Some DVD's don't play - why?

Some background information:
- have a Onkyo DV-CP702 6-disk DVD changer
- use the S-Video output signal from the changer
- Parental Lock is confirmed "Off"
- TV shape is confirmed "4:3 Letter box" and my TV is 4:3 -
should work on anything
- belong to 2-a-month Netflix - just standard DVD's

Problem: of the approx. 32 DVD's that Netflix has sent us, three
have refused to play. Specifically, all of the junk at the front of
the disk plays and the menu comes up with the "play" selection. When
I select play, the screen goes blank. Before and after the blanking
of the screen, the "Display" button works. After the blanking, it
indicates that it is "playing" but the run time counter registers 0.
Before tonight, the only way I had found to get out of there was to
depower and repower the changer.

Tonight, I discovered that, with the blank screen, I could hit
the "Next" button and it would skip 5 minutes into the movie and start
playing normally. Then, I could hold down the "Fast Reverse" button
and back up to very near the beginning (I chickened out at 50 seconds
from the beginning), hit "Play" and I was on my way into the movie.

This is a terrible way to have to start a DVD player! Anybody
have any ideas as to my problem? Again, this has only happened on
three disks (Titles, actually, Netflix replaced the first one that did
this and it didn't work either). I have not had any problems with the
changer on the other 29 or so disks. The DVD tonight was "The Queen"
from Miramax. I don't remember the other two titles.

On May 1, 7:00 pm, wrote:
Some background information:
- have a Onkyo DV-CP702 6-disk DVD changer
- use the S-Video output signal from the changer
- Parental Lock is confirmed "Off"
- TV shape is confirmed "4:3 Letter box" and my TV is 4:3 -
should work on anything
- belong to 2-a-month Netflix - just standard DVD's

Problem: of the approx. 32 DVD's that Netflix has sent us, three
have refused to play. Specifically, all of the junk at the front of
the disk plays and the menu comes up with the "play" selection. When
I select play, the screen goes blank. Before and after the blanking
of the screen, the "Display" button works. After the blanking, it
indicates that it is "playing" but the run time counter registers 0.
Before tonight, the only way I had found to get out of there was to
depower and repower the changer.

Tonight, I discovered that, with the blank screen, I could hit
the "Next" button and it would skip 5 minutes into the movie and start
playing normally. Then, I could hold down the "Fast Reverse" button
and back up to very near the beginning (I chickened out at 50 seconds
from the beginning), hit "Play" and I was on my way into the movie.

This is a terrible way to have to start a DVD player! Anybody
have any ideas as to my problem? Again, this has only happened on
three disks (Titles, actually, Netflix replaced the first one that did
this and it didn't work either). I have not had any problems with the
changer on the other 29 or so disks. The DVD tonight was "The Queen"
from Miramax. I don't remember the other two titles.

this problem is well known, its not the TV, its the DVD player.
the problem is the alignment of many DVDs varies slightly,
and the Onkyo is not recognizing some variation in alignment.
Onkyo factory service should be able to calibrate the alignment,
there is a special alignment disk and test equipment to do this.
take heart, this happens frequently. the alignment of many players
has been known to be slightly off, even right out of the box from
the factory, and its not just Onkyo. I have seen panasonic, sanyo,
pioneer, sony, etc... players all with the same problem.
to compound this, mass produced DVDs are made without the
quality control they deserve. the burners are out of alignment too.
this explains why two copies of the same movie may not play.
but on another player, they work fine.
another thing to watch for is scratches on the DVD surface,
even slightly scratched disks may not play on some players.
the alignment is both mechanical and electronic adjustments.
i hope your Onkyo is under warranty.
you can buy a disk polisher machine for about $30-40 that
cleans and removes the minor scratches. this has solved many
a disk player problem, but will not cure them all.
observation is that the more expensive players are more
sensitive to minor alignment variation and the cheaper players
are less prone to malfunctions- go figure.