[iceman (Mike)]

Does anyone else suffer the same frustrations as I do when watching rented DVD's these days?

They're always scratched and dirty and they just lock up and freeze up while watching them, sometimes for minutes at a time and then when it eventually comes back, you've missed several minutes of the show.

I struggled through 2 hours of "Enemy at the Gates" last night, as it froze up about a dozen times. it was the most frustrating 2 hours i've spent in a long time.

With VHS tapes, if the tape was a bit mangled, the VCR would just keep going past it and you'd get a fuzzy picture for a bit. With DVD's and digital technology though, it just locks up and it can't get past it.

If you go back to the video store and complain, they usually give you a free credit and they put the DVD through one of their cleaning machines, but that's only going to get fingerprints off - it's not gonna fix scratches.

I just can't see how it's going to get better, either. More and more DVD's are doing it these days, as they're getting older and more broken. I don't know what plans the DVD rental shops have going forward to address this issue.

Can the DVD players themselves have their technology improved to be able to better handle a bad quality disc, instead of just freezing up?