Netflix BD disc rental discussion thread - Page 260

Mine has been flipping back and forth for a few days. Yesterday I logged on and I had about 20 movies with a + beside them (all for titles that have long been returned).

But as long as movies keep shipping, I don't care.

The display of my queue is working properly now, Thursday afternoon.

I have been having audio static pops mid way through Netflix blurays which require me to toggle audio tracks or restart the movie from where I left off to make it stop. Then I noticed that there is a new label on the disc around the center hole of the bluray. I think this is causing the problem in my setup. Anybody else notice this? I think my player is not gripping onto the movie very well because of this label.

Ron

I can't guess what's causing the pop, but I'm pretty sure you can rule out the center hole label .. not gripping would cause the disc to stop functioning completely ..

Barking up the wrong tree there. Depends on whether you are sending your AVR bitstreamed audio or LPCM, but the issue is either in the player or AVR and could be quite a few different things. More troubleshooting is required. A dirty or damaged disc could be one possible cause, and we know that such a thing is not unlikely with rentals. Does it also happen on discs that you own?

Just looking to see if anybody else has this problem. Using multichannel analog outputs so decoding is in the player. Its not my preamp. I can select other sources while paused on the player and all is fine. Go back to the player resume and static pops randomly in different channels. All channels have popped. It completely stops when I toggle audio tracks in the player or I stop aand restart from where I left off. always about midway to 2/3rds into the disc. Happened on the last two discs. Now I have to try my own blurays but it will take a while. I have to watch an hour or more to see if it will do it. Thats why I asked here first.

Also had problems with paper disc labels in the past and stopped using them so that's why I have a huntch its this label. I think its very new addition to these discs.

I suspect you have a problem with your BD player, and I'd be extremely surprised if it is caused by the sticker labels around the hub on Netflix discs. The audio and video is in a digital compressed stream with layers of DRM and copy protection around them. Your BD player has to read the raw 1's and 0's off the disc, make sense out of the stream, decode the DRM/copy protection, separate the audio and video portions, and decode the compressed video and audio. Then if you are using analog audio outputs, your player has to do a digital to analog conversion on the audio before it sends it out to your amp.

I understand that...I am an engineer and have been an audiophile for 30 years plus so no need to explain. It may have been two baddly encoded rental discs. I am in the middle of one of my own personal movies and no problems yet. Might have to wait for the next rental viewing to find out if its three in a row or not.

My player has dejittering circuitry the it involves a lock on the bitstream so if the spdif stream deviates beyond the lock range it can cause pops like this. My Meridian preamp will do this with a poor bitstream so I have a hunch this is the same problem. Guess I will find out with the next rental.

Also I had a similar problem with my own personally burned DVD's and using paper labels. It throws the balance of the disc off. I think in this case it may be the spindle not having a good grip or it causes a wobble that increases jitter...at least with my player. Time will tell with future blurays from Netflix.

Ok so my own purchased discs play fine! I really think the label is causing excessive wobble of the disc which is increasing jitter. The audio dejittering needs a reset or resync mid disc on the rentals. Time will tell after more rentals. I may need to find a new rental place if this keeps happening.

BD discs spin at 1x speed in a player, and there's no possibility of a paper label causing balance issues. In a PC drive, while ripping for instance, it's possible since they spin much faster.

And FWIW, "jitter" has nothing to do with "wobbling discs".

Paper labels cause balance problems...trust me I have witnessed it many times and with different drives during playback.

True I really mean error rate instead of jitter in this case because its reclocked after its off the disc but clearly error correction can only do so much and yes you will have higher error rates when the disc wobbles. Also my problem with labels was play back after placing the label on the disc not while recording. Its worse as the laser tracks out to the edge of the disc.

So the disc begins to spin slower as it tracks out towards the edge of the disc and any balance problems become worse because the motor has a harder time compensating for the balance problem. Trust me it has happened many times back in my early DVD burning days about 12 years ago. You can witness the problem more with the low torque motors in laptop drives. The servos try to compensate but the motor can't control the rotation of the disc. I just had an old recording do this to me. One time I had to remove the label to get all the info off the disc. I laser print my labels directly on to the disc now before I burn them.

I used the term jitter because the noise reminds me of what my Meridian preamp does when the spdif timing goes outside what the phase lock loop dejittering circuit can handle. Crackle pop sounds. So I am not sure if its error rate...most likely or the dejittering circuit that is causing this on some discs with that label.

I just finished watching another Netflix disc and it was fine. It was a short movie though so probably didn't track out very close to the outer edge of the disc.

Ron

Have you tried it on a different player? Maybe your player has more issues if it's slightly unbalanced than another player might have.

Next time it happens I will have to try some of my other drives. I have two pioneers, one Sony BD player and a PS3. I was just looking to see if anybody else had a problem. Another thing it could be is the players lock on audio is broken after a layer change. Last nights disc was a very short flick. I could have had two bad discs in a row and it will never happen again.

DO NOT use paper labels on a disc, they will cause warping and instability. Use Lightscribe, inkjet printable discs or a Sharpie.

As for Netflix discs, lots of great films coming out next month:
War Horse
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
The Descendants
Iron Lady
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

Don't all NF, BB or RedBox discs have a label around the hole .. ??

I've never noticed them but I was talking about full face paper labels not the spindle.

I didn't even know they still made those .. live and learn ..

1. I have rented several hundred disc and I don’t ever recall seeing a commercially produced disc with a paper label, they were all silk screened labels. Same with several hundred disc (Blu-ray & DVD) in my personal library.
   
2. The disc griping occurs on the bottom of the disc (drive spindle), not the top. The disc is clamped from the top using a passive rotating device. The griping coefficient with disc with add-on paper labels should be slightly greater because increased thickness
   
3. There is a possibility you have received counterfeit disc.
   
4. I have used paper labels on many data disc (CD & DVD) and never had any problems.

Well, I'm really disappointed that the "Corman" documentary that is reviewed on the forum today came from Netflix DVD and not Bluray when I have a BD subscription. Interesting documentary BTW. I thought at first it must have been released only on DVD then I saw the review when I logged in here.

He's not talking about a full paper label, it's a small sticker label around the hole, maybe 1/4" in width. Netflix started adding them to discs a year or two ago.

1 or 2 years! Well then its not the label. I just never noticed it I guess. Maybe just got two bad BD's that errored the same way. The last disc was fine. Will see what happens with future discs.

Thanks,

Ron

Strangely enough (after just declaring it's been a long time since this happened), they shipped my Harold & Kumar's Christmas on DVD instead of BD. Tried to report it as a problem, and the "Expected a Blu-ray but got a DVD" option was missing. Did they get rid of that or what?

Tried also to check my original shipping notification, but must've deleted it (so now there's now way to check what they thought they sent).

I still watched the DVD...was a bit disappointed, but whatever.

The movie or the format it came on?

I think they finally realized that once a DVD was checked out there is no way to correct it. You have to wait till it's checked in and re-order it on BD. If you call they can release another disc.

Regardless of what you ordered or what they intended to send, the DVD was sent and that's what shows in their records, so any replacement will be DVD too. It's a fault in their system somewhere.

Make sure that your account is set BOTH to have BD access AND that "You currently have Blu-ray added (when available) when you add a title to your Queue."

Both DVD was barebones and PQ wasn't that great, and the movie didn't have enough NPH (the best thing about the H&K movies).


Makes sense. Yes, I have my account set up correctly, and I don't have it happen often (maybe 3 or 4 times over the last couple of years).

That's odd.

I've always had a BD shipped when it's one Netflix stocks. Maybe your shipping center is the the issue, not Netflix itself.

Since their system should not be making this error, it must fall to human error. Someone grabs the wrong disc or it's mis-filed. But once that happens there's no way for them to fix it because their system shows that a DVD was mailed and apparently assumes a DVD was actually ordered. So the system does not cross-check the order with what was actually sent. They appear to have 2 separate systems that don't talk to each other.

I think perhaps the bigger cause is someone in your center not being able to discern the difference between the red and blue labels on the envelopes...

Hi NetworkTV, or their system can read and match the bar code on disc to envelope bar code.