Need advice: playback "hiccups" (on Philips DVD957)

[Harman]

I haven't had my DVD player (a Philips DVD957) for very long, and I'm still getting into the whole technology and terminology of home cinema. This is a question I've been wondering about.

Every now and then, the playback of a DVD "hiccups", with the image and sound stopping for a fraction of a second and then continuing. It doesn't happen with most discs (so I'm fine most of the time), and when it does, it's just once or twice on a DVD. The Lolita DVD in the Stanley Kubrick box set was the disc that prompted this post: it had a couple of hiccups.

Is this normal; is it a fact of life that DVDs sometimes do this? I've had a rented DVD that was terrible (The Mummy Returns), jumping all the time, even skipping whole chapters; when I exchanged it for another copy, everything was fine -- so, could it be a disc-related problem? My real concern: could this be a flaw in my player? It's still under warranty, so I thought I'd better figure this out now.

Thanks for your help, all!

[sideshowbob]

Definitely sounds like you need your player looking at. Pauses / skips are generally down to:

* The layer change on dual layer disks (that'll only be once during a movie though) - all players affected to some extent
* Dirty or scratched disks - some players are more sensitive than others
* Chapter skipping on movies which use seamless branching - e.g. The Abyss, Independence Day (only a tiny number of movies affected) - down to player / software incompatibility

You might also check whether your player is getting too hot during use. My Samsung 709 needed to be somewhere pretty cool (no good under the tv) to stop it from playing up.

I would consider taking your player in for an exchange as you seem to be having more "hiccups" than you should reasonably expect. Hope this helps.

You also edit the header of your original postr to include your player's name. Might attract someone with the same player along for a second opinion. :)

[Bapapapa]

Every now and then, the playback of a DVD "hiccups", with the image and sound stopping for a fraction of a second and then continuing. It doesn't happen with most discs (so I'm fine most of the time), and when it does, it's just once or twice on a DVD. The Lolita DVD in the Stanley Kubrick box set was the disc that prompted this post: it had a couple of hiccups.

That sounds like the layer change. Perfectly normal if it happens once.

Is this normal; is it a fact of life that DVDs sometimes do this? I've had a rented DVD that was terrible (The Mummy Returns), jumping all the time, even skipping whole chapters; when I exchanged it for another copy, everything was fine -- so, could it be a disc-related problem? My real concern: could this be a flaw in my player? It's still under warranty, so I thought I'd better figure this out now.

Rented discs are normally dirty & scratched which would cause these problems.

Your player sounds perfectly fine to me.

[Harman]

Bapapapa, I know what a layer change looks like, and these hiccups do indeed look a lot like that, but the five or six instances in Lolita can't be one layer change.

Today I had some trouble playing Dumbo for my son, which had played perfectly before, so I checked the disc: lots of little fingerprints! I cleaned the disc and it played without error again. So I checked the Lolita disc to see if there was any dirt on it -- but no, it was perfectly clean.

Still, what are your experiences with fingerprints etc. on DVDs? How sensitive are the players to such things?