Burining DVD's?

What's going on with these DVDs and/or my DVD player?

• I got some DVDs from the library and the picture was all messed up. Kind of all smudged. It was the sort of thing that would be fixed by hitting the tracking button on a VCR. The weird thing is that three different sets of DVDs are like this, including a two DVD set and an entire season of a show (7 DVDs). But other DVDs play fine. The truly perplexing thing is that I got these DVDs at different times and they came from different libraries. I've been getting DVDs from the library for ages and never had this problem before. And now three different sets of DVDs are unwatchable. There don't seem to be scratches or smudges on the DVDs. What could be causing this?

• Answer:

  OK I wasn't going to venture an answer here but after reading the additional details and the VCR I do need to say something. What is meant by "the connection between the DVD player and the VCR"? Do you have the DVD player hooked up to the VCR and then to the TV (the DVD player going through the VCR before ending up at the TV? If so, try this: take the DVD player and hook it up directly to the TV and I bet your troubles all go away. If this isn't the way things are hooked up then you need to provide more info. If this ends up being whats wrong it is because you cannot run the DVD signal through a VCR and then to the TV. I has to do with macrovision encoding on the DVD and the macrovision copy protection built into the VCR. addendum. Yes it is most likely the VCR. It must have been a much older VCR that you had before that did not have macrovision copy protection built into it. This article mentions it: http://hometheater.about.com/cs/dvdlaserdisc/a/aadvdrfmoda.htm The RF Modulator - DVD Player Connection Option Many of you have written me that you have tried to connect your DVD player into your VCR and then use the VCR to pass the signal to your TV, but have experienced very poor picture quality in doing this. The reason that a DVD player cannot be connected to a TV in this fashion is due to the fact that DVDs are encoded with anti-copy technology that interferes with the VCR's circuitry. That is why you cannot make a copy of a DVD onto a VCR tape successfully. However, this also prevents you from using the VCR as a "conduit" to pass a DVD signal through to the TV.