Odd..almost the same thing happened to my cousin. He got a certain PC game that didn't run on his computer but it worked just fine on others. <=\

I had to trade out a DVD player that was getting old on my computer. more or less same story. would not play some of the newer movies. traded out the old player for a new one, and there it goes, with out any issue...

I have the first-gen Apex player from 1998. The one with no region coding and no Macrovision. That means it will play any DVD, and you can video-tape from its RCA outputs.

I paid something like $300, because I thought I had to get this before they company was sued out of business, or forced by the DMCA to have region codes and whatnot.

Now it's ten years later. Apex is still in business, and they regularly release new models that can disable regions and Macrovision. Their units are sold in WalMart for $50 a pop.

So don't use me to predict the future! ^.^

P.S. Your slice-of-life comics are, as always, awesome.

I believe ours is going the same way... 'course, it was bought on the cheap, but it's still annoying.

Well... at least he could wash it on another player.

Remember when VCRs didn't like a tape and they chew it up and it came out as a tangle of stretched out or crumpled ribbon?

Oh yeah... I remember. >.<

Aww, poor Lizzie.

I suppose that he did get his moneys-worth from the player, if it lasted for years and years. Can get them much cheaper now.. and many games consoles double as DVD players too.

I love the facial expressions you use in these things :) they're very endearing.

He may be talking lawsuit, but who is he going to sue? The DVD maker? The player maker? What's his loss? For $200 he can buy a new one that does a heck of a lot more than his present one does. Small claims. Not worth his time.

Reminds me of when I bought a 9600 baud modem. This was during the time when there was no standard when it came increased baud rate modems.

Turns out that the modem I bought would go 9600, but only with the exact same manufacturer. I almost never went above 2400.

Did I sue? No.

Maybe if he writes a letter to the manufacturer of his DVD player, expressing his concern, they *might* be nice and exchange his DVD player for a newer model.

*nods* nobody bothers to tell anyone. I wonder if anyone would really listen. thats pretty crappy thing to happen.

I got one that despite our diligence in maintenance.... broke... and it was during the cleaning cycle to boot. ah well.

I had exactly the same problem with my old LaserDisc player. It was one of the "original" models, with all-analog controls. But the last generation of laserdiscs to come out either wouldn't play on it, or the audio would sound like static (I later found out that some LDs used the analog audio track for surround information, which sounds like static on conventional speakers). I had to buy a new player in order to watch my deluxe Lion King LD box set. No warning, no explanations, nothing. That's what soured me on LDs, and why I originally disliked DVDs (I still don't care for them, but at least I can record my own, now).

If it is any consolation, DVDs, like CDs, are on their way out. They're being killed off not by more expensive innovations like BluRay, but by low-tech alternatives like DivX and by file-sharing systems like bittorrent. So your friend will eventually get the last laugh. :)

I'm sorry but I just have to wonder how can people consider Blu-Ray better than DVDs? Don't get me wrong but I know those are still good in a way and I enjoy those. Is it worth getting 10% more space on a disk to show a movie. I have to agree DivX is going to probably kill DVDs... but I hope to see Blu-Ray die first.

10% more room? No no no...try 6X to 24X more room. Single-side single-layer DVD holds 4.7 GB, while a single-side single-layer BD holds 30 GB.

But this was DVD vs DVD. But your friend, Gene, isn't the first to suffer from this. One of the first disks that suffered from version problems was The Matrix, as it was one of the first DVDs that used dual layers. The early single-layer only players couldn't handle it.

But more than likely your friend's problem was a change in the DRM coding on the disk (aka, the copy protection) which was changed because the old DECSS system was hacked a while ago.

Oooww... o.0

And, to think that's the reward of a DVD player surviving for more than 3 years..

I know a guy he had a DVD play that was cheap but it didn't play burned DVDs.

Oh I remember this happening to a friend of mine once. We all told him to wait until the later players came out. They weren't even due for a very late release, but he was adamant he needed the newest, biggest thing. Half his discs wouldn't play!

Yeah, I found that out the hard way, when my brother burned a Bill Engvall special onto a blue-bottom CD, and it wouldn't play in my big bulky Sony DVD (that was only about 3 years old at the time!) but played just fine in my PS2.

That's so strange... I had a little portable DVD player that would play every mass-produced disk but wouldn't touch any disk that I burned myself on my console DVD. Technology is just plain weird.

No contest on that. And I just have to wonder if people are going to be able to adjust to buying a new player every now and then to keep being able to play things. (I mean I use my PS2 to play some of those too.)

I don't know if it applies to all recordable formats, but I understand that DVD+R/W discs could have their 'book type' changed from DVD+R or DVD+RW to DVD-Video in order to fool older players whose firmware expected to see "DVD-Video" and couldn't ignore discs that said anything else.

I expect this was a result of that new encryption scheme that breaks the DVD standard that the manufacturers started adding to discs because CSS was so easy to break.