The DVD player in my Avant (Type 8463) refuses to accept and play 3 out of the 44 discs contained in a new box set of "The West Wing". The offending discs work perfectly, however, in my Panasonic DVD player and also via the DVD drive in my laptop. When I try them in the Avant, I can hear the discs rotating, accompanied by a sort of scraping sound, but then the lid re-opens. These are the only discs I have ever had any problems with, and they fail every time.

So, my question is which is faulty? The discs or the Avant DVD Drive? Perhaps someone has had a similar problem. I suspect the drive myself, but I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the issue.

Thanks. 

Hi Neil

Have tried to clean the lens in the dvd playerI have had the  same problem with a philips dvd player it was the only dvd player that could not play a specific dvd but other dvd player's had no problem.No one could explain why there was nothing wrong with the philips.Some times the same  problems occurs with cd players it's a mystery

regards

jan

Jan

From your experience it looks like it might be a compatability problem, especially since I have now noticed that this disc set is labelled as being " dual layer ". I am assuming that they are perhaps more of a challenge to read than single layer discs.

As you suggest, I might try to clean the lens, but everything looks nice and clean and the DVD drive has had little use. It looks like I'll have to use another player for these discs and hope that I don't aquire any more like them!

Best wishes

Neil 

Hi Neil

Maybe your avant dvd are not capable of reading dual layer.Try to ask b&o

regards

jan

I have that problem too with a few disks, i have burned a copy of the disks and then there was no problem.

Regards

Hi Jorgen

What if they are copyprotected

regards

jan

Use DVD fab5 it newer had failed me

Regards

HI Jorgen

What is dvdfab5

regards

jan

Neil,

The fault may well be with the 3 discs which will not play and the following is the possible reason why:-

Dual Layer also called DVD-R9 are a derivative of the DVD-R format standard which is supported by B&O

Your AVANT DVD Mark III has what B&O calls a P1 type DVD drive and plays the following disc formats

• DVD-R Yes
• DVD+R YES
• DVD-RW YES
• DVD+RW Yes
• JPEG No
• VCD Yes
• SVCD Yes
• CD Audio Yes
• CD MP3 Yes

DVD-R Dual Layer do have compatibility issues with legacy DVD drives known as "Pickup Head Overrun". To ensure users do not get this problem, the two layers of the disc need to be equally recorded which is not easy for the publishers.

Sometime ago a DVD Forum under Pioneer's leadership developed a technology known as Layer Jump Recording which incrementally record smaller sections of each layer to maintain compatibility with old DVD drives. If the publishers of "The West Wing" implemented the Layer Jump Recording technology then you should not have a problem.

However, it may well be that the publisher did not use the Layer Jump Recording technology because most, if not all later DVD players/recorders can handle the two layers not being equally recorded, but the AVANT DVD certainly will not be to handle the un-equal recording.

So, in conclusion the AVANT is unlikely to have a fault in my view and if you send the discs back to the publishers they are likely to say there is nothing wrong with them because it is true if you play the discs on recent DVD player technology.

A DVD rip program

Keith,

Thank you for a most comprehensive reply. (I don't think my B&O dealer would have been able to supply such information!) It looks like good news and bad news. Good that the Avant is probably ok, bad that it may not play all available commercial discs. It never ceases to amaze me that as soon as the word "digital" is involved, then the situation is never stable. I have a Freeview STB which is about to be made obsolete following the digital switchover in this area this summer. (No wonder B&O were reluctant to fit digital tuners in their televisions.)

Regards,

Neil.