liquid looking DVD problem

[jmhinkle]

I was backing up my James Bond collection recently and for some reason my DVD of Licence to Kill is like nothing I've ever seen. It appears to have a gold liquid looking inside of it. If you wipe it the pattern changes. If you set it on it's side it will move down and leave silver area showing. The disc will not read in any of my players or burners. I've never watched the movie, but I've owned it for a while and can't possibly return it now. Has anyone seen this before? I'm now sure if there is something I can do to fix it. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Joel

[Video Dude]

I also purchased that 7 disc boxed Bond set. My disc looks like a ordinary DVD, nothing like you described.

But something like that happened to me in the past. It was too late for me to return it to the store, so I called a tech support number I found on the dvd box. I don't know if it was the studio or distributor but they replaced the disc no problems, I just had to mail them my original sales reciept as proof of purchase. They didn't even want the damaged disc back.

[danielwritesback]

This is a damaged disc. It has debonded due to flexing, freezing, heat, or age. It should be mailed to the copyright holder who produced the disc so you can get a replacment.

You can try DVDDecryptor with the "ignore errors" option switched on. After several hours, anything marginally readble will be on your hard drive. It can then be reauthored by DVDShrink, Nero or other into a functional DVD minus the damaged section.

In some countries, presence of the original media indicates license to use it, so you could rent the movie and then. . .you know. However, in many countries, license to use media means only the original media. That's not too bad, because this means that the manufacturer must replace any damaged media at cost--because you already purchased the license from them. In all countries with anti-copy or anti-decryption laws, manufacturers are not allowed to charge a "new" price to replace defective media.