Bough Babel Used: Froze up completely.

I just rented it last night and watched the entire thing with no interruptions. I haven't heard any reports of Babel freezing up, you might want to clean the disc and try it again.

You could use a disc cleaner, or go the cheap route and use dish soap as others have been doing with Children of Men and other problem discs. Rinse the disc with water, squirt on some liquid dish soap, wipe it around gently with your finger and then rinse and pat it dry with a cloth or paper towel. If that doesn't work it could be a defective disc, maybe that's why the guy got rid of it.

I would not buy any used HD-DVD. A tiny little scratch can render the disk un-playable. If you feel you must own a disc, buy it new. Otherwise rent it. I've rented numerous HD-DVD from NetFlix, and one out of every 4~5 discs do not play or freeze in the middle of the movie. HD-DVD have some serious flaws with their disc that needs to be addressed.

You may have an issue with your player. Have you upgraded the firmware? I rent HD DVDs from Netflix all the time and I've never had to clean the disc since a couple of upgrades ago. Most discs look very scratched, but they play flawlessly on my A1.

Although the price of these high def movies used at Gamestop or similar outlets is enticing, it's something like this that has me extremely leery. You just don't know what condition you're getting. And I highly doubt these places are testing blu-ray or HD DVD movies before they take them as trade in.

Not saying that's the reason for the Babel disc freezing up, but who knows.

Well I rent HD-DVD's from Netflix all the time and have yet to get a disk that will not play.

I have a A1 with 2.1 and maybe it's my location but the disks I get from netflix are all in good shape with only small scratches or none at all. Other than that I give netflix 5/5 stars for great disks!

On the dvd's I rent I also have never had a bad copy of a disk or one that would not play.

For either format I can't remember a time that there was a disk I could not play. Maybe it helps living next to Milwaukee since it's not as big as others with a lot more traffic?

I've bought about 15 used HD-DVDs from Movie Stop since Christmas. I haven't had one problem yet, even with Children of Men. All of their used products are guaranteed for life and the EB Gamer card takes 10% off all used movies. I get all my discs for $10-12. I'm glad lots of people stay away from the used discs, that means more for me!

My problem with HD-DVD may be due to my player (XA1, latest firmware) but I doubt it. I have absolutely no problem playing new discs. Some rentals with scratches play without problem but some with couple minor scratches do not. The last disc I had problem with, Derailed, looked pristine (after cleaning it with Windex) with only a couple small scratches along the edge. Yet the disc would freeze right after the studio logo. In recent days, discs I receive from NetFlix have truly gone down the hill; I receive discs that are badly scratched and sometimes cracked. What do people do with their rentals anyway?

Could be a faulty disc, maybe the reason the original owner wanted to get rid of it. This is a big deal for me and why I don't have a whole lot of discs. I watch each one to make sure that it is not defective before moving on to another. This is also how I know older movies that fail had deteriorated over time.