Slightly OT: Problem with DVD player..

try cleaning the discs by wiping them lightly with a soft cloth from the inner
hole to the outer edge taking care to go against the grooves.  you should also
let us know the make and model number, as certain players have trouble playing
some of the newer discs that are trying out new copyright protection scripts in
the DVD data layer.  These scripts may not recognize your player as a
legitiamate Region locked device and will not play the discs.  Your problem
sounds like dirt tho, maybe inside the machine from before you bought it.  You
may want to get a dvd lens cleaner to insure this isn't the case.  

For some reason I can't watch my movies without them saying "skipping bad
disc area" , freezing up, and losing place in the movie.  Anyway, my model
of DVD player is an Oritron DVD600.  Hope this helps..
Quebec

Some temporary freezing can probably be attributed to layer change, most
DVD players will have a slight pause on certain layer changes. About the
"skipping bad disk part" seems to me that you might be playing DVD's
that have seamless branching and your player doesn't support this
feature. Older  and lower priced players such as Shinco, Raite, Apex,
and other cheaper brands either don't ot just recently put out models
that support seamless branching. Giving the brand of you player would
probably help more in determining the problem.  When I first bought my
Apex AD600A, it didn't support seamless branching, but I wa able to get
a firmware upgrade that fixed that.  If the DVD will freeze and not come
back, try pressing he "Digest" button or something along those lines and
see if that fixes it, this will make you skip the menu's and extra
features, but you should still be able to watch the complete movie.

--
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all its contents. We live in a placid island of
ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant
that we should voyage far.The sciences, each straining in its own
direction,have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing
together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of
reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go
mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace
and     safety of a new dark age."                      

H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)