semi-OT: a Blu-ray disk that won't play the film

[William Sommerwerck]

The following is a simple question, and I don't want to see a lot of time
spent pointlessly elaborating on it.

I've been enjoying BDs since I got a plasma set. I've finally bumped into
one that won't play. It's "Sleepy Hollow", which runs through the
promotional section for "Paramount High Definition", then refuses to play
the film or display the "selection" screen. I tried selecting a chapter from
the pop-up menu, but it refuses to play any.

It's almost certainly not a problem with the Sony BDP-S550 player, as I
installed the latest firmware when I got it. There are no visible surface
defects, but that doesn't rule out a bad pressing.

I have to go to Fry's tomorrow, anyway, so I'll just ask them to exchange it
(after confirming that it doesn't play in other players). But I want to know
if anyone else has seen this sort of thing and has an idea of what causes
it.

Please -- no tsimmes. Thank you.

 

[Arfa Daily]

"William Sommerwerck" <grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:gsbou9$aqc$1@news.motzarella.org...

The following is a simple question, and I don't want to see a lot of time
spent pointlessly elaborating on it.

I've been enjoying BDs since I got a plasma set. I've finally bumped into
one that won't play. It's "Sleepy Hollow", which runs through the
promotional section for "Paramount High Definition", then refuses to play
the film or display the "selection" screen. I tried selecting a chapter
from
the pop-up menu, but it refuses to play any.

It's almost certainly not a problem with the Sony BDP-S550 player, as I
installed the latest firmware when I got it. There are no visible surface
defects, but that doesn't rule out a bad pressing.

I have to go to Fry's tomorrow, anyway, so I'll just ask them to exchange
it
(after confirming that it doesn't play in other players). But I want to
know
if anyone else has seen this sort of thing and has an idea of what causes
it.

Please -- no tsimmes. Thank you.

When DVD player / HC systems were first around, there was quite a lot of
this sort of thing with specific titles doing odd things like refusing to
play beyond the opening menu screen and so on. It never seemed to be due to
either the player or disc per se - just a lack of compatibility between some
'unusual' feature of the disc and the player's software. Where this occured
with a disc of a popular film where the player manufacturer would receive a
lot of complaints from their dealers, the issue was usually cleared up with
a software update, often distributed on disc, but sometimes only available
as a website download. I would not assume that because you have the latest
software flash in your player, it is not still a compatibility issue that
may even have been introduced by the particular revision that you have now.

Sleepy Hollow's not that good a movie anyway ... ;-)

Arfa

 

[William Sommerwerck]

When DVD player / HC systems were first around, there was quite a lot of
this sort of thing with specific titles doing odd things like refusing to
play beyond the opening menu screen and so on. It never seemed to be due
either the player or disc per se - just a lack of compatibility between
some
to 'unusual' feature of the disc and the player's software. Where this
occureed
with a disc of a popular film where the player manufacturer would receive
a
lot of complaints from their dealers, the issue was usually cleared up
with
a software update, often distributed on disc, but sometimes only available
as a website download. I would not assume that because you have the
latest software flash in your player, it is not still a compatibility
issue that
may even have been introduced by the particular revision that you have
now.

Thank you for a clear, terse answer. Guess I'll just have to complain to
Paramount.

Sleepy Hollow's not that good a movie anyway ... ;-)

Agreed, but I got it cheap and it's the kind of film that looks good on a
big HD screen.

 

[Eeyore]

William Sommerwerck wrote:

The following is a simple question, and I don't want to see a lot of time
spent pointlessly elaborating on it.

I've been enjoying BDs since I got a plasma set. I've finally bumped into
one that won't play. It's "Sleepy Hollow", which runs through the
promotional section for "Paramount High Definition", then refuses to play
the film or display the "selection" screen. I tried selecting a chapter from
the pop-up menu, but it refuses to play any.

It's almost certainly not a problem with the Sony BDP-S550 player, as I
installed the latest firmware when I got it. There are no visible surface
defects, but that doesn't rule out a bad pressing.

I have to go to Fry's tomorrow, anyway, so I'll just ask them to exchange it
(after confirming that it doesn't play in other players). But I want to know
if anyone else has seen this sort of thing and has an idea of what causes
it.

I have little trust in optical media. Except ones that had hard error detection
and correction designed in like CDs. I also have little trust in digital
magnetic media, having seen Philips DCCs and Exabyte tapes utterly currupted.
There's a whole big problem waiting out there.

Graham

 

[msg]

Eeyore wrote:

<snip>

I also have little trust in digital
magnetic media, having seen Philips DCCs and Exabyte tapes utterly currupted.
There's a whole big problem waiting out there.

I'm battling with a 'media error' on the second of two files on an EXB-8500
tape; there is no media physical damage. I'd like to find a program (on
whatever o/s will support it) to permit reading past the corruption to
recover the remaining data. Low level scsi commands should permit this
but I am not yet ready to code an app for just this one tape.

Anyone have ideas?

Michael

 

[William Sommerwerck]

I have little trust in optical media. Except ones that had hard error
detection and correction designed in like CDs. I also have little trust
in digital magnetic media, having seen Philips DCCs and Exabyte
tapes utterly currupted. There's a whole big problem waiting out there.

Well, I've never had a defective DVD, and this my first "bad" BD. It played
on a Panasonic player at Fry's, so it seems this is a firmware
incompatibility.

Thanks to everyone for their comments.

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Sat, 18 Apr 2009 10:42:38 -0500, msg <msg@_cybertheque.org_> wrote:

I'm battling with a 'media error' on the second of two files on an EXB-8500
tape; there is no media physical damage. I'd like to find a program (on
whatever o/s will support it) to permit reading past the corruption to
recover the remaining data. Low level scsi commands should permit this
but I am not yet ready to code an app for just this one tape.

Anyone have ideas?

Michael

Hint: You'll get better answers if you disclose:
1. What problem are you trying to solve?
2. What do you have to work with? (Hardware and software).
3. What did you do so far and what happened?

I have a raw read utility for Archive and Wangtek QIC drives, but it
doesn't work for Exabyte. A bit of googling found:
<http://www.solar.ifa.hawaii.edu/Reference/MCCD/MCCD_tape_read.txt>
<http://nsosp.nso.edu/dst/obsman/computers/tapeview.html>
all of which cover recovery from Exabyte tape read errors.

This is kinda interesting:
<http://www.cats.rwth-aachen.de/facilities/storage>

Also see code for tarskip.c at:
<http://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.questions/msg/3822b6ba4eb8b43c>
I have a version for SCO Xenix and OpenServer. I haven't compiled it
for any Linux mutation yet.

Any chance that the file on the tape is a sparce file?

Of course, this has nothing to do with the DVD player problem.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:08:34 +0100, Eeyore
<rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote:

I have little trust in optical media. Except ones that had hard error detection
and correction designed in like CDs. I also have little trust in digital
magnetic media, having seen Philips DCCs and Exabyte tapes utterly currupted.
There's a whole big problem waiting out there.

Graham

Ok, so optical media and magnetic tape are unreliable. That leaves
paper tape, punched Hollerith cards, and stone tablets. Which do you
prefer?

Incidentally, my vote for the worst backup media available was DDS-1
and DDS-2 tape. 1/3 of the data on each tape was for error correction
and it still didn't work right. Average life on a the heads was 5,000
to 10,000 hrs. The typical backup and verify took about 8 hrs total,
which means the drive was good for about 3 years before wearing out.
Extra credit to HP and Sony for making tapes unreadable on different
drive firmware mutations.


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[msg]

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Sat, 18 Apr 2009 10:42:38 -0500, msg <msg@_cybertheque.org_> wrote:


I'm battling with a 'media error' on the second of two files on an EXB-8500
tape; there is no media physical damage. I'd like to find a program (on
whatever o/s will support it) to permit reading past the corruption to
recover the remaining data. Low level scsi commands should permit this
but I am not yet ready to code an app for just this one tape.

Anyone have ideas?

Michael


Hint: You'll get better answers if you disclose:
1. What problem are you trying to solve?
Can't read past 'media error' on an 8mm tape recorded on

an EXB-8500. Would like to sync on good data past the damage.
Data recovery service sites describe using physical cut and
splice techniques but I'm not willing to do that yet.

2. What do you have to work with? (Hardware and software).

Exabyte drives: EXB-8500, EXB-8505, EXB-8900. *nix including
SVR4, Solaris Sparc(various versions), Linux x86 (various releases),
Cygwin, OpenBSD (various Sparc and x86), BSD/OS, HP/UX (various),
MS-DOS diagnostic apps for the drives, etc.

3. What did you do so far and what happened?

Tried skipping the bad block(s) using tape positioning commands
on *nix and cygwin, such as 'mt', skip arguments in 'dd', 'cpio',
etc. *nix includes SVR4, Linux 2.4.x, Solaris 2.6, OpenBSD 3.2,
etc., etc. The drive's firmware returns a 'media error' status
upon encountering the corruption and subsequent attempts to
read causes the drive to go 'not ready'.

Tried working at a low level using Exabyte 'Expert' diagnostic
software package under DOS, issuing SCSI commands and modifying
code page data. Reading the SCSI command set description in the
EXB-8505 manual (for instance) suggests it is possible to physically
position the tape, by modifying the code pages to change behavior,
and perhaps the drive will sync to good data past the damage, but
I have not done this yet.

I have a raw read utility for Archive and Wangtek QIC drives, but it
doesn't work for Exabyte. A bit of googling found:
http://www.solar.ifa.hawaii.edu/Reference/MCCD/MCCD_tape_read.txt

Indeed; I had read that one last month during my searches, but didn't
become inspired to try to convince someone at the site to release
their tape software "mccd_rd_tape", which according to the file
has raw read and skip capabilities of some sort.

http://nsosp.nso.edu/dst/obsman/computers/tapeview.html

This one describes reading telescope image data from exabtye
data tapes but I didn't see anything about tape error recovery.

all of which cover recovery from Exabyte tape read errors.

This is kinda interesting:
http://www.cats.rwth-aachen.de/facilities/storage

On a QIC drive, one can skip over bad blocks but unfortunately
not on an Exabyte 850x using only standard *nix drivers.

Also see code for tarskip.c at:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.questions/msg/3822b6ba4eb8b43c
I have a version for SCO Xenix and OpenServer. I haven't compiled it
for any Linux mutation yet.

Would work for any tape device that permits skipping bad blocks using
the installed drivers, but won't work for the Exabyte 850x with stock
drivers.

Any chance that the file on the tape is a sparse file?

The tape does contain sparse files, but not at this position. The error
is at the beginning of the second file, the first is just a header file
of 16384 bytes.

Of course, this has nothing to do with the DVD player problem.

It's a follow-on to Graham's comments about corrupt Exabyte tapes

I'd like to learn what the data recovery houses purchase or build for
themselves (hardware and software) and some of its specifications
and capabilities; the websites are (intentionally) quite vague.

I downloaded a 'trial' version of a (Windows) tape recovery package that
specifically stated it could deal with 'media' errors on 8mm tape; the
'trial' version seems to be seriously gutted - it had absolutely no menus
or command line arguments or switches, it moved the tape but that's about
all I can say it did as I stopped it after six hours and found what was
supposed to have been a raw image file was only a short text file with the
string "TRIAL " catted throughout.

Michael

 

[Meat Plow]

On Sat, 18 Apr 2009 19:26:22 -0700, Jeff Liebermann
<jeffl@cruzio.com>wrote:

On Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:08:34 +0100, Eeyore
rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote:

I have little trust in optical media. Except ones that had hard error detection
and correction designed in like CDs. I also have little trust in digital
magnetic media, having seen Philips DCCs and Exabyte tapes utterly currupted.
There's a whole big problem waiting out there.

Graham

Ok, so optical media and magnetic tape are unreliable. That leaves
paper tape, punched Hollerith cards, and stone tablets. Which do you
prefer?

Incidentally, my vote for the worst backup media available was DDS-1
and DDS-2 tape. 1/3 of the data on each tape was for error correction
and it still didn't work right. Average life on a the heads was 5,000
to 10,000 hrs. The typical backup and verify took about 8 hrs total,
which means the drive was good for about 3 years before wearing out.
Extra credit to HP and Sony for making tapes unreadable on different
drive firmware mutations.

I remember the HP DDS-2 drives we used to back up out Netware server
with as being the most unreliable device I've ever encountered. One
thing though, I yanked the tape drive out and made an external SCSI
drive with the rest of the "guts" and that was back in 2003. The drive
runs 24/7 here at home on my Netware print server. It's one of the
older larger form factor Seagate Barracuda 4.3 gig drives. The one
that rattled so much they sounded like the head servo was going to
explode.

 

[Bob Larter]

msg wrote:

Eeyore wrote:

snip

I also have little trust in digital
magnetic media, having seen Philips DCCs and Exabyte tapes utterly
currupted.
There's a whole big problem waiting out there.

I'm battling with a 'media error' on the second of two files on an EXB-8500
tape; there is no media physical damage. I'd like to find a program (on
whatever o/s will support it) to permit reading past the corruption to
recover the remaining data. Low level scsi commands should permit this
but I am not yet ready to code an app for just this one tape.

Anyone have ideas?

If you're running some flavour of Unix, have you tried using dd to dump
the raw tape data to a file? I assume you've already tried using a
cleaning tape.

--
W
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Bob Larter]

msg wrote:

etc., etc. The drive's firmware returns a 'media error' status
upon encountering the corruption and subsequent attempts to
read causes the drive to go 'not ready'.

I'm sorry to be the beaerer of bad tidings, but if the drive itself is
throwing the error, you're pretty much screwed. Is there any chance of
trying to read your tape on a different brand of drive? Other than that,
splicing the tape - which is a long shot at best - may be your only hope.


--
W
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Bob Larter]

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:08:34 +0100, Eeyore
rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote:

I have little trust in optical media. Except ones that had hard error detection
and correction designed in like CDs. I also have little trust in digital
magnetic media, having seen Philips DCCs and Exabyte tapes utterly currupted.
There's a whole big problem waiting out there.

Graham

Ok, so optical media and magnetic tape are unreliable. That leaves
paper tape, punched Hollerith cards, and stone tablets. Which do you
prefer?

Stone tablets - stored at someone else's place.

Incidentally, my vote for the worst backup media available was DDS-1
and DDS-2 tape.

Oh hell, ain't that the truth? ;^)

--
W
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:30:05 +1000, Bob Larter <bobbylarter@gmail.com>
wrote:

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Ok, so optical media and magnetic tape are unreliable. That leaves
paper tape, punched Hollerith cards, and stone tablets. Which do you
prefer?

Stone tablets - stored at someone else's place.

Been there and done that. While not exactly stone tablets, some of my
customers are sufficiently paranoid that they keep paper records of
all their transactions, invoices, memos, and payments. I must confess
that these have saved their posterior more than once or twice. For
example, they were able to operate during the 4 hours (yawn) that were
required for me to restore the DDS-1 tape backups after a drive
failure. Many companies have huge storage requirments for such
archival paper tablets.

Offsite storage is a good idea. I have my office backups at home and
my home backups at the office. One customer used to drive around with
the backup tapes in her car. Whatever works. However, it doesn't
always work as expected. After the 1989 earthquake, one large
customer had their backup tapes and CD's stored in a bank safe deposit
box. The bank building was declared unsafe and access was impossible.
I had a similar situation with my office, which was also in a building
that was allegedly ready to collapse. It took a court order and
release of liability to obtain the backups 2 weeks after the quake. In
my situation, I had to bribe a guard, hop a fence, and burglarize my
office for the cash box, records, and backups. Make sure the other
place is accessible.

Incidentally, my vote for the worst backup media available was DDS-1
and DDS-2 tape.

Oh hell, ain't that the truth? ;^)

It was a close race between the DC-2000 style mini (CMS) tape drives,
but DDS-1 and DDS-2 takes the grand prize for maximum dollars wasted,
megabytes lost, and hours wasted. Floppy tape drives are in a class
of their own by running slower than the average glacier.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[Bob Larter]

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:30:05 +1000, Bob Larter <bobbylarter@gmail.com
wrote:
Jeff Liebermann wrote:
[...]
Incidentally, my vote for the worst backup media available was DDS-1
and DDS-2 tape.
Oh hell, ain't that the truth? ;^)

It was a close race between the DC-2000 style mini (CMS) tape drives,
but DDS-1 and DDS-2 takes the grand prize for maximum dollars wasted,
megabytes lost, and hours wasted.

Yep. I've lost count of how many times I've DDS drives with chewed up
tapes in them.

Floppy tape drives are in a class
of their own by running slower than the average glacier.

I once had a client using those, who, (unknown to them) had never had a
successful backup, because the nightly backup was still running when
they ejected the tape in the morning. I replaced it with a good SCSI
card & a DLT-8000 drive. After that, the nightly backups completed in
less than 2 hours.


--
W
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------