So there's a certain table near the Sala Daeng BTS that is about the only place in BKK where I've been able to find foreign/artsy/classic DVDs as opposed to the cam-recorded Hollywood blockbusters that every other DVD seller here specializes in (ooo, Navy Seals!). The problem is, about half of the DVD's I've bought there won't play on my DVD player.

Previously I had a portable player, a computer and a PS2, none of which were fantastic for playing DVDs. I recently bought a dedicated stand alone player that is meant to play just about everything under the sun and it has played a lot of discs my other players would just spit out, however, there are still a few discs that it refuses to even recognize. Specifically the discs it won't play are completely white on the label side without any writing or anything and a blue-ish color on the data side. The most I can get it to do is recognize these discs as CD-ROMs and even then it doesn't always do that.

So my question is- is this some format that my player doesn't recognize or are they just selling poorly burned discs? Anybody else had a similar experience?

Bonus question: know any other places to get non-mainstream flicks (that work)?

Since these disks are probably just mass copied from PCs and not verified afterward good chance they are just bad. One way to check them is to download VLC media player for your PC and see if it can play them. I find this player to play just about anything I can throw at it. If it does you may need to rip the CDs and rewrite them to another blank after verifying the rip (convert if necessary).

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Oh, believe me, I would use VLC to play the disc if the computer would even recognize that I had inserted a disc into the drive. I guess that means that the discs are bad burns and won't play in anything, anywhere?

Is the dvd drive in your computer compatible for all dvd formats? DVD +/-DVR ?

I am pretty sure you are getting bad discs. When I could not play discs bought by a street vendor I took them back and asked him nicely to change them, and he did. Worth a try if you go there anyways.

Is the dvd drive in your computer compatible for all dvd formats? DVD +/-DVR ?

I'm sure that this is the problem.

I recently bought a dedicated stand alone player that is meant to play just about everything under the sun and it has played a lot of discs my other players would just spit out, however, there are still a few discs that it refuses to even recognize. Specifically the discs it won't play are completely white on the label side without any writing or anything and a blue-ish color on the data side. The most I can get it to do is recognize these discs as CD-ROMs and even then it doesn't always do that.

So my question is- is this some format that my player doesn't recognize or are they just selling poorly burned discs? Anybody else had a similar experience?

It appears both his computer optical disc drive and his standalone DVD player refuses these discs. Does it not seem more likely that the problem is bad disc quality and not the DVD formats supported by the individual players?

Either way, it is not very difficult to check, just look at the documentation for the standalone player to see what type of discs it supports.