In
the News
October 2, 2006
  
An industrial-strength
way to clean and repair the DVDs
I had just tucked into one of my favorite Star Trek
episodes recently when William Shatner's face, his lips
pursed, froze on the screen. Pixel by pixel, the picture
crumbled before my eyes.
When I inspected the DVD, it looked as if someone had
used it as a dinner plate.
There's more than one way to fix a scratched and filthy
DVD or CD. I use a cheap mechanical device that fills
scratches with a drop of waxy fluid and a few turns
of a round brush. But if you have a large library of
discs and want to keep them in top shape, you may want
something a more industrial-strength.
The Cadillac of disc cleaners has got to be the Skip-Away,
from Webster-based VenMill Industries Inc.
(The website is www.venmill.com.)
Based on a technology used by television operations
divisions and libraries to maintain their disc collections,
the Skip-Away uses dry processes to clean and repair
DVDs and CDs. The AC-powered Skip-Away heats the plastic
discs enough to make just a few microns at the top of
their surfaces malleable and fixable.
VenMill plans to release the $250 device (which includes
two cartridges that must be replaced periodically) in
time for Christmas. The three pound Skip-Away comes
in several colors and has a boom box carrying handle.
It will clean and repair HD DVDs. But it can't fix scratches
on the specially coated Blu-ray Discs, which are the
high-definition standard competing with HD DVD.
Click
here to download a pdf version.
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