HD200 & Older DVD's - Known Playback Issues?

[Savage1701]

My son got some old Hammer Studios horror films. The HD200 can't navigate past the front menu and actually start the movie. We can't start the movies by scene selection either. Interestingly, we can play the commentary and additional info selections.

Anyone run into this? Is there a way to force the HD200 to play a DVD? We get the opening studio credit, and background music on the static menu, but hitting "play" does nothing, nor does highlighting the "Play" selection and hitting "enter", nor does tyring to choose by scene. Any of those, if they do anything, just take us to the cast & credits extras and such.

FWIW, the DVD plays fine in a stand-alone player, with WinDVD or CyberLink PowerDVD on a PC, etc., so I don't think it's a scratched DVD. It does not matter if the DVD is ripped or not (Yes, I believe fair use doctrine lets me make 1 copy of a DVD I own, I don't want to start something with that. I also don't want my son or anyone else scratching the DVD as it would be hard to replace).

Thanks for any help.

[gplasky]

You're not just copying this dvd to the hard drive or placing it in a DVD to play on a HD200, correct? You're using the appropraite program to rip it to folders as described in the manual or eunning a program on the PC with the drive that allows you to play AnyDVD? (hint)

Gerry

[adamwh]

Have you tried them in stand-alone mode? I have a few DVDs (ripped to folders) where the menu navigation is completely messed up, but only in Extender mode. Stand-alone and through the SageTV software on the server works fine.

[Savage1701]

First of all, sincere thanks to both of you for taking the time to reply. I appreciate your help.

Let me try and answer your questions, and tell you how I stumbled on a solution:

1. gplasky - I am ripping them with SlySoft. As I stated, I do not believe I am in violation of Fair Use Doctrine in this case.

2. Adam - standalone mode is fine. Software players on other computers are fine as well. I understand your point about messed up menus.

Here's how I stumbled on my solution:

I played the movie, even though it did not "play". I then stopped it with blue's advanced stop menu by using "stop and return to menu". I then selected the movie again and chose play, with option to return to where I left off. What do you know? I am now about 30 seconds into each movie. I repeated it for each Hammer Studios film and it worked just fine for the troublesome ones. Go figure.

Again, thanks for the help from both of you.