I hear ya.  There is one small pawn shop in my town. I was just curious once what titles, if any, that they would have. They only had about 30 DVDs but just looking at them it was obvious every one of them was nearly of unreadable quality.

I don't even understand why the pawn shop took them they were so bad.

When I first met my partner, he used to stack his CDs in a pile...no cases...just a pile of shiny silver disc! I nearly had a fit when I saw it.
What's worse is a lot of them were scratched and they jumped.

He honestly thought that you could eat off a CD and it wouldn't scratch to the point of being unplayable.

He obviously knows better know and is very careful with our DVDs and BDs.

I have certain DVD ( r's)  that skip even if there is a single finger print on it .....

Quoting OldMan56:

Quote:
Some people just don't care. The only discs that have any scratches on them are the ones I bought used. The ones I bought new even though they have been viewed still look as if they were just opened.

This... the only scratched discs in my collection is the used ones. But what is even worse is how people treat discs that they rent. You wouldn't believe how many discs I saw come back ruined when I was managing the local video store.

Quoting widescreenforever:

Quote:
I have certain DVD ( r's)  that skip even if there is a single finger print on it .....

Depending on the greasiness of your fingerprints this shouldn't be a problem for the error-correction of your player. So it's more likely that this isn't a problem of the disc(s) but that the mirrors (and/or lenses) of the Laser are dirty -> don't reflect enough light anymore and thereby are overloading the error-correction.

I only lend DVDs to one person, a friend for 47 years a fellow retired computer hardware engineer, he knows if he screws one up he buys it.

Tape was just as bad or worse. The trouble with tape, if people don't take care it you could not readily see it was bad and the stuff on the tape would transfer to your tape deck.

I have two JVC Super VHS tape decks, so I didn't want them messed up. So I only tried one tape and the quality was so bad, I never rented another one.

Because the store with the best LD selection was across town, due date was only a couple of days, I rented laser discs, about 5 at a time, the day they came out and would transfer to tape, take them back the next day. If I liked the movie, I'd buy it.

I occasionally play some of the first CDs and DVDs I bought and they still play as good as new.
I hae put about 9,000 songs form CDs on MY 2T Book, pop jazz and folk music to play while on the computer. Hell, I even have all the computers and they still work.

The LDs still play, but after watching HD it makes you wonder why you ever thought they were great.

The first CD player I bought had a problem trying to playing a set of Beethoven piano concertos. I tried three sets, and on every set a different concerto would not play. Finally, I found if I put match book cover under the right read corner it would work. Experience from working on the UNIVAC I. One of the tape handlers would hang up on rewind sometimes and take the 2.5 foot screw driver we used to remove chassis and hit the top screw on the first chassis and the tape would take off.