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Have you ever rented a DVD, popped it in the player, and then realized it either wasn?t going to play at all, or was skipping every few minutes? This is a fairly common occurrence when renting DVDs. Alera Technologies comes to the rescue, with its DVD/CD Disc Repair Plus ($30), a device that can salvage a disc even if it has deep scratches. We dug up some old DVDs and tried our best to ruin them, and then ran them through this unit. Could it really repair 99% of all scratched discs as its manufacturer claims?
The DVD/CD Disc Repair Plus is marketed as a motorized disc repair kit. In the package is a disc polishing unit that?s about the size of a Walkman CD player. The unit runs by AC power via an adapter that you plug into the wall. Placed inside the polishing unit are two round buffering devices that spin around, sanding and polishing your disc to its original luster. Also included in the kit are polishing heads with two types of fineness. The two pairs of yellow heads, called repairing heads, are fairly smooth, and are used for minor repairs. For major damage, there are two additional heads, called buffing units, that are similar to fine sandpaper. Then there?s the big gun included in the kit, which Alera calls the super buffing tool. You break that out only in the event of what is called ?Super Major Damage.?
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| The kit includes the motorized unit, seen here with the two yellow repairing heads installed, two extra repairing heads and two pink buffing heads. Also included is a polishing cloth and a heavy-duty super buffing tool, seen in the foreground. |
In our first test, we used a disc that was only mildly damaged, one that we had trouble playing a few nights before that had been received from NetFlix. If you?re NetFlix user, you?ve probably realized by now that even though the service offers tremendous convenience and has an excellent Web site, from time to time you?ll receive DVDs from the company that won?t play. However, these discs may have played okay for the previous renter, so their damage is probably not extensive. In our case, we used the procedure that Alera recommends for minor damage. That?s characterized by a scrambled screen, skips, a noisy or unstable signal or the inability to read the file. For this, the mildest of disc repair procedures is prescribed. That involves the yellow buffing heads, and a few drops of a slightly gritty substance that comes in a tube labeled ?repair protective solution.? It?s just a bit of aluminum oxide that serves as a very fine polishing substance. After installing these little yellow polishing heads into the motorized unit, which is a simple procedure, we put three drops of the protective solution on one of those scrubbers and then placed the DVD inside. Closing the lid and pushing the Repair button set the motorized unit into motion. The thing is fairly noisy, and sounds vaguely like a hand mixer, and after two minutes, it?s done its business. Popping open the unit, we placed the DVD in a player and it played perfectly. Hey, this thing works!
Next we chose an even more daunting challenge. Taking a DVD from my collection that I didn?t care to watch anymore, I brutally scraped a ballpoint pen in circles all over its playing surface. It?ll never be able to fix this, I thought. First sliding it into a DVD player, sure enough, it wasn?t even able to recognize it anymore. So I went through the entire Super Major damage procedure. I first used the super buffing tool, polishing the disc in a radial direction from center to edge. This procedure is not done by the motorized unit?you have to add your own elbow grease to fix this kind of damage. After that I placed it in the motorized unit, I used the rougher buffing heads, the ones Alera designates for use with the more radical disc polishing procedure. After two minutes worth of that, the buffing machine automatically stopped. For the next step, Alera recommends changing the buffing heads to the yellow buffers, and adding a little of that repair protective solution. After two more minutes of grinding away, I popped the DVD out and placed it into the player. Voilą! It played. It was almost miraculous the way this unit could repair the extensive damage I had done to that DVD. Wanting to take it to the limit, I severely gouged to the DVD in numerous places, and alas, after I ran it through the three repair steps again, only certain parts of the DVD could play.
So, there are limits to what the DVD/CD Disc Repair Plus is capable of doing. It's not able to repair damage done to the data layer of the disc. However, it can certainly come to your rescue when you have a certain rare DVD with a few scratches on it. The company?s claim of the product?s ability to repair 99% of all scratched discs is probably true, especially since most damaged discs won?t be deliberately ruined as badly as our worst-case scenario depicted. This product would also work well on a software CD or DVD that?s no longer playable?a situation with which those of you who have small children are probably familiar. In addition to disc repair, the unit is also capable of efficiently cleaning them as well.
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| There's also a disc cleaning kit included. |
If you?ve found yourself in a predicament where are you really want to watch a movie but the disc won?t play or is skipping, the Alera Technologies DVD/CD Disc Repair Plus is a must. Its $30 price will pay for itself in a short while. Highly recommended. 9.7 out of 10 stars.
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Related Sites: Digital Producer , Oceania , CEN - Consumer Electronics Net , CEN - DVD , CEN - Gadgets , CEN - Peripherals , Storage
Related Newsletter: Digital Media Net , DVD Viewpoint , CEN - Gadgets Newsletter , Review Seeker
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