Salt – I want my DVD player back
22Dec10
Seems like Sony are at it again with crazy DRM ruining their customer experience.
Here’s what happens when I put Salt into my Kiss DP-600 DVD player:
Disc spins up
Starts to play
Player crashes and switches off
When I switch the player back on:
Disc spins up
Starts to play
Player crashes and switches off
Rinse and repeat.
It took me about 15m to get the player to eject the disc by having perfect timing on pressing the eject button. During that time I did wonder if it would be easier to take it apart and physically remove the disc that way.
Luckily I have another DVD player that doesn’t switch itself off when trying to play this disc.
Filed under: grumble | 8 Comments
Tags: crash, DRM, DVD, fail, player, Salt, Sony
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I hope you’re going to return it for a refund. Blog gripes rarely change the world, unfortunately.
I watched it DRM free a while back – not a bad flick.
And for those who have yet to get a frickin clue, the Humble Indie Bundle #2 proves for a second time that if you give people the opportunity to pay what they think a product is worth when the cost of product duplication is essentially zero (and yes, paying nothing is an option) – they’ll give you cold hard cash (to the tune of 1.4 million dollars so far). No DRM.
It’s a rental, so no need for a refund. After the Digital Economy Bill passed I signed a friend’s pledge not to buy any DVDs for year. If the industry keeps behaving like this I’m quite happy to make that indefinite.
More comments over at Hacker News
Simple solution. Never buy Sony, never buy DRM, support open source everything.
If you aren’t part of the solution…
Thanks for the info….I rented SALT from Redbox and the screen was blank…the counter was working – this is in an Insignia NS-DRVCR. I reported the problem to Redbox and asked if they heard of anything like this happening…the girl said, mebe you need a firmware update. On a not that old VCR/DVD combo? I don’t think so….
I think Sony should be made to flag their DVD’s that have this security program in them. …and whats with everyone pushing Blue Rays all of a sudden??? Since everyone now has flat creens…we now need to get Blue Rays? Ugh! …another marketing gimmick.
I just bought Salt Blu-Ray for $20. Couldn’t play it on my Vizio player (1 year old). Disk would automatically eject after trying to read it unsuccessfully for about 8 minutes – got an “unknown format” message. If I turned the player on while the disk was already in the tray, it would eventually get to a load progress bar, but would hang at about 80%. I updated to the latest firmware – still no go. A bunch of Samsung owners seem to be having the same problem and are pissed at Samsung. I don’t blame Vizio – I blame Sony for this. They should be forced to put a warning sticker on the DVD “Warning: this DVD may not play in some players, even with the latest firmware installed.” If Sony is this worried about piracy, then why release it in DVD at all – just show the movie in the theaters, where they can have police to make sure you don’t get in for free. I own about 600 original (retail) DVDs. I would rather purchase a movie than pirate it. Since I can’t count on my player being able to play Sony DVDs, I have 2 choices – 1 Don’t watch it, or 2 Download it illegally. Sony’s DRM is about as popular as CDilla. Oh, and if any “industry” people are reading these blogs, don’t configure the previews to autoplay on retail DVDs (make them a part of the “special features” section that you have to manually go to and watch). If you are going to force me to watch your commercials, before I get to see the movie, then offer the disc for free. This is like your dinner arriving at your table in a restaurant and not being able to eat it, until you listen to a 20 minute AMWAY lecture.