I have an older Panasonic VCR/DVD player, made in September 2003, that plays older factory-produced video movie DVDs just fine. However, it doesn’t want to play some new DVDs (ABC’s “Castle” television series) I recently bought. It tries to play them, initially stopping and starting, but it then seems to “hang up”, completely stopping play and showing just a black screen. These same new DVDs work fine when I play them on my desktop or laptop computers.
Anybody have any ideas on this problem?
Sometimes DVD players can be “brand sensitive” or react badly to higher speed recording.
You could try cleaning the DVD disk. There are also lens cleaning kits available for the player itself. One or other might help.
You are probably right about copy protection. One quick way to find out (without wasting disks) is this:
Pop the disk in your computer, close the screen that pops up, then right click and select Explore. In one of the folders you will find large VOB files. If none of them play but the screen is scrambled then it is copy protected. You usually find the sound is rubbished too.
EDIT:
my bit about checking copyright.
I should have said that VOB files might not play at all by clicking files using the computer, unless you have them associated with a suitable player (such as VLC Player or Media Player Classic). So if Windows asks what you want to play them with, that in itself is nothing to do with copyright.
The main cause is that new DVDs are usually formed with newer formats. For example, if you play a DVD with a CD player, then none of your DVDs will be readout. The worst case could cause damages to both DVDs and disc players. That is to say, different decoding processes are required in distinct players.