PBS DVD Tracks Ahead Series 6 issues

Has anyone else hav issues with their Tracks ahead Series 6? I had an issue of the DVD 1 never would return to the menu and wouldnt skip backwards. Well The day after New years I got a brand new DVD that had the issue in the mail I dont recall emailing them about and I’m curious if anyone else got one without requesting one?

I have series 5, and it had some skipping problems also. I returned it for another copy, and it skipped in the same places. The dealer inquired and found out that all of the Series 5 copies had that defect, and they’d stopped producing them because of it. Why they’re having such problems producing discs that track properly is anyone’s guess.

Not sure if this has anything to do with it, but Tracks Ahead shoots everything in HD. At least this is what they told me when I inquired about having my G scale layout featured.

So maybe because the original was HD, it doesn’t translate well to DVD formats. Perhaps Blu-Ray is an alternative.

HD has nothing to do with it.

DVDs will skip for several reasons.

  1. Cheap DVD player. The cheap walmart specials from China are not really DVD players, as they leave out things like error correction to save money on licence fees. Small errors can really trip them up. (If the picture freezes, the player has encountered an error it can’t deal with. When it gets good data, the player just switches back to the video stream.)

  2. Weak laser. Cheap players, and older players tend to run into this problem. As the laser diode ages, it’s output is reduced. Cheap laser diodes age even faster. Lower output reduces the tolerance for errors.

  3. Defective disc. All optical discs have defects, but better players have a lot more tolerance for them. Still, there is a limit to how severe the errors can be before the player can’t deal with them anymore.