DVD Guide Blog

Two weeks ago, I wrote to webmaster@starwars.com to ask who people can contact about defective THX 1138 DVDs (the packaging includes the street address for Warner Home Video, but not so much as a Web site URL let alone an e-mail address or a telephone number while the official THX 1138 Web site, the Lucasfilm Web site, and the Warner Bros. Web site do not seem to include any information about defective DVD replacement, although I did just find a customer service form on the Warner Bros. site). My e-mail has gone unanswered. We exchanged our second defective copy of THX 1138 for a third identically defective copy earlier tonight. Could there be a mastering problem that causes incompatibilities with some DVD players?

Scott, a manager or supervisor of some sort at Target in Cupertino (he was identified by a woman at the customer service counter as her supervisor), informed us that we have been making a mistake in purchasing some of our DVDs from Target; of course, he did not use those particular words, but he did tell us that unless there has been an official recall, Target policy does not permit him to refund a customer’s money for an opened DVD even when multiple copies have revealed an apparent defect that may affect an entire production run.

Scott dismissed my suggestion that there may have been a mastering problem, stating simply (and quite fallaciously) that if there had been a mastering problem, he would have had a lot of returns. When I pointed out that a mastering problem may not necessarily result in playback problems on all DVD players, he responded that Target policy also prohibits customers from returning opened games for a refund due to compatibility problems—a point I easily and immediately refuted by pointing out that any DVD carrying the DVD Video logo is supposed to be compatible with any DVD Video player that carries that same logo, unlike computer games, which have specific component requirements (and even so, may exhibit problems with some configurations of supposedly compatible components, but that is another issue). Usually, we would happily accept an exchange for a defective movie because we want the movie (that is why we bought it in the first place), but since we suspected we would encounter the same defect with a third copy of THX 1138, we accepted an exchange rather than a refund only because we had no other choice.

We are displeased. Most displeased.

(Note: This article is also posted in my journal at my personal Web site.)

We exchanged our defective copy of THX 1138 for another copy—another defective copy. The movie stops playing at the same two points (and perhaps others we have not yet reached) when played on our television DVD player, but not when played on our computer via PowerDVD. Shall we try a third copy?

(Note: This article is also posted in my journal at my personal Web site.)

The DVD release of THX 1138 has caused me to ponder what could qualify as the worst DVD of all time; our brand-new copy has frozen at two different points within little over a half-hour into the movie, after which it quits out to copyright warnings (the usual annoying FBI and Interpol crap that movie fans have to suffer through on a regular basis) then the special features menu. We successfully fast-forwarded through the first offending location after resuming the movie after the first incident, but the second location—near the beginning of the tenth chapter—crapped out three times in a row before we decided to declare the DVD defective and put it away permanently (and yes, we checked the surface of the disc for debris, but found none of significance).

There are many DVDs that look overcompressed (for example, there seem to be a lot of sudden grain population increases in dark background scenes in Stargate SG-1) or force you to watch the afore-mentioned copyright warnings before the movie EVERY SINGLE TIME you put the disc in your DVD player and there was even one DVD that forced us to watch the previews before allowing us to get to the movie (the menu button was disabled, but we were at least able to fast-forward through the intrusive advertising), but luckily, that one was only rented (we do not usually rent anything, but we had a gift card). And don’t even get me started about those Dic cartoon DVDs that came in Cheerios boxes; I was sick of the Heathcliff theme song before we even got to the first cartoon!

Without even considering the quality of content, there are a lot of ways to make a poor DVD, but lax quality control may be the surest way because it can ruin even good content. I don’t mean that it can just distract the viewer for a short while now and then or otherwise detract from the enjoyment of content (as the graininess does in Stargate SG-1); it can bring the content to a halt or damage it to such an extent that stopping the DVD is preferable to watching the abomination that remains.

In addition to THX 1138, two DVDs stand out in my mind for their absurdly low quality: the tenth DVD in the “Farscape: The Complete Season One” boxed set (the second episode and the video in the extras section were both severely garbled on our copy before it was replaced) and the 1998 television production of Moby Dick (the audio for an an entire scene—17, if memory serves—was out of synch with the video). Which is the worst of all time, though? Is there anything else I might be forgetting? I will have to ponder this a bit more.

Here’s hoping our defective copy of THX 1138 is a rarity and that we will be able to have it replaced with a properly working copy with less hassle than we had to endure for Kristen’s defective Farscape DVD.

(Note: This article is also posted in my journal at my personal Web site.)