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

[Indianatone]

Hi Roadrunner and Indianatone... thanks for your replies.

I'm wondering, did either of you read my last post?

My issue had nothing to do with the media player nor a defective drive, and I have another drive hooked up that plays all my DVDs now.

Windows Media Player plays all of my DVDs as long as I'm playing them through my LaCie drive that I just hooked up. So it has nothing to do with whether I use MPC-HC or not... in fact in my few tests that I did with MPC-HC, it tended to hang up and crash, even while using my LaCie drive, whereas Windows Media Player works perfectly with all my DVDs now.

And it is evident that the issue with my internal drive that I was troubleshooting is an issue with the Region setting and it is not intermittent behavior from a defective drive.

Thanks.

Yes I read the whole post from top to bottom. Surely if you have stuck more than 5 Japanese DVD's in your computer you would be out of region changes? I stand by what I posted, sounds like the DVD drive fitted in your machine is on its last legs. That fact that you can play them in another drive from 2003 only proves that drive does not have region copy protection.

 

[digiday]

Indianatone,

I indeed did put more than 5 Japanese DVDs in my internal DVD drive, but I still have all four of my allowed changes to make with the Region setting on that drive's Device Manager tab because I have never changed that setting even once yet... as I said before, most of the Japanese DVDs play on the U.S. region setting and many of the U.S. DVDs play and many of them don't, proving that the region setting on the drive is inaccurate or that some of the DVDs just aren't encoded to fit the region they came from.

I'm trying to follow your logic here, but it isn't quite adding up.

But your statement about all of my DVDs playing in my LaCie drive is absolutely correct... that's what I said, it doesn't have any limitations that way, so what's your point?

 

[Indianatone]

Could it be that some of the Japanese DVD are Region 0 which means they play in any drive? I have some discs from the UK that are Region 0 and an Eagles DVD which ir region 0. My point is I was trying to help you out that is all.

 

[digiday]

Hi Indianatone,

I guess that's a possibility, but that wouldn't explain why most of my DVDs that are from the U.S. will not play in this internal drive when it's set to the U.S. region and always has been, as I explained.

All of this is kind of a moot point now that, as I described, I'm successfully using the no limits LaCie drive that I dug out of storage from 2003.

But thanks for the help.

 

[Indianatone]

Hi Indianatone,

I guess that's a possibility, but that wouldn't explain why most of my DVDs that are from the U.S. will not play in this internal drive when it's set to the U.S. region and always has been, as I explained.

What does explain it is my first post to you. Your internal drive is bad. Sometimes when the drive cannot read a dvd it may bring up the region message and the drive spins at high speed. Some DVD's are better reflectors than others, they will play, others will not. The laser is glowing lees brightly than when the drive was new.You need to replace it at some point in the future.
You are very welcome, it is always a pleasure to help. I enjoy paying it back as I have been helped in the past.

 

[digiday]

But I never get a "region message", and I never said I did. The DVDs that won't play just never load and never appear in the E drive in the "Computer" window and there is no spinning noise. The drive works perfectly with any disks that I've ever burned myself and I've never had a burn failure when using a good DVD/CD burner app like the PC version of Toast or the free Ashampoo Disk Burner 6.

Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm repeating myself a lot, but I guess I need to.

People on two other forums tell me that a laser does not decay or "glow less brightly" with age... it's possible for a laser to fail completely, of course, but it doesn't diminish with age, according to other sources.

I think the deciding factor would be if I installed the "DVD Region+CSS Free" software that SIW2 recommended on page two of this thread and it made my internal drive read all of my DVDs, but I'm not going to do that because I have this problem solved.

Thanks.