Cleaning Scratched DVDs

[Daniel]

Anyone ever had any luck cleaning scratched DVDs that won't play? I'm looking for a low-cost solution to clean a few Ronin Warriors/Samurai Troopers DVDs of mine that have playback problems (those DVDs tend to be a bit on the expensive side)...

[_D_]

Cheapest is to have a video store professionally resurface them. The ones here charge a couple bucks a disc. Blockbuster (before they went bust) used to have them but I've found a couple other places that have the same equipment. Sure better than trying to use waxes, etc. that don't really work well...

[greg]

Yeah, I've read stories of even boiling DVDs and rubbing them with peanut butter. I had a DVD that stopped working after my friend borrowed it. It was an MST3K episode, and my friend takes super good care of his crap and we couldn't even see a scratch that looked like it would even affect playback. I took it to a video game store and they had some sort of machine that ground the surface and made it new again. It looked and worked as good as new after that.

[usamimi]

If you can find a place that sells plastic polish, I've heard it works great for that kind of thing. But if you just have one disc that needs to be resurfaced, I'd just take it somewhere. Most places like video game stores or places that sell used DVDs will offer it for like $2 or less a disc. We have a locally owned video game place I like to go to, sometimes the guy there will do it for free for us because we're loyal customers.

[Heibi]

I had one of my Votoms DVDs that I bought on Amazon used not playing in a certain area. I used DVdDrx device I bought at Best Buy. It's a battery operated and comes with two bottles,1 cleaner and 1 skip fix. After I did that it worked fine.

[Animusubi]

I've heard some of the devices (like Heibi mentioned) work good if you know how to use them properly. I've also heard of bad ones too, so probably good to look it up before purchasing it.

But yes, the best method is to find a place with an actual disc cleaning machine (they are big and beefy) who will do it for a couple dollars. I used to work at a game store that had such a machine and used it all the time, worked wonders.