Page 1 of Atlantis, The Lost Empire, Region 2 will not play on ALBA DVD108

Hi,
Just to let you all know, Atlantis, The Lost Empire region 2 will not play on the ALBA DVD108 from Argos the screen goes black after 17 sec from when you press play, all other discs work fine (the film plays ok on the Panasonic region 2 player I have in the bedroom), after reading these forums I decided to go out and buy the DVD108 as I needed a multi region player that was cheap and being a second player, have to say fantastic little player, plays region 1 ok, watched Resident Evil (R1) last night, fantastic all round.
Has anybody else had a problem with Disney dvd`s not playing as the kids want more.

Disney DVDs do not adhere strictly to the DVD standard, hence it has its own `Disney DVD` logo. There have been numerous reports regarding quite a few titles, including: Toy Story Complete Toy Box, A Bug`s Life and Tarzan that won`t play correctly on a lot of budget DVD players. Seems to be a little hit and miss too.

I`ve not had any problems, so I can`t comment further. But I`m sure others will contribute to this...

Disneys dvds do adhere to the dvd standard (just), they take some parts to the limit (this is what causes the problems with cheapo players) but are still within spec.

Although Disney use a modified DVD logo, they are still bound by the dvd spec as it still contains "DVD", which is a trademark of the dvd forum.


One of the most common problems with disney discs are the menus, Disney maxes out the menus, this causes problems on players which have had cut backs to buffer memory (normally the budget ones) this causes either slow loading or failure to load because the player doesn`t have enough memory to allocate to the menus.

Firmware updates can normally correct the problem as they allow a reallocation of buffer memory.


A lot of dvd producers have to make cut backs to the dvd spec when designing their discs due to budget and older players lack of compatability. For example the maximum bitrate available on dvd is not used because first gen players can cope with it (Pathe originally released R2UK Austin Powers with peaks at full bitrate, but they had to reissue it with lower peaks because of playback issues). Many companies avoid seamless branching because many budget players lack the buffer memory to cope with branches over a certain size (thats why some budget players have playback issues with seamless branching discs, ie. repeating chapters etc). Another example is The Matrix which had playback issues, this was because Warner mastered the disc with one of the layers at near to the maximum allowed data area allowed by the dvd spec, problem was not all players (mainly budget) could cope with this because their laser pickups were not setup to cope with the larger data area, most players fixed via firmware updates which set the maximums to correct values. (Toshiba has even admitted that The Matrix playback problems on some of it`s players were it`s fault and so issued firmware updates). Even Layer change problems can occur on budget players when the layer change takes slightly longer than normal.

I would like to say a BIG thank you for the response it has helped, some times it better not to go cheap.
Peter

won`t play on Toshiba SD100E either.............nor will Amelie single disc version.

Just checked mine on my kids alba 108 and it runs perfectly from start to finish.

anyone else tried it?