Hi:

I'm new to this forum and in the market for a new DVD player but I have a question I hope someone can answer for me. My current player, a Panasonic DVD-RV30 has been an excellent unit for the last 5 or 6 years and still works great with one exception. Recently it no longer plays DVD's manufactured by Disney or its Touchstone group. DVDs from this source result in a "NO Disk" message on the front panel of my player. I've had three in the last two weeks. All other DVDs and CDs work fine. I've spoken to Disney and they claim they do nothing unusual and it's the players problem. Panasonic says there is something about the DVDs that is unusual. In any case I was wondring if anyone knows if Disney has some different type of copyright protection that would be unrecognizable by my older player?

Thanks,

Joe

Hi:

I'm new to this forum and in the market for a new DVD player but I have a question I hope someone can answer for me. My current player, a Panasonic DVD-RV30 has been an excellent unit for the last 5 or 6 years and still works great with one exception. Recently it no longer plays DVD's manufactured by Disney or its Touchstone group. DVDs from this source result in a "NO Disk" message on the front panel of my player. I've had three in the last two weeks. All other DVDs and CDs work fine. I've spoken to Disney and they claim they do nothing unusual and it's the players problem. Panasonic says there is something about the DVDs that is unusual. In any case I was wondring if anyone knows if Disney has some different type of copyright protection that would be unrecognizable by my older player?

Thanks,

Joe

Can you give a list of discs you've had this trouble with?

-Bill

Disney dvds have a different file structure and that's why you have the no disc errors,
Another troublesome brand is jvc and some others , if you need more info check out,
www.videohelp.com
They have tons of info on dvds and other stuff.

Disney, Buena Vista, and Touchstone are all using some sort of alternative DVD structure that hoses some older players. I have a Kenwood Sovereign DVD changer/media manager system that locks up when attempting to identify recent discs from these manufacturers. I have to power the changers off and on to recover from attempting to read these discs. Note that they play fine, it is just the lookup process that doesn't work.

Cheers,

Mike

Joe,

I ran into this issue a year or two back with my second generation Toshiba player. At first I thought it was some kind of change in encryption, but it only seemed to effect about 25% of BVHE titles (Buena Vista Home Entertainment handles all Disney, Touchstone, Miramax and older Dimension and Hollywood Pictures titles). The fact that this doesn't seem to effect high security titles like "Pirates" and "Cars" led me to "oh well, guess it's time to get a new player."

Since then I've learned from some folks in the authoring community that BVHE has a habit of putting the maximum programing on a disc to the detriment of the bit rate. I now suspect that older players have trouble with the very low bit rate discs and the only real fix is to get a new player. I still do have the old Toshiba though.

Dead Man's Chest and Cars are two that have given me problems, as well as the newer editions of Remember the Titans and Enemy of the State, along with Madagascar, the Little Mermaid, and Home Improvement Season Three.

I first saw this problem with the bonus discs from Disney sets such as Tron, Beauty and the Beast, and others.

Mike

Thanks for your answers and experiences.

The disks I've recently had trouble with are:

Pirates (Dead Man's Chest) - Disney
Invincible - Disney
Goal, A Dream - Touchstone

Here's the weird part. My son has the exact same Panasonic model I have and has had it even longer and he has had no problems with any of these titles.