I'm pretty desperate at this point. I have had so much troubles watching DVD-movies on my PC that pretty much the joy of it has has almost faded away. If I'd put it into precents, it would be something around 20-40% of the DVD's I rent or loan from my friend that I have major difficulties with watching them on my PC. Either the disc is not regognized at all in my PC's ODD in Windows XP's My Computer or elsewhere, or it utterly frustratinly freezes at some point of the movie (every time at the exact same point). So to state it, it's problem with my drives' (since so far) error correction and toleration. I have tried to clean and wipe the discs' surface with soft cloth and a little humidity - oh, yes indeed *many* times -, but I have recently discover it even in some cases can worsen the situation.

I used to have Samsung SD-616E DVD ROM with what I use to have somewhat as much trouble playing rented or loaned DVD's, especially from local library. Then I got enough of it, since there had been so many freeze-up's watching DVD's on my PC which was utterly frustrating, I decided to buy a new DVD drive mostly for this reason alone.

So about a month ago I got a new LG GSA-4166B bulk drive. Since then I have had at least as many problems trying to watch DVD's, probably 10-20% more. Now there's new kind of problems which were inexistent with the old drive: There have been a bunch of DVD-movies that the new drive haven't even regognized at all when I place the disc in the drive.

I'm so utterly and completely exasperated that I decided to wrote about this into some aficionado forum like this. And what's the main point to consider on this whole issue with, is that every single DVD-that my DVD-drives on PC (late SD-616E or recent GSA-4166B) had any difficulties to play what-so-ever at all, or didn't play at all, have played perfectly and flawlesly without any slow-downs on my parents cheap ProCaster standalone shelve DVD-player.

I'm not sure what to do about this. I'm just left with a big bunch of bad movie watching experiences. I thought that should I try to ask around and look for a solid and more error tolerant (better reading) new plain DVD-ROM drive which would have a best reputation for reading used and a little scratchy DVD's. I have already looked around a little and I thought of Plextor PX-130A. Do you think that would be any better choice besides what I already have? Do you have something to recommend? You are most welcome to do so.

And one last guestion: Why it seems that standalone shelve DVD-players are so much ahead compared to PC's ODD in reading tolerance of DVD-movies? I just can't figure that out at all.


My system specs:
APC BackUPS BF-500FR
Nexus Breeze 400W
Epox 8RDA6+ Pro
AMD Sempron 2600+ (Nexus AXP-3200 CPU Cooler & Zalman Fanmate 2 controller)
Windows XP Pro SP2 FIN Corporate Edition
2 x M-Tec 1024MB DDR400 PC3200 CL2.5 (@ Dual Channel)
Asus nVidia GeForce Ti 4400 (Thermaltake Schooner Fanless Heatpipe)
Viewsonic VA902 19"
LG GSA-4166B bulk (IDE Primary Master) (Firmware 1.01 - factory original)
Plextor PX-W5224A (IDE Secondary Master) (Firmware 1.03 - self-flashed)
Hard-drives (all in NTFS):
_disk1: 6L120MO (Maxtor 120Gb SATA, OS installed onto this)
_disk2: 6B200MO (Maxtor 200Gb SATA)
_disk3: 7 L300S0 (Maxtor MaxLine III 300Gb SATA)
_disk4: 6 Y160P0 (Maxtor 160Gb IDE, attached to mainboard with SATA-adapter)
Lexmark X1110 multipurpose printer
Logitech Cordless Desktop Deluxe Optical
SoundBlaster X-FI XtremeMusic
Creative GigaWorks S750

To add a little essential information, I watch my DVD's on PC with InterVideo WinDVD 7 Platinum. Before that I had WindDVD 6 Platinum, which pretty much had as many problems viewing the DVD-movies.

*sorry for my possibly clumsy and bulky English. This problem has gotten the best of me, and the fhrustration propably shows in my post*


My humble and sincere thanks for all replies and answers.

"error-tolerating" computer dvd drive??

In this case you should buy an standalone player.

I'm afraid that wasn't very helpful not to mention even too nice a post.

I'd buy a standalone DVD-player if I'd have something else but old bulky matchbox-sized 14" CRT TV compared to reasonable 19" LCD screen and Gigaworks S750 7.1 with X-Fi XrtemeMusic.

"Not even too nice" and then you edit your initial post.

Huh?!?

Since when is an error-tolerating drive more ahead of one that has a normal error-correction?!

liteon and benq are two of the best are reading out of spec DVDs, IMHO of course.

The two LiteOn drives I own have done an amazing job of reading discs that another burner just spits out, so I'd recommend a Litey.

Nothing against BenQ, just never used one!

Personally I recommend the Asus E616A. They have an amazing reputation for reading crappy quality/scratched up DVDs without a hitch.

I ordered and got just yesterday evening Plextor's PX-130A black bulk drive and it seems the problems are thing of a yesterday. The drive seems to read all the problematic DVD-movie discs without a hitch. And the drive seems to be so silent! That's real good and ideal for watching movies.

Thanks for all the answers: the nice ones and also the "not too nice" one.

Blah... bugger.

ROTFL

@Atte

Enjoy your Plex!