DVD Guide Blog

When first played on the night of Wednesday, January 27th, our copy of the newly released Stargate SG-1, Season 5, Volume 3 DVD was not even reaching its main menu. It automatically played some severely garbled video from the beginning of its first episode then it froze. I ejected the DVD for inspection, but I could see nothing wrong with it, so I attempted to play it again only to encounter the same results. However, when I attempted to play it the next day to seek more information about the failure, the DVD made it to its main menu without issue. Despite further testing, I was not able to reproduce any of the undesirable behavior, so I now suspect that the DVD itself was not at fault; something may have come between the DVD and the laser inside of the DVD player.

(Note: This article was originally generated manually with a date, but no time of day, so although midnight [00:00:00] has since been entered as a placeholder for content-management systems, that is not likely the actual time of posting.)

ADV Films has acknowledged a defect in an unspecified number of copies (possibly all copies) of the tenth DVD in the “Farscape: The Complete Season One” boxed set—on our copy of that DVD, the second episode and the video in the extras section are both severely garbled—but the company is refusing to replace defective Farscape DVDs in a prompt manner, instead citing a company policy that dictates a wait of up to eight weeks for “processing” of all returns and replacements. I hereby call for ADV Films to publicly announce the defect, to offer immediate replacements for all defective copies, and to amend its customer-unfriendly policy. I would call that having integrity and doing the right thing; what ADV Films is doing now I call despicable.

(Note: This article was originally generated manually with a date, but no time of day, so although midnight [00:00:00] has since been entered as a placeholder for content-management systems, that is not likely the actual time of posting.)