Defective original discs

[Webslinger]

This question is mostly directed to matthew.

As we both know, bad original discs are becoming more common, even directly out of shrinkwrap. The discs may look fine, but they aren't fine in these cases. With dvd movies and Blu-rays, discs may even play fine and be defective. Similarly, the same thing can happen with game cds.

What happens when the original disc is actually defective when using Game Jackal? People maybe jumping up and down claiming that Game Jackal doesn't work with a specific game when the problem may be the disc is defective, no? That issue certainly isn't Game Jackal's fault, and given the thousands of situations I've dealt with in the Anydvd forums, the fact is most people are too stubborn (or worse, frankly) to accept the fact that they have a bad original disc.

That situation is pretty hard to diagnose since a lot of copy protections cough up bad sector reads anyway under normal circumstances. Would it be impossible for Game Jackal to cough up an error message stating, "Your disc may be defective. Try replacing it"?

The reason I'm asking is due to your response here: http://forum.slysoft.com/showpost.php?p=186886&postcount=8

 

[matthew]

Ah... excellent question.

Well this is something we are going to look at in the release after next (v3.2.0.6 is close to being released). You are right that errors on the CD/DVD can cause a profile to fail (acuse GJ will capture those errors). What we are planning to do is improve the scanning when profiling.

 

[Webslinger]

Neat

O.k., thank you

 

[cybmole]

if an original disc is defective then presumably the game would not install & play correctly when disc is used normally i.e. problem should become apparent before any GJ profiling is attempted ?

 

[Webslinger]

if an original disc is defective then presumably the game would not install & play correctly when disc is used normally

Not necessarily

 

[Webslinger]

if an original disc is defective then presumably the game would not install

No

It is possible to have an area of a disc that's defective that's not covered by the file system being used.

& play correctly & play correctly when disc is used normally i.e. problem should become apparent before any GJ profiling is attempted ?

I have a pretty badly scratched up older securom protected disc (someone's kid came over and wrecked my disc). I can install and play off of it fine (well, sometimes, I need to try more than once). I cannot use any program to create a working image or profile. And I'm certain the problem is due to the disc damage.

 

[matthew]

if an original disc is defective then presumably the game would not install & play correctly when disc is used normally i.e. problem should become apparent before any GJ profiling is attempted ?

Once again Webslinger is on the money.

The reason for this is the way the way the disc is read.
When running a game from the cd... the game will make many attempts to read bad sectors before giving up. GJ does not do this when creating a profile (it basically gives up on the sector straight away). What we are doing in the next version if to make the capture process more robust in this respect.

 

[cybmole]

sorry but I still have a problem with this - if a game works fine with original CD/DVD in drive but does not profile Ok in GJ, then no reasonable court would construe that as "defective".

the fault is with GJ's lack of tolerance, not with the game publisher
- a consumer would have no grounds for returning the original media as "defective" since it does exaclty what is says on the box i.e. plays the game every time when inserted in the Dvd drive!

 

[Webslinger]

sorry but I still have a problem with this - if a game works fine with original CD/DVD in drive but does not profile Ok in GJ, then no reasonable court would construe that as "defective".

Then the "reasonable court" is clueless. If I need x>1 number of read retries before a game disc plays, something is wrong--either with my disc or my drive.

the fault is with GJ's lack of tolerance, not with the game publisher
- a consumer would have no grounds for returning the original media as "defective" since it does exaclty what is says on the box i.e. plays the game every time when inserted in the Dvd drive!

No (and in my case it's not "every" time either with that game cd).

That's like saying simply because a dvd-video disc plays fine, it is fine. That's simply not true: http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=11981. The reason for that is completely different from games, however.

 

[Frank]

Keep it simple

The easiest and most painless way to see this game profiling thing vs. playing the original is:

PLAY is not READ, period.

Windows, your drive, its firmware and the using hardware do not give a twit about bad images, missing audio pieces, pixeling, etc. when you "play" the disc, be it game or DVD. There is no "control" over the flow of data to you, the user. However, as soon as some program uses the Windows rules for file transfer, including block-for-block redundancy, etc. that is a whole different ball game. Educating a judge in some court about the technical differences between playing a disc and reading a disc would be an interesting challenge. I see this as the difference between dumping a load of rocks off a truck and landing a plane at night in a snowstorm.