You’ve put in your favorite CD or DVD, and the stupid thing just won’t play! It skips, it freezes, it pixelates into pretty colors, or the player spits it out and declares “Bad Disc!” Your heart was set on that, and now you’re out of luck and your kids are getting cranky.
Don’t despair! The solution is often very simple. By far, the most common, annoying, easily fixable problem with disc materials is FINGERPRINTS. Turn it over and look at the non-label side. It should look like a mirror. Are there fingerprints? Is coffee spilled on it? Or maple syrup (that’s happened)? CLEAN THE DISC.
“But it’s a library disc!” you say. “If I damage it, they’ll charge me!” Don’t worry. While discs are fragile, they’re more durable than you think. Some of our discs have been used more than 150 times and still play fine. CDs and DVDs are made from polycarbonate, with a layer of foil (gold or aluminum) protected by a layer of lacquer. That’s the same plastic as your eyeglasses! General rule is, if it’s safe for your eyeglasses, it’s perfectly safe for a disc. You can clean them with eyeglass cleaner, water, hand sanitizer, baby wipes, even liquid dish soap, but *make sure you clean them with a liquid*. You can even rinse them under the tap if you must. To dry them, you can use a glass-cleaning cloth, a clean piece of flannel, or in a pinch, a clean cotton dishcloth or Tshirt.
DON’T: rub the mark with something dry, use a paper towel, newspaper, or rough cloth. All these things will leave fine scratches on the polycarbonate. If the laser can’t penetrate the polycarbonate layer, it can’t read your disc. You can clean them with Windex or window cleaner, but repeated exposure to the ammonia in them can eventually dull and damage your disc. Don’t run them through the dishwasher.
Clean the disc, try it again. Audio CDs (music or audiobooks) are very forgiving. They can look scratched and still play fine. Sometimes it’s the player: what plays perfectly in your computer or your cd player won’t play right in your car. DVDs, with their video component, are much fussier, and Blu-rays the fussiest of all. If it still won’t play right, bring it back, but stick a note on it or tell us, and we’ll give it a more thorough diagnostic. Be especially careful with those awful double-sided DVDs – always hold them from the very edge, or you’ll be cleaning one side while dirtying the other.
With a little polish and a little luck, you’ll be singing along again in no time!
You may not know his name, but chances are you know his face. James Cromwell is one of those lucky actors who never seems to want for work, with more than 163 film and television credits to his name. At 6′ 7″, he is the tallest actor ever nominated for an Oscar. Born in 1940, educated at Middlebury College and Cal Tech, Cromwell has been cropping up everywhere since the early 1970’s, and is still going strong. A staunch vegetarian, he was once arrested for protesting a Wendy’s in Virginia. Total Film ranked him 56th of the Top 100 Greatest Movie Villains for his role as Captain Dudley Smith in L.A. Confidential, which many people think he should have won an Oscar for. Whether you remember him as Farmer Hoggett in Babe (his Oscar nomination), Zephraim Cochrane in Star Trek: First Contact, or Archie Bunker’s loading d0ck buddy Stretch Cunningham in All in the Family (yes, that was James Cromwell), you’ve probably seen his work. Whether funny, serious, or villainous is your style, get that popcorn going, sit back, and check out some of these great Cromwell performances!
The Cheshire Library Blog 