I have encountered a recent problem trying to watch Sony DVD’s, that I’ve purchased and rented, on my two year old Toshiba 4700 DVD player. Stranger Than Fiction, The US vs. John Lennon, The Departed and Talladega Nights will not play on my DVD player. All other brand DVD’s play on my machine. I have to watch the Sony DVD’s on my 17″ computer, instead of my 42″ Plasma TV! I’m not trying to pirate the movies, I’m just trying to watch them. As of now, I won’t buy or rent another Sony DVD until there is some type of remedy. Is anyone aware of a fix for my dilemma? Please Help.

Thank You,
Al Winkler

Hello Dave, 2 issues:
1. I have real old vhs movies that I am trying to record onto my Liteon DVD recoreder and it says that it is protected content and then some times it may work when I press record on the DVD recoreder and then press play on the vcr. Is ther a work around to make recordings from vcr to DVD recorder and is ther an issue with the firmware

2. What is the best DVD formatt to use DVD-R or DVD+R and also the brand?

Hey there, This is in responce to Al Winkler. I got 3 different copies of the movie Stranger than fiction and not one would play on my pc or DVD player. (my DVD player is actually a 1 weed old Philips DVD recorder that is known for supprrting many different formats of disks (not that that should matter since i rented the original copy 3 times). Reading your coments about it being a Sony movie got me thinking.. The only time that something like this ever happened to me was when i got the movie Layer Cake (3 times). I looked that movie up and sure enough- Its a Sony movie too. To make a long story short ( I know, too late) I have no idea what to do about it or exactly what the problem is. I guess Sony sucks.

I am having the same problems with SONY DVDs - they are not playing on my DVD player - most recent is Stranger than Fiction and also Casino Royale. I have a Toshiba DVD player. Does anybody know what is the issue?

I’ve had the same trouble with the recent purchase of Casino Royale. Took the movie back three times with No Joy. The special features DVD in the set plays fine, it’s just the film itself that won’t play. I’m using a Harman Kardon DVD101 player and this DVD refuses to play on my player. In fact it has made it exhibit bizarre behavior. Like shutting down the player. Harmon Kardon tech support is baffled too but suggested it may be some kind of new anti piracy thing Sony has done. I’ve emailed Sony (for all the good that will do) and am waiting for a reply. Yes, it will play on my PC but like Mr. Winkler that’s not where I want to watch it. Hopefully we all won’t be stuck with the prospect of having to buy a new DVD player simply to be able to watch Sony produced DVD’s.

Larry

Same problem! Sony movies don’t play on my dvd player.
Won’t buy any more sony movies. Very annoying! I was a Sony customer-not any more! What have those idiots done now?

I am having the same problem with rented dvd movies that are sony produced. They don’t play on my Toshiba SD 3750 nor my Dell laptop 5150 nor my Dell desk top nor my compaq nc4010. I rented Casino Royale twice and it is not able to play. Does any one have a fix?

Yea, thats why i got on here. Sony is doing something with dvds to make them unplayable. I have 2 different dvd players, the pioneer tivo unit will reboot when it trys to play the dvd and the zenith starts to play somewhere in the middle of the dvd and freezes, i dont mean it stops in the middle of the dvd, it starts somewhere in the middle. Terrible on sonys part, must be a way for them to sell more HD players.

Yes, I am here because of the same issue. Recent SONY produced DVD’s will not play on my Toshiba DVD player. “Pursuit of Happyness” and “Casino Royale” refused to load.

They will play on my XBOX 360, but that is obviously not a fix to this problem.

Same here Happy Feet, Casino Royal, & Holiday all a no go on both of my toshiba players.
Had to run it thru the powerbook to the TV & Stereo
No surround sound and not as good a picture on the 50″ screen, & no remote.
Blockbuster did a no charge for the first 2. Can’t see that happening again.

You can’t rent or buy a Sony movie & actually watch it. Is Sony suicidal?

Vent Vent Vent

I have the same problem with Casino Royale and some Pixar Disney movies. I contacted my DVD player tech support and they say that they have RCE protection on them that won’t allow the player to play them if they are multi region players. I have yet to find a solution to the problem.

I have purchased three movies that is produced by sony. Stranger than Fiction, In the Pursuit of Happyness, and Open Season, and all three of those so far won’t play on my Harman Kardon 101, Harman Kardon 25, or my Toshiba SD-5109. I ended up calling Harman Kardon and they told me that it isn’t an issue with the Dvd player it is an issue with SONY! I have also emailed Sony and have had little success with them emailing me back, actually I don’t expect a respond from them. Now I’m stuck with movies I can’t watch, now what fun is that! I don’t want to purchase all new dvd players which at this rate it looks as though I may have to.

I am having the same problem with DVDs on my Toshiba DVR/DVD player with some new discs, both Stranger Than Fiction and The Holiday. Any work-arounds?

Like everyone else pretty much ANY Sony DVD produced in 2007 will not play on most non-Sony DVD players. I have two different brands and neither will play Sony DVDs from this year (including Casino Royal and Rocky). Because of this I refuse to buy any Sony product. If everyone who rents movies would join me in this boycott we’d be able to get Sony to stop this (remember when they were installing spyware on all their CDs and got forced to stop?). If we give in by buying a Sony DVD player then this problem will only get worse.

I have a Sony 400DVD Changer and I’m encountering the SAME problem. Although 1 of the movies is a WarnerHome and another is a FOXHome. All new movies:

Stranger Than Fiction
Happy Feat
The Pursuit of Happyness
The Holiday
Casino Royale
Blood Diamond
Eragon

This is VERY annoying….!!!

Same thing. Casino Royal doesn´t play on Harman Kardon DVD 25.
New absurd copy protection. (Who are they stopping? The geeks have cracked it already. ) Had to buy a HK DVD 37 player. It plays on that machine. Mailed HK, asked for a software uptdate, no reply. Perhaps not possible to acheive on player whith chips from 2003?
For HK to state that it is a Sony problem is ridiculous.

I just bought Casino Royal and couldn’t get it to play in my Insignia DVDR or on my Dell laptop! Can’t get a refund and can’t watch it! Thats the last Sony product I buy period!

Incredible! First they do this to their CDs (Switchfoot, Elton John, etc) and then after apologizing they go and do this to their DVDs.
What a kick in the teeth!

As consumers is there anything we can do? I refuse to buy a new DVD player because Sony has started to use a non-stadard disc format or are using some new RCE.

Just a point of information.

JVC’s DR-MV7 series DVD recorders will not play anything from Sony Classic Pictures released after 2005. Furthermore, they have a high error occurance with Columbia and Columbia/Tristar movies that are in association with Sony Pictures, however, do not seem to have a problem with movies released only by Tristar/Sony or just Columbia and Columbia/Tristar. Also, new Lionsgate titles play with artifact and time errors or not at all, which should not be too suprising given their alliances with Sony (Blu-Ray).

Hi, I too have experienced the problem on my Toshiba DVD player. Stranger Than Fiction and The Holiday both refused to play at all on the DVD player but played fine on my Dell laptop. I guess I now need to go through my Netflix queue and weed out the Sony-produced DVDs.

RE: Sony DVD’s not playing…
Same problem as everyone else. I’m surprised that most of the major DVD & movie websites haven’t addressed this problem. Personally, I’m tired of Sony’s manipulation.
Currently, the discs that won’t play on my Toshiba are Rocky Balboa, Black Christmas, Casino Royale, Blood Diamond. Guess Sony’s trying to con people into thinking their players are fried. Gotta by a new player? Why not buy a new-fangled Blu-Ray player. It’ll play all your old DVD’s plus you’re set for the future - sorry Sony - SCREW YOU!!!

Wow, I figured I wasn’t the only one with this problem, but thought it was just limited to Pioneer. I have a Pioneer DVR-57H with Tivo (about 3 yrs. old and expenisve). Never any problems until Casino Royal was released and now all new Sony dvd movies won’t play and I have to reboot the system to get the movie out. I called Pioneer and they said they are looking into it, but it looks like Sony has added some process to enhance the security of the DVDS and our players can not read it…

Marie Antoinette is another culprit. The Sony disc doesn’t play on my Toshiba SD5700 DVD player.

I hope the people responsible for this stupidity die in a church fire. That is all.

Same problem here trying to play “Casino Royale” on my Harman Kardon DVD25…….Netflix sent me out a second copy of the DVD after I complained that the first one they shipped was defective. Now the replacement copy has arrived and it’s a “no-go” also. I am some-what
relieved to have found this thread…at least I know what the issue is !
….and where to focus the brunt of my frustration. SONY !!!…..those jerks !!! I guess at this point the best I can do is go through my Netflix “wish list”, and weed out all the Sony productions, then write them a “disconcerting” letter, and firmly resolve to never spend a dime on anything remotely related to Sony !

- regards to all !

I can’t play Casino Royal on my Go Video recordable dvd player as well. Sony is really messing up consumers with their dvds not being able to play on different brand dvd players.

Never had any problems with my HK DVD21. Until I bought Casino Royal. It won’t play on this player too.

Same thing for me. Tried to run Open Season and Casino Royale on my HK DVD101 and it just gets stuck on reading. I was about ready to go out and buy another player. Thanks goodness I found this forum.

UNBELIEVABLE! I rented Casino Royale, popped it in tonight to enjoy it, and NO LOAD. Took it back to the store, got the disc swapped out, came back, still NO LOAD. Googled around and found out that it’s anti-piracy run amok. Does SONY realize that they are disenfranchising a gigantic percentage of their viewing and buying public by implementing a copy-protection scheme that is so friggin’ overboard that half the players out there won’t play it?!?! I’d love to run the numbers on this, just to see a comparison of revenue lost to the unplayability of this disc and revenue recovered from the pirates thwarted. I’d hazard to guess that it’s no comparison, and SONY actually takes a bath on this decision. I won’t ever buy or rent any SONY DVD movie releases ever again. And I hope you won’t either.

Same issue with Casino Royalenot playing on the Toshiba player.

I received “pursuit of happyness” from netflicks, wont play on philips dvdr3400(which plays almost any format),so…i ordered another discussed problem with netflicks support,they said it was the first time they heard of this problem…the menu and previews play fine but when i push play it stops after 4 seconds,the second copy i received is the same.it plays on my x box though and computer. i googled and found this page. im not the only one w this problem is see, im going to do some more research and see what can be done without violence

Sony Fixes Problems With New DVDs

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday April 18, @04:43AM

from the DRM-again dept.

Sony Media Movies Entertainment

An anonymous reader writes “Following up on reports that DVDs for some Sony titles were causing problems, Video Business is reporting that Sony has fixed the copy-protection problem on recent DVD releases, and will provide replacement discs to customers. The problem was with the ARccOS DRM system. The company issued the following statement: ‘Recently, an update that was installed on approximately 20 titles was found to cause an incompatibility issue with a very small number of DVD players (Sony has received complaints on less than one thousandth of one percent of affected discs shipped)… Since then, the ARccOS system has once again been updated, and there are no longer any playability problems.’ Customers can call 800-860-2878 to inquire about replacement discs.”

Thank goodness for this site!

I was going nuts trying to figure out why Casino Royale wouldn’t play on my DVD player but worked fine on the computer. Now I know. Sony will be getting a phone call in the morning!

I have had the same problem with Talladega Nights and The Pursuit of Happyness on my Phillips DVD player. This is riduculous. I rented each movie more than once and it still would not play. I’m not going to go out and buy a new DVD player just so I can watch a few titles. I’m not going to be renting anymore Sony produced DVDs from my online Blockbuster account. Anyone w/me in boycotting their products? It’s a waste of my time to rent their movies.

Here’s a link to a story covering the issue and Sony’s response to the problem:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070418-sony-to-replace-incompatible-dvds.html

disc is stuck in player can’t get door open

It’s good to see that Sony’s doing something about this. My Mitsubishi DD-8030 can’t play the new format DVDs either.

I’ve had the same problem with Lionsgate’s DVDs since January 2007 but have not been able to find out if they’re acknowledged the problem and will do anything about it. Does anyone have info regarding this?

Bought Casino Royale - it just shows blank screen on our Insignia DVD/VCR(R) combo.
Annoyingly it plays fine on the ‘older’ Toshiba DVD player, and the ’special features’ disk plays ok on both.
WTF does SONY think it’s doing?
Last disk we buy at list price!

QUOTE: … i ordered another discussed problem with netflicks support,they said it was the first time they heard of this problem…the menu and previews play fine but when i push play it stops ….. END QUOTE

I talked at length and at all levels with Netflix about this issue last month, so for them to say they have not heard is absurd. They, as well as a lot of retailers, are probably tired of replacing disks.

Heads should roll at SONY for this one.

PS:

The latest SONY disk I played, Stomp The Yard, played fine. I guess they fixed it. I hope they get all the bad DVDs out of circulation.

I’ve swapped Talladega Nights out 3 times now and haven’t been able to get the DVD to play — ON MY SONY DVD PLAYER!!!

Thank You!! This message board has restored some of my lost sanity, lol. Two weeks ago I rented Catch and Release from my local Movie Gallery and was unable to watch it on my Samsung DVD/VCR combo.I tried it in my relatively new (Feb) Dell desktop and again wouldn’t play. My husband tried it on our Go Video DVD/VCR combo in the bedroom an it played fine. He then tried it in his Dell Laptop (also purchased in Feb.) and it played just fine. I sent of a nasty e-mail to Sony and told them that if I could not watch their movies I would not rent or buy another one and I was not about to buy a new DVD player to accommodate them. They actually e-mailed me back wanting to know the make and model of my player so they could offer a solution I guess. Haven’t responded to them as of yet. I will also say my husband has rented Casino Royale, Rocky, and Blood Diamond and they all played fine on the Go Video player. I unfortuantely didn’t try them in the Samsung player because I wasn’t interested in those particular titles, I wish now I had, might have found out about this sooner. Just my thoughts on the subject. Hopefully they fix the problem soon.

I record many shows/games on DVD-R but I was unable to watch them on my DVD player. That is until I read your response, concerning “finalizing” DVD-Rs, above.
Thanks for that info. You’re the man!

Carl

Found this page from google…I haven’t been able to play most new releases rented from blockbuster on my samsung dvd player. The dvd’s won’t load. Older dvds will play fine. Very frustrating.

Same problems continue for Sony DVDs into the summer. For us, it was Stranger Than Fiction and The Pursuit of Happiness. Both were Sony discs. We rented 3 copies of the first; 2 of the second, all from Blockbuser. No Joy when we tried to play. Special features from the menu were fine. But each disc froze when Play was tried. Sadly, Blockbuster was (1) no help in dealing; (2) not even aware of these problems with Sony; and (3) downright dismissive in believing that Sony discs had any widespread problems.

I was having the same problem with my Phillips DVD Player and so I went to their website and was able to download a firmware update that fixed it. It only took a few minutes to do and I am now able to play the previously unplayable movies. Hopefully this helps some of you.

I called Sony Pictures at 1 800 860 2878 and they send they would send me a replacement DVD that will work on my laptop and other DVD players.

Hope that helps

I just phoned the 1-800 number and will be receiving the replacement disc in a weeks time. Very fast response time.
I have a Sony DVD player of all things and I tried everything including firmware upgrades and re encoding my players region setting. Nothing seemed to work.

Hi! Well, I have a slightly different problem. I have a Sony DVD player; It will NOT play the menu of a DVD. But it will play the movie. Can anyone suggest what to do?