lol...sounds like someone over there has a crummy DVD player...here's an idea though: insert the discs and open them and look inside the VIDEO_TS folder, and see if there are .vob files in there that actually have size (ie, greater than about 100MB). if not, he did try to screw you, if so, he's prolly got a crappy burner/burned to junky media at 30x+ while playing a fullscreen game, listening to music, watching a movie and checking email

anyways, sorry to hear ya got screwed...

cheers, calvin