DVDs Poorly Manufactured Off Centre.....Drive Wear?

I have just finished watching a comedy DVD where the disc made a spinning noise like a fridge compressor as it was clearly spinning unevenly. The unit was vibrating in an unhealthy way.

It did this in two machines...One games console and one trusty Toshiba I have. Picture quality and tracking was perfect but I shouldn't have to put up with noise and vibration

Im a bit miffed as I've had this problem a few times recently. It was a new DVD and didnt look polished or anything. Its a bit hard to tell how off centre it is but something makes it spin unevenly

It can't be doing the motor spindle any favours at the high RPM. Apart from the noise it generates, it must be reducing the life of the drive and I'm not best pleased

It was only a couple of pounds posted so not worth sending back. It seems the quality of disc manufacture is getting worse either in rough edges or a hole pressed off centre. If it was full priced it would have been going back. I will watch out for this in future. It was very cheap including postage but I wonder if there are bad batches of them.

Has anyone else noticed this issue with DVDs?

Cheers
Martin

I have this on some CD's I have, but not to that extent, as I use a Bel Canto CD2 which is open top, cd is held with a puck, if the cd is good when it plays you hear a very very quiet sound from the cd player almost silent, if the pressing if slightly off centre you can just hear the drive moving the head to compensate, this is still a very quiet sound. but is something you would not notice in an enclosed player.

Your disc must have been very bad.

Can be a few reasons. As you say, off centre is one. The way they are printed can cause it too as can poorly finished edges. Warping and disc thickness too

Yes and it doesnt look massively off centre but the edges are a bit rough. I suppose extra thickness or roughness around the rim would do it but its probably off centre by enough to cause this.

Ive had some cds do this in a laptop drive but I have never heard it in a decent cd player.

Its just a bit annoying as I was going to put this with the other live comedy events as a collection and now Ive got a duff DVD. I dont want the thing buzzing away while I watch it.

I think quality control is going down the pan. They certainly seem more cheaply made than the discs I was buying in earlier decades.

Oh well its not worth sending it back. It only cost me £1.88 sealed new. Recorded in 2010, I presume its now heavily discounted to shift old stock with a low demand.

Thanks
Martin

Just to add that quality control must be going down the tubes. I read that they stamp discs out for 79p but I would have thought that the machinery used to make these discs ensures some quality control as standard. If they can get it right most times, what's going wrong?

The problem disc has a very rough edge which looks like a trail of glue or plastic going up and down in a rollercoaster motion. I have been studying it and its just not acceptable for something that spins so fast. I feel like smoothing the edges as uniformly as possible to prove a point

The next disc I bought was lovely, smooth and ran beautifully in all my video players.

Ive had this problem occasionally with DVDs and CDs...They have usually been second hand/very cheap and not cost effective to compain about when I cant claim return postage.

If I ever get this problem with a new disc at normal retail price, it will be going back

Dunno IF you care ? I did, but haven't bothered for a while.
It is quite simple to Balance a CD.
Cobble up and Fit a diy spindle / axle to it's centre hole.
Place a pair of Neo magnets on the jaws of a vise.
Touch one end of the axle to a Magnet.
Wind the other jaw magnet within a ~1/4" of the other axle end.
Which will be magnetically levitated (almost) with V little if any friction.
Place a bit of tape on the light side of the disc as required as balancing weight.

Once :-)one has cobbled together the axle contraption bit, the CD balancing takes less than a minute.

Sounds good. One would have to ensure critically accurate machining and balance of the arbor (axle) and that it would hold the CD exactly concentrically.

Or you can sand the edge if its rough

Yeah I will make a magnetic bearing NOT :D which leaves option B with my fine grade wet and dry paper.

I think DVD's spin faster than CD's? Which makes it even worse if they are out of round. There is a machine for sale at Music Direct, they've had it for many years, a lathe to cut the edge of the CD perfectly round and with the correct bevel to reflect the light away, something like that. It's expensive! But, truing your CD's has been a thing for many years, along with green pens, green mats, etc. but if DVD's are spinning faster, perhaps truing them makes more sense?


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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Minstrel SE

Yeah I will make a magnetic bearing NOT :D which leaves option B with my fine grade wet and dry paper.

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So don't :eyebrows: Far easier to do nothing rather than address the problem

Its not that. I dont really understand what you are getting at in terms of balancing them or whether its worth my time. Ive just had another rough edged disc which spins ok without vibration.

Maybe the original example is cut off centre.

I dont want to sound anal over this and maybe nobody else is that bothered. I dont particularly want the drive in two machines sounding like a lawnmower with a bad disc. It was cheap enough to put it down to experience

If it happens again with a boxset for example, I will be sending it back.

All the best
Martin

If it is a rare problem, I agree there is no sense in getting excited about fixing it. And like the device I mentioned that trues a disk, if the center is off, balancing the disk will not make the "groove" concentric.


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Aaaaaargh. Just bought another off centre disc. The latest Roger Waters The Wall. Had a good relationship with the seller and it cost me £4 new so Ive taken it on the chin...again! I may actually contact the seller about it. Cant play it again as its seriously vibrating the players and wont be doing them any good

Right thats it!...Blu ray from now on. Im buying it again on Blu ray and getting a Blu ray player

Im sick of this and DVD standards have been slipping for a long time. Bye Bye DVDs because production is getting too shoddy :(

Russell's right - DVDs do spin quite a lot faster. Never had this with a CD, even though so look shoddily-made with sharp edges and whatnot. It has to be centred correctly surely, if the picture is OK.

Can you take it back and swap it? Assuming it was a real shop in the real world.

Yep and a disc will only vibrate like that because its uneven off centre in some way. (thickness, edge, hole or paint) Ive held it up back to back with another one and it looks ever so slightly off centre with a more poorly cut hole. Somethings causing this and I suspect a cost cutting process.

Ive got no chance of an online refund. The new disc surface looks mint and it plays. This guy has been alright but he is not running an off centre testing process. Thats why I go aaaargh as Ive got a duff dvd and very little I can do about it.

I might mention it to the guy. What effin annoys me is that its the sort of problem that can be seen as subjective when it isnt. Thats two Ive had fairly recently and Im surprised this issue isnt reported by others. Nothing really on google about it so I must be going paranoid :)

Anyway Im going Blue ray and I will not be buying DVDs again unless there is no Blu Ray option and they are charity shop one view prices

Can you film what's happening when the 'fault' occurs so we may see if they are indeed spinning off-centre?
Are these Commercially available DVD's or DVD-R/DVD+R/DVD-RW's etc etc?
What Player are you using?

I am not for a minute disputing you are having problems but after 30 years repairing domestic electronics I have not come across this before in a domestic DVD player, only in a PC Drive which, when Ripping CD's and having to spin at 'excessive' speeds I would experience some vibration and worst case scenarios would not be able to read the disc. Playing back at 'normal ' CD speeds it was fine but at the ripping speeds, similar to DVD speeds, it would vibrate. This was due, I think, to variances in the thickness of the Disc caused by the Ink for the Labels on some CD's. When watching these discs spin I never saw them spinning off-centre.

Some 'damping' added to the very cheap Plastic Mechanism cured the problem changing the resonant frquencies of the Mech.

Jim.

Its the same in six players Jim. My trusty well reviewed black Toshiba 220E, A Sony NS29, Xbox 360 Slim, Original X Box, Playstation 2. All these units have drives which can easily cope with a good dvd. It also vibrates in the laptop. They are not the most expensive drives in the world but can easily cope with a well made dvd

Two or three times recently is too often.

Its definately the disc..some players can be damped with a finger on the side but thats not the point...They are vibrating excessively due to the disc rotating unevenly. I dont think its acceptable even if others do.

Its a commercially produced Dvd of the latest Wall Tour. I cant see where it was made yet. Someone can have this disc because I want to get to the bottom of this. Im surprised that others havent reported this fault. Why would I want a player sounding like a fridge compressor or power tool with this disc?

I will send it to you Jim no obligation. I dont want it and it would be worth your second diagnosis or opinion. Im buying the new Blu Ray version for £6 then a player :) Not even much difference between the discount disc prices so maybe I should have gone Blu ray ages ago

'Has anyone else noticed this issue with DVDs?'

+1

Could be a number of things including off centre spindle aperture, uneven spindle hole circumference, variations in the thickness of the disc &c. So far I've only noticed it on a few DVDs and not on Blu-rays [though I'm not sure why a BR disc could not be manufactured with the similar shortcomings.]

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Landloper

'Has anyone else noticed this issue with DVDs?'

+1

Could be a number of things including off centre spindle aperture, uneven spindle hole circumference, variations in the thickness of the disc &c. So far I've only noticed it on a few DVDs and not on Blu-rays [though I'm not sure why a BR disc could not be manufactured with the similar shortcomings.]

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Yes Im glad you have also noticed. Im just sorting out a second opinion with Jim now. I have 170 DVDs and still consider this a rare occurence but it seems to be getting worse.

I dont buy many DVDs now. Ive had two or three fairly recently with this problem so the percentage would seem high. I wonder whether the Dvd is now just seen as the second class, magazine giveaway and they are cutting production costs.

Its definately an issue and Im surprised it hasnt cropped up on Google complaints more often.

I sat down to enjoy the film but it was spoilt by the noise and feeling that my player was going to shake itself to an early repair bill. I dont know how the drives cope with it but it cant do them any good. I put some headphones on and skipped though it because Im not playing that disc again.

Ive ordered the Blu ray and let this be the start of a good Blu Ray collection. I will make the assumption that Blu Rays have a more complex production process and therefore better quality control.

Well Ive had a second opinion that it plays fine in other players like an Oppo.

I wont give up on this though and I will be like a dog with a bone investigating this further.

Somethings up and Im not imagining that my players cant handle that disc without vibrating quite badly. I cant see that the spindles in my drives are that much worse for the job in hand than more expensive players.

I would have thought most video disc drives are based on a lot of plastic now.

I will have to build up a spindle and investigate this to the nearest micron :D

Time to get a new DVD player. I've never had this issue nor has anyone I know and we own thousands of DVDs between us.

When its happening in several players its not just a case of one player. I have 175 dvds and this problem has occured a handful of times so that is a very low percentage.

Its clearly attacting a wasting our time vibe but I still think there is something significantly wrong with some discs. It seems to be a problem which Im expected to write off once in a while.

At least one other person has noticed it and there are reports of vibrating discs in various consoles. I just think they are warped or off centre discs. If I cant get a consensus here, you can imagine how the refund chain would view my claim.

Anyway I will leave it now and its one of those I will get my coat moments....they happen in life :)