD is original there is no doubt about that.
2. My DVD ROM drive works perfectly with all DVDs I have never had a problem.
3. I put in the movie Barnyard & its new out Seems to work fine in my ROM drive
4. The disk is in perfect shape no scrapes.
5. I plugged a USB Dual layer drive in & was able to view the movie with no problems.

[solarfox]

Barnyard and Little Miss Sunshine might not be using the same copy-lock scheme (if indeed that is the problem), though, so that's not necessarily conclusive.

(However, just to prove it to yourself -- just look at the color of the disc. If the data surface(s) are a shiny silver, or a very slight golden color, it absolutely cannot be any kind of recordable disc. DVD-Recordables are always some kind of reddish-purple in color, while DVD-ReWritables are a darker silver-grey "gun-metal" color.)

The Pioneer 104/A04 is an older drive, and sometimes older-model optical drives will just do things like this... My own A04 has occasionally hiccuped on reading discs that it's newer cousin (an A07) in the other machine reads just fine; similarly, my Apex 1500 set-top DVD player, which has seen the most service (and has been moved around a few times) has started to hang up on discs that it used to play just fine, even though those same discs play perfectly on other machines.

Try the disc in another player -- preferably a set-top player. If it plays OK in that, and it plays OK in the external USB burner, then the odds are strongly in favor of it being the Pioneer A04/104 drive's fault, not the disc's.

[WitchfinderGeneral]

I just burned Little Miss Sunshine to dvd+ r yesterday using Dvd Decrypter and Dvd Shrink, it took about 45 minutes to get it all. It was one of the complete fast loads that i have ever had.