Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Trouble in BD-land

1:38 PM / Technology / CommentsNo Comments

Technology

Well, this is a bit of a pain: my PC's Blu-ray/HD DVD combo drive, an LG GGC-H20L, is having problems reading certain BD titles. It simply doesn't recognise them, acting as if there is no disc in the drive.

So far, Waltz with Bashir (UK), Chemical Wedding (France) and the just arrived Franklyn (UK) are all affected, as well as my brother's '09 Panasonic Viera Demonstration Disc Vol. 1. There may be more, but it's interesting to note the common factor: all of them originate from Europe, and all are single-layer discs. They're all also fairly recent releases. Is a factory somewhere in Euro-land pressing dodgy discs? Could be, but that doesn't explain the fact that two of these discs did play at some point in the recent past - Waltz with Bashir and Chemical Wedding. It also doesn't change the fact that all four of these discs play fine in both my brother's and my laptop's drives (an LG GGW-H20L and a Matsushita BD-MLT UK-220S respectively).

Unfortunately, my drive's one-year warranty expired last month, preventing me from getting a replacement. As a result, I've had to seek out an alternative solution, picking up a Sony BDU-X10S for a not unreasonable £50. Obviously, this drive only reads DVDs and BDs, but I'm going to keep my pernickety GGC-H20L around as well and hope it doesn't decide to stop playing HD DVDs any time soon.

Don't you love technology?

Updated, Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 05:13 PM: We can add Poltergeist and The Island (UK releases) to the list of problem discs: two more European BD-25 titles.

Updated, Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 05:18 PM: And the pattern has been broken: the US release of Final Destination refuses to play. It too is a BD-25, but doesn't originate from Europe. I'm going to keep checking through my collection, but I've yet to find a BD-50 that has problems playing.

Updated Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 08:16 PM: Well, this is peculiar. I opened the tray and blew into the drive, and most of the problem discs are now playing. The Viera disc is still a no-go, but (touch wood) everything else appears to be working. Not that I'm satisfied, though, as even if only a single disc refuses to play, the drive is still clearly flaky.

 
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