Anyone else gotten a rash of bad DVDs from Netflix?

[Bateluer]

I've been with Netflix for over a year now and didn't start having a problem until fairly recently. My first bad DVDs started when I was getting the Star Trek Enterprise DVDs, but it was only 1 disk in season 4 that was cracked. Not a big deal.

However, since I started getting TNG and HBO's Rome DVDs, every other disk is damaged. My first Rome DVD arrived around 25 Sept, and I'm just now getting to disk 3 because each disk has been bad and had to be remailed. I just popped in the most recent disk 3 that arrived yesterday and its scratched beyond playability.

I think it could have been something flaky with my notebook's capabilities, but its never given me a lick of trouble before, and still plays all the DVDs on my shelf without a problem. The damaged Netflix disks display the same problems in all three of my desktop's DVD drives as well.

Its great that Netflix cut their prices, but did they slash their QC budget to do it?

 

[grohl]

I had some a few months ago, none in the last 30 or so movies.

 

[2Dead]

I've had some cracked occasionally but usually when the mailman tries to stuff the dvds along with all the other mail in the smallish mailbox. Scratched dvds happen.

 

[eplebnista]

Have you tried wiping/washing them off? I only had a few DVD's from Netflix that were completely unplayable, several of the ones I had trouble with played fine after being cleaned.

 

[Casawi]

Never had a problem.

 

[Linflas]

So far I have never received one that will not play.

 

[ultimatebob]

I had problems like that until I got a better DVD player. My old one couldn't read scratched DVD's at all.

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

I have never received a bad disk in over several hundred.

 

[FoBoT]

i don't have a rash
i do have to use lotion on my fingers though or they dry/crack/bleed

 

[frodrick]

I used to get 20-30% cracked-in-half dvds from Netflix and Blockbuster. The other 70-80% were scratched nearly to death but usually still played.

 

[Tsaico]

I have had a recent bad run of discs in the last couple of months. Mine were either cracked or scratched so much the sound or video was jumpy. It tended to be the discs that were younger audience base, but not always. And as for overall, I would say it is about 30% or so, but recently they started getting better, the last four I got were fine.

 

[BigPoppa]

If you're playing these discs on a computer, you may need to fix your IDE channels' transfer mode.

Bad discs can cause the IDE channel to drop into PIO mode rather than DMA. This makes ALL subsequent disc playback awful.

How to check:

In device manager, expand IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers.
Right click -> properties on all the Primary IDE and Secondary IDE channels (some with only have 1 of each, some will have more. I have 3 of each on this computer).

Click on Advanced Settings tab. Make sure that both Device 0 and Device 1 have DMA set as their current transfer mode. The device may say 'not applicable,' that just means there isn't a device on that channel. If any of the channels has a device in PIO mode, uninstall that channel and restart the computer.