Commercial DVD Playback confusion

[macpaladin]

My sister-in-law has a Panasonic SC PT-650 Home Theater system with a built-in 5 disc DVD changer (manufacture date approx. 2006). We recently purchased a commercial copy (from WalMart) of the movie Trolls (2016) for her for Christmas. After inserting the disc the player attempted to read and play the disc but failed. I inserted the disc in my MacBook Pro (6,2 circa 2011) and it read and played the disc fine. We inserted an older DVD (Mixed Nuts starring Steve Martin 1994, disc released 2003) in her Panasonic and it plays fine. I've Googled everything from the specific DVD (Trolls) to her Home Stereo system, consulted the troubleshooting guide in the manufacturers manual, looked for firmware updates to the player, I feel I've done my due diligence, yet I still don't have a solution. Any thoughts?

[october262]

is the trolls disc a dvd or bluray ?? it's very easy to mistake a bluray for a dvd
try cleaning the disc to see if that helps. another possibility is that the laser diode in your 5 disc dvd changer may be
getting weak.

[usually_quiet]

My sister-in-law has a Panasonic SC PT-650 Home Theater system with a built-in 5 disc DVD changer (manufacture date approx. 2006). We recently purchased a commercial copy (from WalMart) of the movie Trolls (2016) for her for Christmas. After inserting the disc the player attempted to read and play the disc but failed. I inserted the disc in my MacBook Pro (6,2 circa 2011) and it read and played the disc fine. We inserted an older DVD (Mixed Nuts starring Steve Martin 1994, disc released 2003) in her Panasonic and it plays fine. I've Googled everything from the specific DVD (Trolls) to her Home Stereo system, consulted the troubleshooting guide in the manufacturers manual, looked for firmware updates to the player, I feel I've done my due diligence, yet I still don't have a solution. Any thoughts?

There was a problem report posted on the AnyDVD HD forum involving the Trolls DVD on Feb. 18, 2017. Some in the community felt that the original DVD authoring was faulty, resulting in bad timestamps. So, it's possible that the DVD is inherently flawed, but many DVD players are unaffected by the defect.

[jagabo]

Since CSS (the encryption used on DVDs) was cracked many years ago the studios have used obfuscation techniques to keep discs from being copied. The idea is to author a disc that is playable by DVD players but confuses DVD copying programs. Sometimes they go too far and even some DVD players have problems.

[macpaladin]

So, definitely DVD not BlueRay. As I mentioned in my original post I have played this DVD in my MacBook Pro, which cannot play BlueRay discs. Disc was brand new out of the sealed package, although my wife did clean it (as a precaution). DVD player is old as the hills and dusty as hell. We did our best to clean it, but it has occurred to us that a lens cleaning disc may be called for in this situation. Still doesn't explain why the older DVD disc (Mixed Nuts) played fine in the dusty old player, but the Trolls DVD didn't.

Interesting note about the Trolls time stamping. We actually have two different Trolls discs. The 2016 movie from Dreamworks animation studios (Party Edition) and the Trolls Holiday edition (a made for TV short from 2017 which my wife mistakenly bought thinking it was the movie) also by Dreamworks animation studios. Both are having the same problem. I'm inclined to believe this is less a production problem and more a copyright protection scheme. Which is really stupid as these are commercially distributed and purchased DVD's not homemade duplicates.

Thanks for the speedy feedback BTW

[lingyi]

Couple of possibilities related to the age of your player that have already been stated. Sadly, 11 years (you state your player is from 2006) is several lifetimes past for many modern electronics.

As october262 stated: The laser in your player may be dying. Different discs (especially from different pressing plants) may have different reflectivity properties. Using a lens cleaner and cleaning the entire player with canned air is a good idea, especially if it's in a dusty environment.

As jagabo stated: Studios are constantly tweaking the DVD copy protection system and pushing the limits of player compatibility. Pioneer players, like most major manufacturers (e.g. Sony, Philips, Toshiba, etc) are typically manufactured close to the original DVD specifications. Ironically, a off-brand player may be more tolerant of discs that are not 100% DVD spec compliant. My first DVD player (circa early 2000's), was a Pioneer and it couldn't play burned DVDs. I had to get an off-brand player for that and my Pioneer sat unused for years and eventually died.

[dannyboy48888]

True about the knockoff part, I have cheap dbpower potable player that plays anything resembling a mpeg video file rather pal NTSC etc. On high bitrates it slows but still chugs along. Then I got a old high end Sony 5 disc that chokes on anything that is not exactly compliant. With these newer protections on DVDs ironically a beater player has the best results playability wise.

[macpaladin]

Couple of possibilities related to the age of your player that have already been stated. Sadly, 11 years (you state your player is from 2006) is several lifetimes past for many modern electronics.

As october262 stated: The laser in your player may be dying. Different discs (especially from different pressing plants) may have different reflectivity properties. Using a lens cleaner and cleaning the entire player with canned air is a good idea, especially if it's in a dusty environment.

As jagabo stated: Studios are constantly tweaking the DVD copy protection system and pushing the limits of player compatibility. Pioneer players, like most major manufacturers (e.g. Sony, Philips, Toshiba, etc) are typically manufactured close to the original DVD specifications. Ironically, a off-brand player may be more tolerant of discs that are not 100% DVD spec compliant. My first DVD player (circa early 2000's), was a Pioneer and it couldn't play burned DVDs. I had to get an off-brand player for that and my Pioneer sat unused for years and eventually died.

So, obviously I'm painfully aware of the vintage issue...if we could afford (or more importantly convince my sister-in-law of the the value) to replace it we surely would. This is STEP 1 in that direction.

We're definitely going to purchase a lens cleaner disc this week and try that.

The DVD (Apple calls it a SuperDrive) in my MacBook Pro is a Matshita DVD-R Model UJ-898 circa 2010. Panasonic is hardly an unknown in the electronics, much less the stereo/home theater world and I would hardly consider them "off-brand" however, your point is well taken (that off-brand worked better for you). I'm pretty sure they both follow industry standards/specifications pretty rigorously. I'm just flummoxed as to why one works and the other doesn't.

Again, thanks for the reply

[jagabo]

You can get a new DVD player for US$20.

[lingyi]

The DVD (Apple calls it a SuperDrive) in my MacBook Pro is a Matshita DVD-R Model UJ-898 circa 2010. Panasonic is hardly an unknown in the electronics, much less the stereo/home theater world and I would hardly consider them "off-brand" however, your point is well taken (that off-brand worked better for you). I'm pretty sure they both follow industry standards/specifications pretty rigorously. I'm just flummoxed as to why one works and the other doesn't.

Again, thanks for the reply

Lots of variables that may cause a DVD play in one device and not another. Two major possibilities: 1) In general, computer DVD drives are very different than those in dedicated DVD players. They have to read (and in your case write) non-video and video data, where your DVD player's drive only has to read DVD video. 2) Your computers DVD is four (4) years newer than the DVD player. Again, a lot was tweaking was done to pressed DVDs within the parameters of the DVD specifications that may have been built into the computer drive that wasn't on the player.

Try enough discs and you'll come across a disc that will play in your particular player, but not on your particular computer. Again, too many possibilities (bad/dirty DVD player, bad/dirty DVD drive, bad/dirty disc, etc) to definitely answer in every situation.

[orsetto]

So, obviously I'm painfully aware of the vintage issue...if we could afford (or more importantly convince my sister-in-law of the the value) to replace it we surely would. This is STEP 1 in that direction.

The problem is almost certainly the player reaching the end of its useful life re firmware compatibility or laser strength. Normally it would be no big deal to simply replace it with a newer model, but you are facing down a double-headed dragon in this case: 1) the player involved is of the ill-conceived "all in one" variety, encased in an "entertainment system" and 2) the owner of the ill-conceived "al-in-one" box is a relative by marriage. The combination is lethally resistant to any changes: this I can tell you from first hand experience. My own S-I-L adamantly refuses to give up a similar JVC all-in-one, despite the dvd player having died less than a year after she bought it and the lack of modern HDMI etc causing relentless lipsync audio problems with her flat screen TV. She won't give it up because the limited (nonexistent?) selection of similar "all-in-ones" today aren't as pretty as her mirrored-surface, pseudo-art-deco JVC unit.

We're definitely going to purchase a lens cleaner disc this week and try that.

Its worth a shot but they almost never work. Don't waste $29 for one at a ripoff store like Best Buy: order it from eBay or Amazon. Note if her Panasonic is playing most other discs just fine, the problem is probably not a dirty laser but outdated firmware that can't handle the asinine encoding glitches in these specific Trolls discs, as others suggested earlier.

Personally, I'd skip the cleaning disc and try to convince her to buy a current small cheap supplemental dvd player like the Sony DVPSR210. It is barely the size of three stacked DVD cases, plays almost anything, and seems very compatible (considering its a Sony). Connect it to the inputs of the Panasonic all-in-one, and she should be good to go.

The DVD (Apple calls it a SuperDrive) in my MacBook Pro is a Matshita DVD-R Model UJ-898 circa 2010. [...] I'm just flummoxed as to why one works and the other doesn't.

It isn't so much the computer drive hardware as the software controlling it. Apple's crude DVD Player app is surprisingly compatible with almost anything you throw at it, including badly-authored RW discs that won't play in any other device. You notice a similar pattern in Windows systems, where VLC or PowerDVD will play nearly any disc or any video file, no matter how badly encoded or corrupt, while Windows Media Player or KM Player will not boot or crash quickly with the same drive/disc combo.

The reliability record of the Matsushita (Panasonic) SuperDrives is actually pretty terrible: you've been very lucky yours didn't crap out on you long ago. I gave up replacing the drives in the MacBooks, Minis and iMacs I administered, and just handed out cheap portable LG USB drives like candy to anyone with problems. The disassembly time alone on a Mac Mini can approach the cost of replacing the entire computer (like Panasonic "entertainment systems", embedding an optical drive in a sealed monocoque computer that takes three hours to tear down was not one of Apple's more brilliant moves).