I am unable to load the HD-DVD side of the disc. Instead I got an error message saying "Can't read disc." My Xbox 360 is currently connected to Xbox Live but there doesn't seem to be any updates for the disc.

I wanted to know if there are others who have this similar problem and know when Microsoft might address this issue.

Thanks.

I am unable to load the HD-DVD side of the disc. Instead I got an error message saying "Can't read disc." My Xbox 360 is currently connected to Xbox Live but there doesn't seem to be any updates for the disc.

I wanted to know if there are others who have this similar problem and know when Microsoft might address this issue.

Thanks.

Hi Zaku, I just finished watching it on my hd dvd add-on and it had no problems playing it at all. this probably won't work, but try disconnecting your 360 from xbox live. it's weird, but superman returns and the departed said 'cant read disc' when i have my 360 connected to xbox live. when i disconnect it, it works fine. good luck!

you might also want to check for Scratches as some of the players seem to be sensitive to them. It could be though that you just got a bad disc, if you are having no other problems with any other disc then that would lead me to think its the disc. I have seen the Live trick and the power trick (Turn off the 360 (unplug it from the wall) plug it back in and power back on.

Thanks for the suggestions but unfortunately the Live trick didn't work. If it's not a widespread problem then it's probably a bad disc then.

I thought I'd come here and see if the 360 is missing a patch for the disc or something.

Thanks for the help.

I've gotten my copy to play however the video stutters and is jumpy. Gonna try some resets and see what happens.

Well unplugging both the 360 and hd-dvd drive seems to have fixed the problem

I'm having the stuttering problem with COM as well. The special features play fine but the film stutters the whole way through. I had the same thing happen on my Alice Cooper Live at Montreaux disc. Is it just a bad disc or is the player the problem ? Thanks

I watched the movie all the way through with no issues. On a second watch through, I had the issue. I just backed out to the dashboard and restarted it.. no problems.

I have an issue playing the HD-DVD side of Children of Men as well, I assumed it was defective and am having amazon ship me another copy. I will let you know if this replacement can play or not.

I'm having the stuttering problem with COM as well. The special features play fine but the film stutters the whole way through. I had the same thing happen on my Alice Cooper Live at Montreaux disc. Is it just a bad disc or is the player the problem ? Thanks

I have the same problem as well. It slowed down at the beginning of HappyFeet, Slowed in COM in the cafe and the way to the cafe the first time, stoped the disc and restarted and froze half way through the movie. It froze at the fight seen in SD Rocky Balboa. It seems to be a Hard Drive issue or the DVD drive. Any solutions out there?

No playback issues here on my 360. However, I did have a problem where things would kind of hang when it went into the Universal logo screensaver. You can't do anything except eject the disc and load it up again. No big deal really. Anyone else have this happen?

It seems every time a new HD DVD comes out there's one of these 360 problem threads. It's just unfortunate. I can't help but think of little kids excited to see their favorite movie in high def and experiencing these problems. Shame on you Microsoft for making little kids cry!:cool:

It seems every time a new HD DVD comes out there's one of these 360 problem threads. It's just unfortunate. I can't help but think of little kids excited to see their favorite movie in high def and experiencing these problems. Shame on you Microsoft for making little kids cry!:cool:

I don’t know about that, the only 360 issues I’ve had were the NIN TrueHD clipping and this Children of Men issue (also seems many people are having problems with this disc not only on 360's).
I really hope that the update to fix the sound compression and some compatibility issues is released soon though...

It’s kind of sad though that when new discs come out you do have at least one defective disc thread, this is part of the reason I don’t recommend the next gen video formats to anyone unless they are prepared to deal with compatibility errors, firmware upgrades and possible disc returns. Early adopter beta testing is an acquired taste.

I just popped mine in and I'm getting the cannot read issue. This sux because its the first HD-DVD I bought in like 2 months and I'm having people over for a movie night tonight!

Ooooh, I just changed my settings on my 360 from 1080i to 720p and it started playing. Perhaps there is a problem with 1080i settings?

unplugged my 360 and add on, changed to 720p, gotten a new copy of the disc, and disconnected from live and i'm still getting errors.

thats really not cool seeing as how i've really wanted to watch this movie for months now.

I am having the same issues as reported here w/ this DVD. Not only w/ my 360 but on my Toshiba HDXA2 so I suspect this is an authoring issue w/ the disc itself.

Recieved my replacment copy today, this one the 360 can actually read.
I don't have time to watch the entire movie again but its playing perfectly as i type.

I hate it when discs are defective :mad:

No playback issues here on my 360. However, I did have a problem where things would kind of hang when it went into the Universal logo screensaver. You can't do anything except eject the disc and load it up again. No big deal really. Anyone else have this happen?

I've had the Universal screensaver hang once or twice in the entire time I've had my 360 (since Christmas). I've watched/tested countless HD-DVDs with it.

That's the only problem I've ever encountered.

Seems like this problem is spreading:

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Universal/Microsoft/Xbox_360/Technical_Glitches/Children_of_Men_HD_DVD_Hits_Xbox_360_Playback_Snag/552

~Josh

Problem for me with the XA2. It is not even recognizing the disc. I had the same problem with Hollywoodland. Every other movie plays fine so I am not sure if it is my player or the disc.

I ran into a problem with XA2 on this disc. It loaded and played fine for the first hour then the picture froze then in about 30-40 seconds the screen went blank and error box appeared. "This disc cannot be played....Error Code ________" I forgot the code. I tried again and the same thing happened in another chapter. I just installed the latest firmware update last week.

Edit: spelling correction

I just popped mine in and I'm getting the cannot read issue. This sux because its the first HD-DVD I bought in like 2 months and I'm having people over for a movie night tonight!

I enjoy both BD and HD but I have had many issues with lip sync, drop outs and freeze with the Toshiba players. For this reason, I am reluctant to play an HD DVD movie when I have guests for a movie night. I use my Pioneer Blu-Ray. I have had zero such glitches with the Pioneer or with my prior Samsung player. I replaced my Toshiba XA1 with the XA2 as I expected that such issues had been fixed.........no so. I only purchase HD DVD when a Blu-Ray is not offered.....mainly Universal titles. The only Blu-Ray glitch was with The Descent and that now plays with the latest firmware. I just loaded the latest Toshiba firmware update last week and thought that this would fix these problems. Apparently not unless Children of Men is exception.

It seems that if you spend $750 on a player it should work.

Watched it last night on my XA2 with no problems. I even watched most of the extras...I am using the latest firmware.

I've had problems with the Universal screensaver freezing, and subtitle problems like I had with Babel. Has anyone checked the subs on their's yet? They flash on the screen too fast to read on mine.

I also have the latest firmware installed and still had problems. Amazon is sending a replacement. Will post with results.

I just tried my copy in the XBox 360 HD DVD player and it played just fine. I have an A1 as well, but didn't try it on that yet. It seems that some copies not all are affected by this issue.

AFter the Happy Feet issue, I was nervous about this one.

It played problem free, twice for me, so far. I have the A1 FW2. I wish I still have my A2 to try it and Happy Feet on. I gave it to a family member who had an HDMI receiver. I'll aske him t play both, and see if he has any issues.

Count me in as having problems with this disk. Intermittent slow downs with no sound, and out of sync audio when starting back up. Pause/unpause would fix it until the next occurence.

I just emailed Amazon to send me a replacement.

I am very disappointed about this. A ruined first screening of one of my favourite movies of the year. :(

Well this sucks... This movie is one of the major reasons I purchased the 360 add-on and it doesn't work on it?? I only bought the add-on for Universal films which I like a lot of, all my other movies are BD. This sucks.. Well at least I have The Thing.

So far so good for CoM & the 360 drive for me. Only movie I've had problems with has been Hollywoodland, it was a rental though.

I ran into a problem with XA2 on this disc. It loaded and played fine for the first hour then the picture froze then in about 30-40 seconds the screen went blank and error box appeared. "This disc cannot be played....Error Code ________" I forgot the code. I tried again and the same thing happened in another chapter. I just installed the latest firmware update last week.

Edit: spelling correction

I got the same error message on my XA2. I am using the 1.3 Firmware. Must be a bad batch of disc. Amazon is sending me a replacement.

Children of Men began pausing and skipping at the end of chapter 16 into chapter 17. Will request a replacement from Amazon.

Toshiba HD-A2 with latest firmware updated.

This is the first defective disc I've had for my Tosh. For what its worth, Happy Feet (which people have posted problems) played flawlessly earlier today.

Played fine on my 360 HD-DVD add-on last night from start to finish and through all the extras (great movie BTW). So there are good discs out there and I happened to get one from amazon. Lucky me! :D

After reading about people having problems with this film on the 360 add on, I popped mine in yesterday morning to see if it would work. Watched about 20 minutes of it and tried some of the U-Control extras. Worked perfectly. Turned it off and went out for a while.

I come back 3 hours later to play some Castlevania :Symphony of the Night and guess what?? I get the 3 red flashing rings of death on my console. :confused: Hardware failure. I just don't get it. The system is well ventilated and well taken care of. I've had it since February 06. Thankfully I have the service plan so I'm sending my baby off to MS for free repair. God knows how long it'll take. Color me disappointed.

*pours out liquor for his dead homie*

**Disclaimer** I'm in no way insinuating that Children of Men killed my 360. Just wanted to vent.

Too bad the cheap $100 Chinese HDDVD players aren't out yet, I was having friends come over for a screening of this gem of a film tonight.

I watched mine last night on 360 hd add-on...not a single problem, I watched all of the extras as well. Will watch again tonight and see if any issues occur.

I don't have Children of Men yet but I was wondering if there are serial numbers on the disc that could be posted to track the "bad batches" of this movie?

C.

I got the same error message on my XA2. I am using the 1.3 Firmware. Must be a bad batch of disc. Amazon is sending me a replacement.

This re: my XA2

My first copy from Amazon would not load at all. All I got was "disc not DVD format" or some such. Got my replacement disc yesterday. Started up and I was really enjoying the movie then froze. Now it will not load at all and I get the "disc not DVD format" error again. I really don't know what to do. I still have my A1 but not in my system. This evening I will do a quick hook up and see if the disc plays in that player. I probably will send into Toshiba once I exhaust all avenues to try and pin the blame on disc or machine.

I never could get Hollywoodland to work either---that was a rental though.

Now Happy Feet played through in all of its glory last night after the CoM debacle. Not one problem with that disc.

****Spoiler Alert****

My wife and I watched CoM last night on the A2 and in the scene where they are rushing the lady out of the "motel" the morning after she gave birth it froze and would not progress. I powered off the machine and re inserted the disc and it froze there again. I had to skip to the point where the lady, baby and Clive Owen were in a rowboat heading towards a buoy. What happened between these scenes?

~Josh

^^
Whoa!! Watch the spoilers!!

Seems like this problem is spreading:

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Universal/Microsoft/Xbox_360/Technical_Glitches/Children_of_Men_HD_DVD_Hits_Xbox_360_Playback_Snag/552

~Josh

Whatever respect I had left for beatboy, I lost with this post.

Contain your glee.

Freaking romper room forums, and Beat leads the charge.

Can I vent too? This sucks that I spent $500 on the HD-A2 back in January, much to the disapproval of the Mrs., now the $30+ HD DVD "Children of Men" is a PITA to play and watch, let alone use any U-control, or view "extras"

I blame Universal, "Disc not DVD format" WTF??!! It is too! "Cannot read disc" along with various 8-digit error codes, which I don't have handy, since I'm at work.

Maybe the next commission check will be spent on Blu-ray afterall...and I hate how Sony is taking control of various (almost all) movie studios!

$1,000 bucks for a blu-ray player...PLEASE!! What a rip off, or not, if it plays smoother than my HD-A2. Did you hear that Toshiba??!! (granted this is the first HD DVD that won't play properly, but I'm ticked!)

In this thread, as well as in the thread Beatboy linked, the majority of reported problems with this disc are with Toshiba standalones, not the Xbox 360 add-on. Also the number of people reporting no problems is substantially higher than the number of people reporting problems.

That's not to say the folks getting errors are imagining things. There could well be a bad batch with authoring problems. At least some of the complaints could be from people with older firmware, and there are also posts from people who solved loading problems by cleaning the disc or unplugging and replugging the player.

I don't see any reason to leap to the conclusion that this is an Xbox problem.

FYI, my Xbox plays CoM without a hiccup. Love the movie, and the 360.

Played it again last night after I read this thread..

No problems for me as well...

Cheers!!

It seems every time a new HD DVD comes out there's one of these 360 problem threads. It's just unfortunate. I can't help but think of little kids excited to see their favorite movie in high def and experiencing these problems. Shame on you Microsoft for making little kids cry!:cool:

I don't see it that way at all. I was thinking about adding another HD-DVD player, but it seems to me that the XBOX is the BEST solution for the time being.

Can we have more people chime in if thier copy of COM is working or not working on thier add on. I just bought bought my copy from amazon and now worried it might not play, and also add to the fact that I have not seen this movie and was really excited to see it. Bummer....

My copy would not work on the 360 add-on, although it works perfectly on an XA1 2.0.

Can I vent too? This sucks that I spent $500 on the HD-A2 back in January, much to the disapproval of the Mrs., now the $30+ HD DVD "Children of Men" is a PITA to play and watch, let alone use any U-control, or view "extras"

I blame Universal, "Disc not DVD format" WTF??!! It is too! "Cannot read disc" along with various 8-digit error codes, which I don't have handy, since I'm at work.

Maybe the next commission check will be spent on Blu-ray afterall...and I hate how Sony is taking control of various (almost all) movie studios!

$1,000 bucks for a blu-ray player...PLEASE!! What a rip off, or not, if it plays smoother than my HD-A2. Did you hear that Toshiba??!! (granted this is the first HD DVD that won't play properly, but I'm ticked!)

Samsung's BD player is much cheaper. The biggest fallacy HD-DVD zealots use to make HD-DVD look better is to say that Blu-Ray is way more expensive when this in not the case. Pretty much all HD-DVD day-and-date releases are combo discs which cost a hell of a lot more than BDs.

I just got my copy from Amazon. I will try to watch it tonight on my 360 add-on, or at the very least see if it recognizes the disc.

Samsung's BD player is much cheaper. The biggest fallacy HD-DVD zealots use to make HD-DVD look better is to say that Blu-Ray is way more expensive when this in not the case. Pretty much all HD-DVD day-and-date releases are combo discs which cost a hell of a lot more than BDs.

You don't have to be a zealot to know that BD players cost more than HD DVD players. You just have to be literate. Same with software.

I just added up the MSRPs and the discounted sales price of the top ten titles on both HD and BD at DVD Empire. No matter which way you slice it or spin it, the average selling price of BD movies is higher.

No go for Children of Men HD-DVD on my 360 add-on. Not even a glimmer of recognition. The DVD side plays just fine.

We need a poll...

OK. I watched my copy from Amazon that I got today. It played perfectly fine until...

***spoilers***
They got to the elementary school and were waiting for Sid to arrest them. When the "midwife" was telling when she first noticed a problem with pregnancies, I wanted to hear everything she was saying, so I was rewinding the disc and activating subtitles. The disc made a weird noise in the tray and then stopped. I had to mess around with it quite a bit. I had to restart that scene about five times until it started up again. I still had problems with that chapter and the chapter where they were on their way to the prison. Once I got it going again, I did not want to do anyting to it...no pauses, rewinds, subtitles or anything. It stuttered a bit when she gave birth, but it played fine for the rest of the movie.
***end spoilers***

What a great movie. Very numbing. The freezes really took me out of the movie, though. I think it would have been more impactful if it hadn't f'ed up. I'll watch it again in the next few weeks with my roommate and his brother and let you know if I have more problems.

Oh, this was on the Xbox 360 add-on.

Now to watch Happy Feet.

I just tested mine from Amazon and i got an error of "Cannot read disc". I guess i am sending this back Monday.

i ordered from amazon and viewed it on the 360 add-on and had absolutely no problems. i didn't do much of anything with the bonus features though...i just watched the deleted scenes after i finished the movie.

fantastic film.

Well I think tat I was lucky with the Children of Men disc appears to play on my 360 Add-On, however the anti theft tag was glued to the HD media side of the disc.

Out of the hundreds of DVDs and the 7 HD DVD titles that I have purchased this has never happened previously.

I had to be extremely careful removing this (and of course the adhesive stuck to the acrylic)

After 3 loadings in my XA2, the movie finally played, but it locked up when I paused it for a bit to answer the phone and the Universal screen saver came on and ran a few cycles. I had to stop and restart the movie to get it to work.

Watched it for a 3rd time, on my A1 FW2.0. No problems at all. Happy Feet has been the only disc with a reproduceable problem since I bought this machine last April. (wow, has HD DVD really already been out a year? :eek: )

I'm not sure if Happy Feet and CoM is the same problem. Happy Feet seems to be the exact same spot where everyone's having issues (around 28:49). CoM, I'm not sure if it's the same spot causing all the trouble. Too bad if the disc batches are bad, since these are two very big titles for the format.

Mine only had 3 spots where it briefly stuttered and only 1 of the 3 threw the audio out of sync until I paused and pressed play. For an HD-DVD Combo, that is a major success!

Happy Feet seems to be the exact same spot where everyone's having issues (around 28:49).

Not to get too off topic, but what was the issue with Happy Feet that people are having?

No problems playing CoM on my 360 add-on. I did have plastic shards on the HD DVD side of the disc. Compressed air and my t-shirt solved that problem.

I can report that my Fiance had no problems playing CoM tonight was well :)

This thread should be renamed.

It's not a problem with Xbox 360 users only. Several XA2 users are having problems, including myself. With the latest firmware installed, I got a "cannot play disc" error several times. It finally played but then froze half way through the film. When I reloaded I got the garbled audio problem and more freezes.

On my XA2 this HD DVD disc is basically unwatchable. I finished the film on the DVD side without problems.

I have 2 Toshiba XA2's and an XBox360. COM plays fine on the XBox but will not play on either of the XA2's. I get the "Not a DVD" error on both machines.
/\/\

Toshiba or Universal needs to get their act together. I have only had problems with 2 discs. Both Universal. Hollywoodland and Children of Men.

Had to watch the end of Children of Men on the SD side... Sucks, will have to send it back to Amazon. Oh well, first movie I ever had roblems with...

My copy of Children of Men had constant stuttering playback issues on my A1 with 2.0 firmware. It played fine in my 360 add on. Nevertheless, for 27.99$ the disc is going back. This is the first HD DVD that I have to return and I own over 60. :(

I tried to watch my netflix copy today and had the same issue with the HD DVD side, I reported a playback problem and hopefully the next disc will be playable. Such a freaking bummer and I refuse to watch the dvd side.

COM doesnt work in my 360 either... I contacted Amazon and they told me they would send a replacement with no charge IN JUNE.

Ridiculous...

I can report that my Fiance had no problems playing CoM tonight was well :)
SOB....welll I thought Fiance had watched it on Fri night without problems, but found out that she didnt end up watching it. Well we watched it last night and had problems . TGhe movie was playing fine until I had to pause the movie to take out the puppy. When I got back the screen was frozen and the only way to get anywhere was to exit to the dashboard screen. Well we got it to play again, this time it playes until the Scene within the school, it the pausedand I had to exit out to the dashboard. (I should metion that it started to make some loud "searching" sounds at this time. ) After this however the dis would no longer play on the HD DVD side wouldnt load at all so had to switch it to the DVD side (YUCK ) and watched the rest of the movie. I havent returned the movie yet, and this could be a production error instead of a disc problem. Hopefully trhis gets figured out. Was a great movie IMO though.

I also had problems with this disk on the XA2 and the add-on. First disc so far that I ran into problems with and I did watch Hollywoodland with no problems on the XA2.

This thread should be renamed.

It's not a problem with Xbox 360 users only. Several XA2 users are having problems, including myself. With the latest firmware installed, I got a "cannot play disc" error several times. It finally played but then froze half way through the film. When I reloaded I got the garbled audio problem and more freezes.

On my XA2 this HD DVD disc is basically unwatchable. I finished the film on the DVD side without problems.

I'm on copy #2, one from Amazon and one from local BB. Neither plays on a new XA2 with 1.3 installed.

Going to try a 3rd copy from BB later today.

Based on my experience having 5 previous bad Universal discs, I don't think anyone's player is to blame. Just bad authoring or most likely pressings. That's why some have problems, some don't with the same equipment and FW.

ss9001

recap: my copy of COM would only play once on my xbox addon (other times gave a disk error). when it did play (just skipping through the chapters) it froze on whatever chapter starts at 1:23.

took it over to a friend's house and played it on his xbox addon. it usually gave the disk error i got, but it played a couple of times with no freezing. his addon is set up vertically and mine is horizontal. i'm convinced this is a physical issue, where the player and disk tolerances are just lax enough to cause problems but sometimes work, like when the disk tray grabs the disk "just right".

Well, this is interesting. The first time I put it in my 360 Add On, the movie came up fine to the menu. I didn't actually have time to play it, so I assumed I had a good copy. Yesterday I tried to play it, and the the disc was unreadable. I tried to play it multiple times without any luck. I took the disc out and put it in my A1 and it played flawlessly. This is the first disc so far that I've had problems with the 360 Add On not playing the disc.

For those keeping track, add me the list list of possibly defective CoM HDDVD disks.

I had both of these problems (in title) happen on playing CoM. Have had no such problems with 10 previous HDDVDs purchased.

Paused the movie for a break: when we came back the Universal logo was up, and we had to eject to get out of it.

Couple of minutes from the end (arriving at the buoy) it froze. Could not get past that point, or rewind or chapter skip. Had to restart the system, go to the end credits, and rewind to just after that spot, and it worked.

Worked fine on my 360 drive. Guess I got lucky.