Any fine (and by fine I mean extremely tiny grit) polish could theoretically polish out a scratch.

I would try a product called Mirror Glaze. It is a fine polish that should work. I have never tried to polish out a scratch on a disc, but I have taken badly scratched plexiglass and sanded it with 150 grit, 300 grit, 600 grit, 1000 grit, white polishing compound then Mirror Glaze and gotten it clear again. On a DVD your mileage may vary, but I guess if the disc is unplayable, you can't hurt it.

I would be very hesitant about using any kind of abrasive on the data side of a DVD.

The tiny, superficial little marks that any DVD will get over time from normal playing you don't have to worry about.  They are small enough that they won't interfere with the focus of the laser beam reading the disc.  These scratches generally don't penetrate the outer layer surface protection applied at the factory.

Deeper scratches that affect playback do so because they cause the laser to lose focus and not be able to read the bits encoded on the disc.  Using any kind of abrasive may remove these or smooth them out, but it also will damage the protective coating applied to the disc surface.

There are products on the market that solve the problem by filling in the scratches with a completely transparent liquid that sets in place without doing further surface damage.  Same sort of thing that is available for fixing scratches in eyeglass lenses.  That's the best way to go.

I have the 'Skip Dr' device and can confirm it does work and work well.

One of the B5 sets I ordered from R1-land arrived with a rattler.  It was so badly scratched that even my (very tolerant built-like-a-tank) Sony 7700 refused to play it.  The thought of having to send the disc back to Canada for replacement wasn't pleasant so I invested in the above.
I followed the instructions and minutes later had a fully-playable disc.

HTH!

Quoting jgilligan:

Quote:
Quoting Iken:

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I have the 'Skip Dr' device and can confirm it does work and work well.

One of the B5 sets I ordered from R1-land arrived with a rattler.  It was so badly scratched that even my (very tolerant built-like-a-tank) Sony 7700 refused to play it.  The thought of having to send the disc back to Canada for replacement wasn't pleasant so I invested in the above.
I followed the instructions and minutes later had a fully-playable disc.

HTH!

I've got one of those, and I've had hit and miss results with it.  Most of the time it seems to work very well, but I've gotten some CD's from our public library that have been in pretty bad condition... It has almost always improved them, but some were scratched beyond anything I could do to help them.

To quote an old movie title:  They shoot horses, don't they?

Quoting Rifter:

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Quoting jgilligan:

Quote:
Quoting Iken:

Quote:
I have the 'Skip Dr' device and can confirm it does work and work well.

One of the B5 sets I ordered from R1-land arrived with a rattler.  It was so badly scratched that even my (very tolerant built-like-a-tank) Sony 7700 refused to play it.  The thought of having to send the disc back to Canada for replacement wasn't pleasant so I invested in the above.
I followed the instructions and minutes later had a fully-playable disc.

HTH!

I've got one of those, and I've had hit and miss results with it.  Most of the time it seems to work very well, but I've gotten some CD's from our public library that have been in pretty bad condition... It has almost always improved them, but some were scratched beyond anything I could do to help them.

To quote an old movie title:  They shoot horses, don't they?

There have been a few CD's that I've gotten from the library that look like someone tried to shoot them!

But hey, when you get to use them for free, I guess you don't get to complain too much.

Quoting jgilligan:

Quote:
I've got one of those, and I've had hit and miss results with it.  Most of the time it seems to work very well, but I've gotten some CD's from our public library that have been in pretty bad condition... It has almost always improved them, but some were scratched beyond anything I could do to help them.

To be fair, I don't think any product (at least consumer-based) can repair deep gouges in CD/DVD discs.  The point of 'Skip Dr.' and others of that ilk (as I understand it) is to remove a microscopically-thin layer of the substrate to improve the laser's ability to focus onto the relevant reflective layer, thus 'read' the disc pits/troughs.
A heavy gouge will deflect the laser beam so much, even after a 'repair', that even the best error-correction algorithm is useless and a replacement is the only alternative (assuming the blasted title isn't OOP   )

As you say, though, for surface scratches, even major ones, it's extremely effective.

Regards,

I have tried to ideas mentioned on another site Pledge & Rain-X. I can report neither of these worked. At this point I will try the AnyDVD suggested above, and also i have a friend who is a mechanic at American Airlines and he has a product they use to repair scratches on cockpit windows. If neither of these work the cost of a replacement DVD is about the price of a SkipDr, and other products.

Sometimes I think I make things harder than they need to be!

Thanks to all who made suggestions.

Bobb

I tried AnyDVD on a scratched disc to try to make a backup of it. Unfortunatley I was not able to get it to read past the damage. This is on the Cirque De Soleil Solstrom Box set. I lent it to my brother and it became a coaster at his house. I will try the skip dr thing and then I will have to see about purchasing another copy if it does not work. I tried Mcguires scratch remover as well and to no avail it did not buff out the scratch which is highly visible. so new rule in my house is no more lending original DVD's. Live and learn.

Quoting JonM:

Quote:
AnyDVD now has an extra very simple utility to rip a DVD to the hard drive. It mentions, sort of in passing, that it will "repair broken DVDs" while doing so. I was sceptical because while I always thought that in theory, a copier should have a better chance of bypassing read errors, in practice it never worked. But this does and I recommend trying it.

I bought an ex-rental Apollo 13 and the disc was probably in the worst condition I've seen; looked like it had been run over! Plus there was a crack right through the centre ring. One player just spat it out, another proudly offered the menu, then growled, hissed and farted for two minutes before giving up.

I ripped it, made a new copy, and it plays perfect.