I family member has a DVD player connected via composite video and when watching the movie Wolverine, the color simply disappears. Here are the strange variables:

-The DVD movie only exhibits this behavior in the Sony DVD player. Her computer plays the disc just fine.
-All other movies and the menu are in color on the DVD player.

So there are no bad cables, no encoding error on the disc, a good player, and a good TV. Any ideas? This is a new one for me.

Look on the front and see if they is a hard button labeled "progressive". I ran into something like this the other day.

Oops, missed " all other discs play fine"

Ok. When I first started out in this industry, I got stumped in a similar fashion. Customer had a marantz DVD player that would not play a certain DVD. They even went and bought a brand new copy of the disc to try. No dice. They were not concerned about it as every other DVD player fine and the problem movie played find in their other players. It was very disconcerting to me.

So after hours I searched and searched the internet looking for anything that would help. I called marantz tech. support and they were as puzzled as me. I finally found a list online somewhere that consisted of problematic dvds and how to determine if yours was one of them. Sure enough, the customer's DVD was on this list. There was a run of discs made that wouldnot play on certain machines. I believe there was a contact number where you could request a replacement DVD at no cost. I passed this info on to the customer who was still not worried about it, but was thankful that I went through the trouble to solve the puzzle.

Why would other discs work fine expect for this one. I saw the video she posted where the menu is in color and as soon as she hits play, the disc starts play in color and within .5 seconds, it switches to B/W.

Could it be a PAL disc?

Most be the case. As you mentioned, I really want to dig into the "why" but I don't think it's worth the time! Thanks

What the heck is this client going to do? Where will he find a new DVD Player with that new-fangled thing, composite video?

I know, right! When she posted the video, she called it a VCR so you can tell where her mind is at....

Although I'm guilty of saying "I'm going to tape a TV show." LOL

When I was in high school, a guy that took some form of drugs started tripping during class. He later said that he was sitting there and everything was normal, until he looked at the person sitting next to him. They were in black and white. Have you looked at the possibility of illegal narcotics?

We hear that all the time from technical people, as well as "taping." So here's the challenge -- what's an appropriate word? Don't say "record," because that means shellac, shellac on aluminum, wax, recording tape, film, magnetic tape... I think the Spanish word for this is similar to "engrave," so also actually inappropriate, but who can keep up?

Record doesn't have anything to do with the medium used. Writing a statement made by another person is 'recording' it. Writing your own thoughts is 'recording'. Saving a video or audio file on a computer IS a way of recording it.

The Spanish word is 'registrar' (the 'ar' suffix is used on words to mean, in this case, 'to register') but how it is used as a noun depends on the prefix, as shown in the translation link.

[Link: translate.google.com]

The reason the translation has anything to do with 'engrave' is that the word was coined when engraving was the only way to make a relatively permanent copy and the origin of 'record' goes back to the early 13th century, while 'engrave' is from the 15th century.

'record' is a perfectly cromulent word. Saying 'tape a show' when a digital recording system is used would only be correct if that system uses some kind of tape that stores the data in a digital format but if it uses anything else, e.g., HDD, flash memory, etc, it's wrong.