Just Rented Live free Die Hard...

Movie just kept displaying anomalies on tv, stuttering, or completely pausing. Are these moronic companies using a new method of extorting us lowly standard dvd viewers to purchase new equipment. It was conveyed to me that if I burned the movie and removed the protection it may resolve these issues. I asked"What?" "I have to burn a movie to watch it!"

Is there a solution to this? What gives?

I used both a JVC dvd player and Pioneer Player. The jvc had the most problems and the pioneer mostly stuttered.

Welcome chris_shimizu,

I moved your thread to another part of our forum although your problem might be copy protection related I think you'll get more help there.
I would take the movie back to the video rental shop and ask for a replacement maybe you got a bad disc which is not uncommon (disc scratched,...).

Well what dvd player are you using?

I once had a Philips 625 dvd player it would not play one of the dvds i bought but the downstairs dvd player an LG about so many yonks old would. Seems some discs are manufactured in a way that stops certain players playing, depends on the hardware used for playback.

Sounds like a bad disk, excahnge it for another copy.

Even fine scratches that don't look really bad can sometimes cause playback problems. Its pretty common with rented movies. It doesn't look like this movie has any special copy protection

Video DVD (or CD) label: LIVEFREE_OR_DIEHARD_BRANCH
Media is CSS protected!
Video Standard: NTSC
Media is locked to region(s): 1!

Found & removed RCE protection!
DVD structure appears to be correct.
Structural copy protection not found.
Autorun not found on Video DVD.
Bad sector protection not found.
Emulating RPC-2 drive with region 1!

Though on top of a scratched disk, there are other issues that may be at play here. It seems that others are having problems backing up this movie and there may be several causes. There may be a plant with some bad disks (mastering errors etc) so some copy are a bit messed up, others are not. some people can back up, but others cannot, using the same programs and same versions. There has also been mention of files that are compliant, but empty (contain no information) which can aparantly mess with some software (maybe it messes with some players, I'm not sure), and one person claimed that there were non compliant files too.

Long story short, I would exchange the disk. whoever told you that was right though. Removing copy protection can sometimes resolve playback issues. Further, some software that defeats copy protection also repairs things like mastering errors, corupt files from low quality disks etc. It can also slow way down while copying to read problem spots (be it scratches or poor disk quality), and burn them better. There may be some legal issues to copying a rented disk, but then again, if you paid 4$ to rent it, but can't even watch it, and a 20 cent disk can let you watch it? It might work....

Fyi, buying new equipment generally won't resolve these issues. Be it poor quality disks, or pooly done copy protection, a new player won't nesasarilly resolve the issue.