Can someone explain why DVD's have "problems" sometimes?

Question

Here's an example:

I was watching "Six Feet Under," season 4, the episode where David confronts the carjacker (this is all besides the point)...and anyways, during one scene, the DVD stopped on one frame, and then slowly began "sputtering" through the next few frames, and pressing "Play" on the remote control wouldn't fix it. I finally just had to stop the DVD because it wouldn't play anymore. This was my Toshiba TV/DVD combo player.

So next I tried it on my Sony DVD-R connected to the TV, and during the same frame where my Toshiba just sputtered out, the Sony only made a slight pause during the frame, but kept playing after that just fine.

So next I decided to try it on my Daewoo Region Free DVD player, and there were no anomolies during the frame that had made my other two DVD player's experience problems. It played right through flawlessly. Wierd, huh?

The DVD was not scratched though, so what makes DVD's do this? It's happened with undamaged discs of mine before.

Answer 1

Some DVD players are more sensitive to & less forgiving of small defects in the disc's surface; it may be that your Toshiba is more sentitive, your Sony less so, and your Daewoo less than the others. It's also possible that the problem was caused by a small smudge which was "wiped" away by subsequent play in the second and third players.

Answer 2

A DVD works through a number of small bumps, it reads those bumps like brail and then can show an image from that reading. So your problem may be a slight fault with the DVD but as it is recurring I believe that something may be wrong with the DVD player itself.