Why won't some DVDs play in my computer's DVD drive?

I have a small collection of commercial movie DVDs. Most of them are from the U.S. market place and some are from Asia... ALL of these DVDs play in my Phillips DVD player that is connected to my TV.

But only some of these DVDs will play in my DVD player that is in my Dell Inspiron 531 computer with Windows 7 Ultimate.


This computer has a SAMSUNG HD161HJ SCSI DVD/CD Disk Drive.

Some of the DVDs that will play on my computer are from the U.S. market and some of them are from the Asian market, so I don't think that has anything to do with why some of these DVDs will not play on my computer. Some of the DVDs that won't play on this computer are from the U.S. market too.

The DVDs that play just fine in my Phillips DVD player on my TV that won't play on my computer don't even seem to wind up to play on my computer. The DVDs that will play on my computer wind up (you can hear the sound) in the DVD drive within about 20 seconds and they start playing automatically in the Windows Media Player... but I've allowed all the others that will not play to sit in the DVD disk drive for several minutes each in my tests and nothing at all happens... there is no wind up sound and nothing at all happens on the computer screen.

This does not seem to be a problem with the software driver for the disk drive since some of the DVDs will play.

None of these DVDs are warped and all of them are clean.

I've tried two or three times testing each of the DVDs that won't play, taking them out of the disk drive and putting them back in.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,

digiday

What software Player are you using to play the DVDs on your computer?

First, thanks for the recommendation Roadrunner... I thought that might be it since, according to the information on the Media Player Classic page on Wikipedia it says,

"Media Player Classic is capable of VCD, SVCD, and DVD playback without installation of additional software or codecs. MPC has built-in codecs for MPEG-2 video with support for subtitles and codecs for LPCM, MP2, 3GP, AC3, and DTS audio."

So I thought that since it has its own built-in codecs that might solve the problem, but it didn't. Since Media Player Classic does not actually install, and it just runs from the folder that the zipped file is extracted to, then I don't see how that would affect the DVD drive itself, right?

And thanks to jumanji and firebird for your input as well.

The Windows Media Player that is on this computer is version 12.0.7601.17514 dated 11/14/2010. I think I upgraded it once since I installed Windows 7 in October of 2010. But apparently that doesn't have anything to do with this problem because Media Player Classic HC doesn't see the same DVDs that WMP won't see.

Let me clarify, with the DVDs that won't play, the DVD drive does not show that there is any disk in the drive when I look at the Computer window that shows my drives... it just appears that the DVD drive is empty, whereas when there is a DVD in the drive that will play, it shows the disk and the name of the disk in the E drive.

The problem is that the DVD/CD drive is just not seeing some of these DVDs, and as I said, many of the DVDs that it will not see are from the U.S. market, and even some from the same distributor will play and others from that same distributor will not. In addition, most DVDs from Japan will play and some will not. At this point after testing about 50 or so DVDs, the ones from Japan have a better play ratio then the ones from the U.S... but a few of the DVDs from Japan will not play.

Could that have anything to do with the fact that this 2006 computer's DVD drive is a Japanese model? Again, it is a SAMSUNG HD161HJ SCSI DVD/CD Disk Drive.

I thought that possibly more codecs would make a DVD drive see more types of DVDs, but I think I understand now that isn't the case. Codecs make a video player play or convert more types of video and video editing apps deal with more types of video formats, but it has nothing to do with what a DVD/CD drive will see, right?

I edit and create some videos in Adobe Premiere, so I have at least a vague understanding of codecs and I've installed some on this computer... but I don't believe that has anything to do with this problem.

Is it possible that a newer software driver for my internal SAMSUNG HD161HJ SCSI DVD/CD Disk Drive would make it see more types of DVDs? Maybe I was wrong with my previous assumption that the driver won't make a difference.

Or is it possible to "set" the region for the DVD drive, as firebird indicated? How does one go about doing that?... and would that be likely to make it so it wouldn't play some of the DVDs that it will play now?

Thanks,

digiday

Hello Roadrunner and Firebird, thanks for your replies.

First, Roadrunner... the MPC-HC download that I downloaded from the page you linked for me was the one labeled "Zip file" next to the "Installer" link, which usually means that it is a Zipped version of the same thing. But I see now that the download link named "Installer" downloads an actual installer... so I get that now.

But are telling me that installing that MPC-HC app will make my DVD drive see DVDs that it will not see now? I mean, even if it installed additional codecs on my system, that doesn't make my DVD drive see anything differently, right?

And Firebird, the Microsoft driver for my DVD drive is the one that I was referring to... which other driver would be available for it, right?... and it CAN be updated, according to the Device Manager interface for that drive, seen in my screenshot attached at the bottom of this post.

The driver for my SAMSUNG HD161HJ SCSI DVD/CD Disk Drive is the Microsoft driver, version 6.1.7600.16385, dated 6/21/2006, and it does give me the option to update it. My concern there would be that it may (for whatever reason knowing how things go) render my DVD drive inoperable in some sort of software glitch if I try updating that driver... Murphy's Law, ya know?

My last question would be, have you ever heard of or experienced a DVD drive's software driver update improving its ability to read more types of DVDs?... or have you ever heard of updating a DVD drive's driver having the opposite effect.

Since this DVD/CD drive is consistently reading the same DVDs properly over and over in my tests, and not reading the same DVDs over and over in my tests, it leads me to believe that this drive is not having an intermittent failure problem, but more of a problem where the drive or the software driver for it is not reading some types of encoding that some DVDs have. In addition, this drive has never had any problem burning any DVDs or CDs or reading any of the DVDs and CDs that I've burnt.

Let me know what you think of my last question.

Thanks,

digiday