problems with premixes in lic and drillmax

K

kristieschultz

Cathlete
I have had no problems at all with any of the dvd until today when I did premixes in drillmax and then lic. The drillmax 41 minute premix got thru the warmup and then went to a screen saying get ready for drills then it went black and just skipped to the screen saying get ready for stretch. When I did the lic upper body premix I skipped thru the warmup because I didnt want to do it and started with shoulder lat raises which was fine, but then when it got to the bicep part it did the same thing, it went black and skipped all the way to the pushups on the step and skipped over the bicep part entirely. I have a sony player which I just purchased a couple of weeks ago and have had no problems at all with any dvd's until today so I'm not sure what is going on. has anyone else had this problem?
 
Some players will have problems with premixes. A premix is not recorded video. They are just small computer scripts that tell your DVD players laser what to play next. As long as the normal program plays okay then it is not possible to have a defective premix. I think if you try the discs on other players it will play just fine.
 
>Some players will have problems with premixes. A premix is
>not recorded video. They are just small computer scripts that
>tell your DVD players laser what to play next. As long as the
>normal program plays okay then it is not possible to have a
>defective premix. I think if you try the discs on other
>players it will play just fine.

I don't understand this. Another workout by another instructor had a "defective" premix and that instructor replaced that workout and it is fine. Every other premix and the workout played fine but one premix did not work properly. I know you can't comment on another workout by another instructor, but it was obvious that the premix was defective or something was. I'd like to know, because several instructors now, offer premixes on their workouts and don't seem to have the problems that your DVD's have. I think if this was addressed clearly, you would save a lot of problems for yourself and your customers. I love my Cathe workouts, but have seen a rise in complaints but the only solution offered is to clean the DVD's or to try other DVD players. I only have one DVD player that is in my workout area, so it wouldn't matter to me, at all, if it didn't play in my workout area but played in my DVD player upstairs. That would not solve my problem. I personally, have never had a problem with any of your DVD's, but I'm begining to fear that one day, if I do, I'm going to get the same old response and that just wouldn't keep me a satisfied customer. Why do your DVD's seem to have so many problems when other's do not? And why not just replace her DVD? Will you replace the customer's DVD if she continues to have problems? I'm not talking about the mass replacement you had to do recently, things happen, but there have been many isolated instances brought up in the past and on other fitness boards and I want to know that my DVD's would be replaced if they were not playing correctly on my DVD player. I was hesitant to post here, because of the loyal fan base, of which I consider myself to be a part of, but I did not want to post this on another fitness site, which often turns to bashing. I'd really like you to clarify this issue. Thanks for listening!
Angela
 
Thanks Angela for asking this. I've had the same questions about why there are problems with Cathe's DVDs and not other instructors. I do have a problem with one of my replacement DVDs and have been told that it's just the layer change, but I don't think that's what it is and I've just learned to live with it. It freezes in two different places and affects the workout.

Erica
 
I’ll try my best to explain. Since a premix is just a very small computer script that takes up a very tiny small spec on a disc and because DVD disc have redundant data locations it is nearly impossible for just the main data location and the redundant location to be damaged without also causing a problem elsewhere. In all of the years that we have been selling DVD’s I don’t think we have ever seen a case where a replacement DVD solved a customers problem of a premix not working when no other problems were reported on the disc. In the post that I responded to, the customer had a problem with 2 premixes on 2 different discs.
We’ve been selling and producing fitness DVD’s longer than just about anyone. Through the years we have learned many things from thousands of customer support requests. For example: You mention that we always ask customers to try cleaning their disc and also to test on another player. This is true and is done not to harass a customer, but because in a very large percentage of cases cleaning a disc solves the customer’s problem. As an example, several times a year we will get a customer who sends us back multiple discs that they have had for a while claiming that they are now having problems viewing them. When we examine the discs we see they’re covered with fingerprints and simply clean them, test them and send them right back to the customer. If the customer would have only followed our instructions of first trying to clean the disc they would have been saved the expense and trouble of sending the disc back. As for testing on another player, this is the only way to really determine if a disc is the problem or if it could be the player. This is simple request that we kindly ask customers to do whenever possible and is not a requirement. For the DVD to play properly both the disc and the player must be basically defect free. There is actually more things that can go wrong with a player than a DVD disc. Again, through the years we have had many customers who thought they had a defective DVD only to find that after they purchased a laser cleaning kit their problems disappeared. I think asking a customer to do these two simple requests whenever possible is not only reasonable, but makes sense. It is many times more costly to have a customer service rep spend time trying to solve a problem than it is to just send a replacement disc. Sending a replacement disc without asking any questions is the easiest solution, but it is not the wisest as the DVD will not work if the problem is player related. It is simply not true that the only solution we offer is to tell the customer to clean the DVD's or to try other DVD players. This is merely the first question we kindly ask a customer. There are thousands of customers on this forum that have received replacemnt videos, DVDs and steps during the last 18 years we have been in business.

As for our discs having a high defect rate this is simply not true. Our DVD’s are now replicated by SONY and their DVD plant is one of the best in the world. I don’t know another company that does a better job. You need to realize we’re one of the top online sellers of fitness DVD’s. This means that since we sell more DVD’s we will have more problems. As an example, if you have a 1% defect rate and only sell 1000 DVD’s (this a typical amount for many online instructors) you would only have 10 defective DVD’s. But if you sell 100,000 DVD’s you would have 1000 defective discs. I will admit that we probably have a slightly higher preship defect rate than most companies, but this is not because of quality control problems, but because we add more features to our DVD’s than any other company. The more features you add to a DVD the more chances you will have a compatibility problem. As an analogy I know a lot people who never fumbled a ball in a football game, they also never carried the ball or scored a touchdown. If we were to eliminate dual layered disc, premixes, music louder and reduce our chapter points our defect rate would be very close to zero. But would the cost of eliminating all of these benefits be worth reducing our defect rate by just a small percentage? As you have mentioned you have not had any problems, and this is the case of the vast majority of our customers.
I realize there are some other instructors that are now using premixes, but most are using the same company that we use and taught how to make a premix. They too will and do have DVD player compatibility problems. There is simply no way to avoid this. In fact there is no such thing as a DVD that will play perfectly on every DVD player that has been made. The only difference between them and us is we probably sell a lot more product and have a much larger online community. This of course means more reported problems.
 
SNM, I think you should copy your explanation and post it as a sticky at the top of this page. I think a lot of people will appreciate this lengthy response, and it will answer questions that tend to come up a lot.
Thank you for taking the time to explain the issue.

Wendy
 
I really do appreciate the response. But, if my DVD quit playing on my workout DVD player and it worked fine on another player, it would be worthless to me, in that I could not use it where it was most needed. I understand your very high sales rate, but one has to admit, that if the other instructor with her "defective" premix, that sent out the replacement that plays fine on the same DVD player, the problem was resolved in a manner that left the customer 100% satisfied. Will you replace or offer a refund for a DVD that does not work after the customer cleans it or that does not work in the DVD player in the workout area when every other DVD the customer has works in that DVD player? I did not mean to assume that you ONLY asked the customer to clean or try on other players. Those are just the responses that get the most attention and are discussed the most on other fitness sites. If you follow up with a replacement or refund then I am satisfied. Agian, even with all the new instructors popping up, Cathe is still the BEST out there. I LOVE all my Cathe workouts and they have made a HUGE difference in my quality of life! Again, thanks for taking the time to respond in such great detail! :)
Angela
 
I'm going to try them in another player and see what happens. I'll also try to clean them. I can always return this player because I still have the receipt. thanks.
 
The short answer is yes. We send out replacement DVD's every day to people where cleaning does not work. We even replace for free discs that children thought were really cool Frisbees. As many of you are aware we just got through sending tens of thousands of replacement DVD’s at our expense when we found a defect in the product. This even included replacing the free gift DVD. We realize that cleaning will not work for the majority of people with a problem, but it will work for a significant number of customers. Again, this is only first question we ask when a customer first reports a problem.
As for your premix example you sited it is impossible to refute since I nor do you have any direct knowledge of the problem. What you read on a forum may or may not have anything to do with the truth. Still, I can give you two possible reasons why a replacement worked though: #1. There was no problem to begin with. The player just needed to be rebooted (powered off and then back on). We have had numerous customers through the years who reported a problem only to call back and say that the problem went away when they turned their player back on. #2 The disc had a fingerprint at a critical location and just need to be cleaned. In this case a replacement disc will work, but so will cleaning the original disc.
We answered over 134,000 customer service calls and emails last year and I think most were happy with the result. We also run one of the largest online fitness forums and if customers have a problem our dirty laundry is there for everyone to see.
:)
 
Thanks!

Thanks, I wasn't trying to stir anything up. I didn't read about the defective premix on the forum, I experienced it myself. I wouldn't just bring up something from a forum and quote it as nothing but the truth or anything. There was another instance of someone I knew from years on the forums that got me concerned. I've always chimed in on other threads/forums that I have no doubt Cathe.com would always resolve the situation to the customer's satisfaction and you have just confirmed that you do/will. I've also always said that instead of posting gripes on another forum the poster should go directly to cathe.com and come right out and ask. Thanks!
Angela
 
I, too, had the same exact problem with the Drill max premix. I admit my Dvd player is pretty low quality. My question is are there any Dvd players anyone would recommend that don't have these problems and aren't too expensive?(I am saving my money for more Cathe Dvds!!!:7) I would hate to upgrade and still have this problem!!!Thanks, Nancy~~~~
 
LIke I said I just bought this one. It is a brand new sony, and I'm so surprised this is happening because I had no other problems up until now. I don't know if the quality of the player really matters at this piont. Maybe Chris can answer that.
 
The quality of the player doesn't really seem to matter. In your case you have a SONY player and this is the same company we use to replicate our discs. Premixes are something very few companies use. Thus, companies that have a slight problem with the firmware that runs their player are unlikely to know about the flaw because very few disc sold utilize this feature.
I know customers sometimes think we can do something on our end, but there really is nothing we can change. Making a premix is very simple and idiot proof. All you do is drag and drop the chapters in the order you want them to play into a field box. The only mistake a human can make is to drag them in the wrong order or to forget to add a chapter point. The software creates the script and code and this can’t be changed or edited by us even if we wanted to.
So why do premixes work fine on some players and not on others? Well, as an analogy let’s compare a premix to a web page. If you look at our home page on our website on 10 different computers you will find that our home page looks slightly different on each computer monitor. How our home page looks on your computer will depend on your operating system, security settings, screen resolution, browser type and version, screen fonts and a host of other variables. In most cases everything will look fairly similar on all systems, but in a few cases certain things may not show correctly or even play at all. Your DVD player is really just a computer and for the same reason a web page displays differently or has a problem, so will your DVD. As an example, Premix number 6 on Supersets will not play at all on my “Go Video” player . Every other premix on the disc will play just fine, but not premix #6. In fact, this is the only premix I have ever had a problem with on my “Go Video” player. Since this is the main player I use to test when authoring I at first thought there was a problem with the authoring and had Telenium redo the test master three times. Each time I got the same result, premix #6 would not play. So off to the electronics store I went and tested the disc on every player they had in the store. On every player Best Buy had premix #6 played just fine. It was only my player that it wouldn’t play on. We will never know why?
We do seem to have the most problems with SONY players these days even though we use them to replicate our disc. Toshiba use to be the brand of players that gave us the most reported problems, but a few years ago we noticed a spike in problems with SONY players with playing premixes. This may be because SONY just sells more players or it could be some minor code change to their firmware that they made a few years ago that is causing a compatibility problem with the authoring software we currently use. But don’t be too alarmed it only seems to be a problem with a small percentage of their players
 
I like technology. It does some really great things for us, but sometimes it can be a real you know what. Thanks. I'll let you know what I figure out.
 
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