Cheap DVD players

We've had a few instances at the library where the patron returns a brand-new DVD (say, Finding Nemo or Pirates of the Caribbean), claiming that the product (which he paid five bucks to rent) won't play on his perfectly functioning DVD-player.

Well I know from experience that it's probably because his player is a cheap'n'nasty. We used to have a cheapie one at home, and encountered the same problem - always only with the brand new DVDs. The boy always fixed it by spitting on the DVD and rubbing on it with a bit of cloth (whatever he was wearing at the time). Now that he's splashed out on a more expensive Sanyo, we don't get this problem at all.

Well, I wasn't going to tell today's complainant to spit on the library's DVDs - who knows what abrasive fabrics he'll be wearing when the occasion arises - but I did try to find out whether he was the owner of an el cheapo DVD player. Perhaps he was just proud, or maybe he really does have a 'good' player, but he wouldn't own up to having a cheap'n'nasty.

So the result was that I'm taking two copies of Pirates home to try them out on the DVD player at home. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that his copy was a replacement copy; he'd already found the previous one faulty in exactly the same way.

What a pity it wasn't a movie that we haven't already got a copy of. I wouldn't mind seeing The Office again, and the boy refuses to buy it on DVD because watching it makes him squirm and stress. He reckons its too real to be funny!