Playstation 2 plays games & DVD-Rs, but craps out on bought DVDs

[JustPlainDon]

I've got a friend (I swear he is real and not imaginary) who has a Sony Playstation 2. It has worked fine for several years until about a month ago. His player continues to play his games and his DVD-R backups. However, when he tries to play purchased DVDs (stamped, not burned) the audio and video will "stutter" and beakup. I know that he only backs up his DVDs to single layer DVD-R discs at a sometimes significantly lower bitrate than the original. His purchased DVDs play just fine in all of my set top DVD players (all Sony units on 3 different TVs/monitors). This is pretty much all the information I have on his problem.

Any ideas on things he can do to get his old studio released DVD playback quality again? For lack of anything better to suggest, I have suggested that he try a lens cleaner to see if that helps.

L8r,
Don

[scandragon]

Back before I traded my PS2 for a mac (stupidest trade ever.. I've never even used the mac) I remember a similar problem.
I never got it to accept original dvds, which is why I traded it away.. I found no way to fix it..

[handyguy]

Boot the PS2 with no disc, once at mainscreen press "triangle" go to diagnostics and turn it from off to on. press "O" until you back at the browser screen, insert a DVD , once it boots wait one minute and reset the PS2. This will recalibrate the laser and works 90% of the time

[Po|arbeaR]

Sounds like the laser is going bad I have a dvd player that currently does the same thing. It'll play backup movies perfectly but won't play regular dvd's anymore.

-PB