to "sticky note" customers

[KellyHabersham]

I appreciate your leaving a note to let staff know that a DVD or CD which you had checked out is scratched/unplayable, but in the event that you get sucky about it, please keep the following in mind:

- the item in question will be deleted/tossed out, We don't have a buffering machine anymore, and unfortunately we don't have enough staff/time to clean DVDs or CDs in other ways.

- we don't really need to know which tracks/scenes don't play.....if the equipment exists to isolate and fix those issues, we don't have it.

- please keep in mind that it might be your DVD player that is the problem. (such was my personal experience)

*I realize this isn't a big deal to gripe about, but with some of these items, the customer really needs to bring it to a circulation staff member instead of putting it in the bookdrop*

[EricKei]

I would expect a movie rental place (which barely even exist these days) to have a rebuffer machine...not a library. >_< I go in to libraries knowing that the books/movies/whatever have been previously handled by people who acquired them for free, and I set my expectations accordingly. You guys and gals can't control how badly they treat your stuff.

[KellyHabersham]

To be fair, I'm not sure these people are expecting us to have a rebuffer machine, but I did have a guy hand me a CD once......I guess he'd been trying to play it in his laptop, and he did say that he wasn't sure what we did about such items.

[EvilEmpryss]

I would let the people know that the disc was bad at a particular track/scene so that they could check it themselves specifically because it might have been my equipment that was the problem. I wouldn't want them to throw the DVD or CD out just based on my say-so or have to wait through a whole disc to find the bad spot.

[KellyHabersham]

I would let the people know that the disc was bad at a particular track/scene so that they could check it themselves specifically because it might have been my equipment that was the problem. I wouldn't want them to throw the DVD or CD out just based on my say-so or have to wait through a whole disc to find the bad spot.

And that I can understand.....I know we used to do that back when we carried VHS tapes, because I got to go through a small pile once to check them. Now though, I think we'd need more/difference spacing and staff to do that.

[Jack7957]

I've had DVDs from Netflix not work on my living room player, but work fine in my bedroom player. I had it traced down to a certain movie studio DVDs (sorry, don't remember which one) so I knew when opening the envelope if it would work or not in the living room.

[retro]

I have Blurays from Lovefilm here in the UK which have fingerprints, scratches, all over them and refuse to play in the player. I know it's not the player because all of my own Blurays (which I look after) all work all the time.

I'm of the opinion that I pay them a monthly rental so they can send me their discs to clean.

[MrSmiley]

Obviously if it's not for you to deal with there's nothing you can do.

I've dealt with a whole lot of CD Players and CD-ROMs over the years from a variety of manufacturers and all I can say is that... some read a lot better than others. Really it's a whole bunch of things including laser strength, alignment, motor... basically the quality varies of the parts inside and how it was manufacturer.

Some remembered quirks:

• Cousin had a JVC DVD player that would bulk on the slightest piece of dust or fingerprint.
• Had a CD-ROM in a computer that could only ever read 70% of the retail discs I gave it. I ended up replacing it. Never figured out any specific reason.
• Had a CD burner that could not handle any recordable "dyes" (you may have noticed some CDRs are different colors) other than blue. I had to be sure I was buying certain brands that were blue dyed for it to work.
• Had a DVD Player once that worked just fine until it was region unlocked. Then it was fine unless the disc had both it's region information and other regions on the disc (dummied out data?) and I think it basically got confused. This wasn't every disc though and many worked just fine because they only contained information for their region but others... even though they were formatted for a region, still contained all the data for other regions on the disc. Another region unlocked player didn't have this problem on these same discs.
• Friend's DVD worked great but would sometimes overheat and when it did would start skipping scenes as if someone were hitting buttons on the remote.
• The original model Playstation 1. A variety of problems with alignment & heat issues would result in us having to put that thing on it's side, leaning on the table, upside down... etc etc. Eventually it got sent to Sony to fix.
• The original model Playstation 2. Mediocre DVD playpack anyway, but eventually developed laser alignment issues. Sent it back for repair 3 times and fixed it myself another 4 times.
• In the mid-late90s there was a form of disc copy protection with "black sectors" you could visibly see on the disc. The idea was that these couldn't be copied properly and resulted in errors during the copy. Unfortunately they also caused a lot of devices to not read them.
• My later model Xbox360 may have other issues; but it seems to be a fairly good DVD reader. It seems to be able to read through most scratches and smudges that my other devices get stuck on.
• Several cheap "portable dvd players" with built in screens that just are cheaply made and don't play a lot of discs correctly. Sometimes overheating too.

I'll end by noting that my local library does have a buffer machine (or rather the central branch does, and other libraries in the region send them their discs if they're marked) and the librarians thank me for bringing any ones that aren't working properly to their attention.