I did think that some copywriting stuff could be at work but i thought i was being paranoid!

To be honest It's been happening a lot even before I flashed the drive its just becoming more usual. when i'm really lucky i'll boot up the laptop with a problem disk in and it'll work fine! i'm more inclined to think its dirty lens antics because its occuring to lots of my dvd's.

Also there's no TV out (dug a nice hole in the back where i thought the s-video socket would be but it was empty! d'oh!) hmm! i'll give cleaning a go and see what happens. Thank you!