Do you store your discs in a place that occasionally gets damp or humid?
Maybe demand for DS9 and VGR on disc in Europe is low, and there was a bad production line. So when you go to replace them, you end up just duplicating the problem. This happened to me with a Blu-ray that went bad. I ordered a replacement four years after the original one, and it had the exact same issue. Luckily the complete series had been reissued by a different company and was on fire sale, so I was able to fix the problem and future proof the rest of the series with minimum economic damage.
Could your player somehow be damaging the discs? Do you live in an outlier climate region?
I know how frustrating it can be to have a problem and then have people just shrug and go well this is an extreme outlier, not sure what to do, and time it out. Considering your bad run of luck, I'd maybe just go the iTunes route.
I keep them into a cupboard in a storage room when there is dark.
I live in a country with warm summers and sometimes very cold winters but due too good ventilation and warming system the inside temperature is around 20C all the time.
As for iTunes or other streaming services, I have no intention to pay a monthly sum to companies whose programs are 99% crap and who might cancel my favorite series after a while and then only come up with stupid suggestions when I contact them.
It happened to me once. All of a sudden, there was a message about "we don't have this series anymore" or whatever. When i called them about it, the idiot I talked to adviced me that there was another good series which I could watch, which happened to be one of those series I hate and would never watch even if they paid me for it.
"But everybody loves that series" was the reply I got. "I don't like it, I hate it!" was my reply. Then I told them where they could stop their streaming services and where to go. And then I cancelled my subscrition to that service.
In that case, I rather look at other options.
Nothing will change if you keep buying either, sadly.
Making people aware and hopefully that they are not alone in facing these errors. I would be hard pressed to believe your experience is isolated incidents.
Sometimes I don't watch anything at all. I write stories, build worlds, do model work (building models), paint, photography, etc. as part of my fan experience.
I have a lot of hobbies when it comes besides watching certain series, music, sports, writing, reading, traveling and some computer games. Some sports games I mod myself with accurate line-ups and correct jerseys and such.
But I really find it comforting to watch my beloved TOS, TNG, DS9 and early VOY from time to time.
Therefore I find it disturbing that those DVDs cause me so much trouble.
I have CD-records from the early 90's and DVDs from 2006 which works perfect after all those years, including the first three seasons of VOY which I bought in 2006 and still works fine, even if I discovered a small glitch in the episode
Tuvix this summer. However, it was just an one-second stop and then it played on as usual.
Its just the current problems with Paramount's products which really annoys me. They don't even have the dignity to reply to my questions and mid you, i've really trid to be so nice, and polite I can in those mails and letters, just pointing out the obvious problems and kindly asked them what they are going to do about it.
That doesn't mean that it won't ever happen though. It's been done on amazon a lot, which is why I don't buy digital stuff from them.
Amazon don't seem to be much better than any other company.
Here's the recent situation: Amazon in my country has a Voyager box to a rather decent price.
However, when I checked the reviews of this German-made box, there were a lot of complaints.
The package is awful. No doubt that discs get damaged in such packages. OK, I have two similar boxes with awful packages, one TNG and one DS9 which I use to "cannibalize" malfunction discs in older boxes I have so I don't have to open those horrible packages until I need to replace the older discs I have. That was also my plan for Voyager.
But in the reviews, there were also complaints about some episodes being unwatchable and on some discs the language option was malfunctioning. When you try to choose the English speaking option, you still got the German version.
My German is so-so. I can read and understand most of it and speak rather good if I had to. But I'm not gonna waste money on watching Voyager episodes overdubbed with German speech. I find over-dubbing totally awful.
It might be funny being abroad and watch some movie I've seen before overdubbed with, let's say Slovak speech. But it's not funny in the long run.
So for obvious reasons, I won't buy this one.
The option is to buy directly from the US. But then transport costs and customs taxes had to be paid by me too. OK, if I was 100% sure that the DVDs would last for a couple of years, it would be worth it but with the current products.........
It will probably end with me doing costly business and then have the same problem again in two years or so.
What really annoys me with Paramount is that they have no dignity and no honor. They continue to spit out those lousy products over and over again and cheat their customers. They should think about their reputation.
I once worked in the music business and had a conversation with a member from a rather famous rock band. That member told me that "we do care about our fans and those who buy our records because they are paying our wages".
Paramount should think about who are paying their wages too.
Not to mention that the fans and buyers of theit products should star to react too. Is it only me who actually criticize their shady business?
