Ahhh iceman.
I used to be a manager of a EB Games store and yes i have frustrations with scrached disks! (cant understand how you can go home come back within a hour saying the disk wont work on inspection it looks like the little bub has used it to slide around on concrete!) the thing is where the scratches occur it doesn't really matter, if you can buff them away (very fine sand paper) and so that substrate is still resonably clear the laser penetrates though to the silver membrane that lays under the pretty picture on the top thats where the information is! just like a telescope really, if you have a scratch on the mirror the light rays don't all come back to the same point, well neither does the returned laser beam sending back the 100101110110101 10101... thats your skip! so yes the vid stores buffer machine does work, they just have to do it a few times for those extra useless people that have put deep scratches in!
Brendan