Do those DVD polishing things really work?

[SoupDragon]

The ones which "repair" scratched game disks and DVDs etc.

Thanks.

In my experience, no.

Yes, that's my gut feeling too.

Unfortunately.

Bloody Band Hero

Depends on how deep the scratches are, all they do is melt the top surface off with isopropanol, of course you can only do that a few times (I think it's around 5-7) before you melt away all the data tracks on the thing rendering it a coaster.

The big fancy one at the second hand gaming shop does, but the nice man in there told me it cost him £180

I choose to just pay him £2 to fix all the kid's games instead of buying my own.

Hmmm. I wonder if any of the local game shops do it...

Blockbusters will do it for a few quid.

My dh swears by t-cut (yes, the car polish). Apparently it polishes the scratches off, allowing the disks to be read.

He's successfully treated quite a few Xbox discs that ds and dss had abused. Worth a try?

When BF used to work at GAME they just used Brasso on the second hand ones before resale, but I wouldn't recommend that as it scourers rather then melts so you end up with tonnes of tiny scratches (plus you can only do it 3 times before it's a coaster).

Yes they can work but largely depends on the degree of damage. What lots of people don't realise with cds and dvds is that a scratch on the clear plastic side is usually repairable, by polishing it away, as others have mentioned, because the data is actually stored on the inside surface of the label side of the disk, so if you scratch a cd on the opposite side to the one that faces the laser, deep enough to end up with a bit of the 'silver' missing when you hold the disk up to the light and look through it, then you're really stuffed!

I've had loads of unplayable/scratched games repaired at Game for about £2 each, successfully every time.

Unfortunately our Game was one of the victims of the recent cull!