DELL DW316 DVD drive not playing Disney DVD's

[MikeBrunel]

Hi,

 

we have a load of these DW316 USB Rom drives attached to school PC's on class 55" LCD's but in recent days we started getting complaints that they not play a DVD. The PC is running Win10 with VLC as the player which is fine for most other DVD's but it appears to be disney DVD like Finding Nemo and Toy Story 1, 2 and 3

 

Dell does not list a firmware update for the drive and does not want to know outside of warranty Has anyone else had issues with this drive?

 

 

Kind regards

 

Mike

Edited June 25, 2019 by MikeBrunel

[mavhc]

Have you set the region code?

[MikeBrunel]

Yes first thing I thought so set to Region 2. Can hear the disc hunting like when a ROM drive can't detect a disc and then it fails. Put any other film in and it reads just fine. All the Disc's like new with not a mark on them. Even tried a lens clean just in case it was something on the pickup assembly. Think we may just have a batch of ROMs that won't play the new Disney encryption and Dell won't acknowledge it

[Mjstone1]

I have seen issues with VLC not playing DVDs on Windows 10 on some laptops, whereas on others it works fine. I find that if VLC isn't working it will normally work using Media Player Classic instead though: https://mpc-hc.org/

[synaesthesia]

There's often a few DVDS (looking at Sony usually) that just have the world's worst copy protection on them making them unplayable on most if not all computers. Not much you can do about that!

[chazzy2501]

sometime the AV goes wild if the disc has annoying stuff on it, this with the VLC then the teacher hammering the play button. This stops the DVD from playing. I've had to train my teachers to not immediately try and play a DVD after inserting it.

 

Also HDMI, some DVDs get funny if you have a second monitor that IS HDCP compliant and you have the desktop duplicated!

[Koldov]

We had a similar problem!

 

I was called into the Hall in front of 300 children to sort out why a particular DVD wouldn't play (Monsters University)...

 

Couldn't get it to work on the Hall PC (just an old cheap little Dell Optiplex) running Win 10 using VLC player.

 

So I took the DVD to my office and still couldn't get it to work on my PC using VLC or MPC!

 

Edit: Also had the second monitor thing (gives a very cryptic message about copy protection IIRC).

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/2004673/windows-media-player-cannot-play-this-dvd-because-it-is-not-possible-t

Edited June 25, 2019 by Koldov

[mavhc]

Could always remove the copy protection and burn a new copy

[MikeBrunel]

Thanks Mavhc, this seems like a good idea but as it's a school I think they might target us on that

[crc-ict]

ISTR that Disney releases are marketed as 'Disney DVD' and not 'DVD' because they don't actually meet the official DVD-Video standards because of additional copy protection etc. This means that they can't be described as 'DVD' because they are not 100% compatible with all players. That doesn't help, but is probably the issue that you are facing.

 

Have you tried using software like PowerDVD or similar to play the DVD? I've had much more luck playing this sort of thing with PowerDVD than VLC, as VLC always seems to lose the plot when the DVD is something a bit out of the ordinary. I've had similar problems with VLC on DVDs which have PC content on them as well as the movie, but no issue in PowerDVD.

[DrBeaker]

All of this hassle for the sake of Microsoft removing the DVD playback function from Windows 8 onward. Did they really save that much money? So how come a free open-source app like VLC can do it but M$ can't?

 

I want to like you Microsoft, but you're not making it easy for us techs!

[LeMarchand]

All of this hassle for the sake of Microsoft removing the DVD playback function from Windows 8 onward. Did they really save that much money? So how come a free open-source app like VLC can do it but M$ can't?

 

You've already forgotten my pearls of wisdom here: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-10/199582-windows-10-has-killed-job-me-8.html#post1712724

 

*sniff*

[Koldov]

Have you tried using software like PowerDVD or similar to play the DVD? I've had much more luck playing this sort of thing with PowerDVD than VLC, as VLC always seems to lose the plot when the DVD is something a bit out of the ordinary. I've had similar problems with VLC on DVDs which have PC content on them as well as the movie, but no issue in PowerDVD.

 

Do they still do a free version?

[MikeBrunel]

Thanks everyone, crc-ict you are correct that's a crafty one that Disney has done. Will try PowerDVD but the fact I hear the disc hunting says to me it's not going to read with any software in that drive

[mavhc]

I wonder what educational reason they're claiming to show Monster's University to 300 children under the licence they have. Seems like just buying a dvd player is easiest.

[crc-ict]

I wonder what educational reason they're claiming to show Monster's University to 300 children under the licence they have. Seems like just buying a dvd player is easiest.

 

If they have a PVSL licence (a lot of schools do, we do), there is no need for an educational reason. PVSL covers you for entertainment purposes too.

[crc-ict]

Thanks everyone, crc-ict you are correct that's a crafty one that Disney has done. Will try PowerDVD but the fact I hear the disc hunting says to me it's not going to read with any software in that drive

 

I've had the same hunting with discs in VLC and was all but ready to give up, but they worked in PowerDVD. YMMV, though.

[mavhc]

If they have a PVSL licence (a lot of schools do, we do), there is no need for an educational reason. PVSL covers you for entertainment purposes too.

 

Only if you fill in the reporting form of course.