How to view a DVD that will not play?

In the old days you could use 321 Studios DVDxRescue. It really did a great job, whether the original was physically damaged, or just had some internal conflict.

A lot of the time it seems as though the disk is fine, but somehow the player is not able to find sections, or maybe one tiny section is damaged but there is no way to bridge the movie part just before the glitch to the part just afterward.

I have noticed that there are commercial products on the market, but would really like to hear someone say they have had good success with one of them.

On the other hand, I'd give any free program a shot if it sounds good! Any recommendations?

Thanx,

HandsOff

 

sometimes I try using a different dvdrom to read the dvd. A dvd might not play on one dvdrom, but will read fine on another dvdrom. Some particular dvdroms have more powerful lasers that can read a scratched dvd better.
Also you can try dvdfabhddecrypter (make sure you program it skip all read errors) This way it will read the whole dvd without stopping for errors.


http://forums.afterdawn.com/forum_view.cfm/11

 

Slightly off-topic, but I just read the wiki entry on 321 Studios and thought some other members would be interested to see why they aren't around anymore:

As for reading DVDs, I have to echo what jonyjoe81 posted; sometimes a DVD won't work on my laptop even though my desktop can see it and read it.

Other than trying different DVD drives, I've tried (on WinXP, and not uninstalled) BadCopy Pro, BadCDDVDRecovery and CD Recovery Toolbox Free (works on DVDs too). IsoBuster Pro is another powerful recovery tool. If your computer can see the contents of the DVD, then something like Unstoppable Copier (freeware) may be useful to try to copy it to your hard drive, or at least it's better than Windows' default copy.

edit: also, you can always wash the cd/dvd (people use just water, or toothpaste instead of soap)

 

Thanks for those ideas. I had heard that Isobuster was good at recovering bad discs, so I should try it and the others.

The irony here is that I really am talking about original discs. I have noticed that component DVD players hooked up to a TV often are better at reading discs than DVD players in computers, I know not why.

I wish 321 Studios had elected to offer DVDxRescue as a stand alone product, though, now that I think about it, I guess you cannot really do what it did without duplicating content on the disc.

BTW, along the lines of toothpaste, I do have a product that does the same sort of thing. you spray on a slightly abrasive fluid and crank a handle which rotates the disc and smooths the surface, thus removing scratches. It has worked, though it is not a real high percentage fix. Commercially you can buy some very good resurfacing machines, but the ones I've seen cost several thousand dollars!

Thanks for the ideas - I will see what happens!

 

As most originals have copyprotection,use Isobuster in conjunction with AnyDvd or DvdFabHDdecrypter,else the data extraction will possably fail....

 

if the disc is physically damaged or scratched what i do is use a fine compound called finesse it from 3m made for cars, i buff the disc with that starting in the middle working straight out do not go in circles. then i use the 3m glaze compound and a high speed buffer with a foam pad set to low speed and i hold the disc and gently buff it back to a mirror shine. this works almost all the time. for deeper scratches i actually wet sand the bottom surface a bit to get most of them out.

also i normally would not say this but being they are out of business if you look around im sure you can find the 321 program or i may even have a copy laying around somewhere

 

Thanks, Roady, and ZFactor! I really appreciate the comments. This is one of those threads where I feel people have really gone the extra mile to help me out. I do have AnyDVD. If I buy a movie I plan on viewing more than once or twice I usually make a back up copy in order to keep the original pristine.

And I have a purchased copy of 321 studios DVDxRescue. The problem is that the product requires activation, and beyond that, further research has revealled that DVDxRescue is not compatible with Windows beyond XP sp1. Seriously, people! do not chuck your XP sp1 O/S thinking that you will never need it again.

In the spirit of helping others out there that suffer the same agony that I have been lately I wanted to share one other bit of what I believe is surprisingly good news. I bought a laser lens cleaning disk at a thrift store. And much to my surprise it has a very good track record. The disc has a few sets of tiny bristles on the surface of a disk. You insert this disk and play it which takes less time than 5 minutes and then DVD's and CD's will often run without a hitch.

I know it is kind of tacky to answer your own posted questions, but this is news about a product that many people may have seen and wondered about. I have two different brands of laser lens cleaning discs, and one is careful to state that you should not use it on video game consoles. Well, actually I did it anyway, but this is possibly a risky thing since I think game console DVD's have a different structure use different areas on the disk than movie DVD's so their treatment will probably have to be different.l

Thanks again!

HandsOff

 

yeah for sure be careful with those "disc cleaners" sometimes they do way more harm than good. imo a purchase of dvdfab is a better thing than anydvd for making backups because you still need another piece of software to actually make the backup and compress it to a blank dvd unless you use dual layers all the time (to rich for me for a lot of movies im not crazy about but dont want ruined by the kids and hate to say careless wife who just tosses them around they ONLY get backups.. its funny when she asks me for the original and simply look at her and say "no" lol) but dvd fab will copy it compress it and also bypasses the protection same as anydvd...

also to add a lot depends on the drive and its error correction.. for realy bad discs i cant use my fav burner the optiarc 7240 i have to use my sammy's (i have 5 burners in my desktop i built) they seem to almost never throw a error where the optiarc's (i have 8 so its not just that one drive) will throw a error and say it cant read it...

final thing yeah i know about the xp thing i keep a really old compaq notebook loaded with xp just for this type of case.. i use that and a older "test" desktop for anything releated to winxp anymore since i no longer run it on any system we have..