NEWS

Disc repair has become a major business as DVDs and CDs have become more prevalent in entertainment. For a long time, retailers have carried the cheap crank disc repair units that hardly work. Those days are over as Disc-Go-Tech’s new repair unit Disc-Go-Pod Plus is small enough to be used at home, but is intended for small businesses.

The Disc-Go-Pod Plus is fairly easy to use. All you have to do is take it out of the box, put the cleaning liquid in the back basin, add water, plug the unit in and set your disc on the clasp. Then you just have to decide how damaged your disc is. They suggest if it’s lightly damage that you put it on for a 5 minute cycle, while medium damage should get a 10 minute cycle and heavy damage a 15 minute cycle.

As you can see, there is one button on the right, which you push once for a 5 minute cycle and twice for 10 minutes. If you want to stop a cycle then just push it again. The LED indicators on the left indicate which cycle you chose. The red blinks if it’s for 5 minutes and the yellow blinks when it’s 10 minutes. Overall the setup and daily use of the Disc-Go-Pod Plus is very easy.

The real question, though, is does it work?

The first disc to the left is one with light scratches and dirt spots across the disc. This CD really doesn’t have any problems running, but obviously doesn’t look ideal and if left these scratches and spots could result in real problems in the future.  

On the right you’ll see that same disc cleaned through the Disc-Go-Pod Plus. As you can see, after a five minute cycle through the unit this CD looks brand new and now only features one or two very light scratches.

Our second disc features medium to even some heavy damage around the whole disc including a few deep cuts. Surprisingly this disc actually still works pretty well and only has a slight jump here or there.

After a couple runs through the Disc-Go-Pod, our disc looks great, as you can see. Now the disc has just a few minor scratches remaining and more important than that is the fact that the jumps that were present previously are now gone.

Finally, we come to our worst disc which is a CD that I took a sharp knife to and cut across the data side. This disc only had a couple music tracks that worked after the cuts and those even had a skip or two when we tried to play it.

After running it through the unit a few times by no means is the disc perfect, but already many of the deep cuts on the outside edge to the middle of the disc are gone and the closer cuts into the center are filled and look more like regular scratches. Beyond that, previously the disc could only play a couple music tracks and now all but three can be heard like brand new.

Despite the obvious benefits of the Disc-Go-Pod we noticed a few major problems, the biggest of which obviously is the price. The Disc-Go-Pod Plus retails at $495 which includes the basic supplies you’ll need for the immediate future. One other issue we came across while using the device was the fact that the system is pretty loud when it’s running. Because of this retailers will definitely want to consider putting the unit in the backroom.

Two other issues that seemed to be a problem were overheating and clean up. The good thing about this unit is that the Disc-Go-Pod Plus will shut off when it starts to overheat, but the problem I noticed related to this feature is that you have to unplug it a lot or else you’ll have the machine overheating all the time and when it does it takes at least a good 30 minutes before you can come back and work again.

The other problem is that you really need to have a lot of discs when you plan to use the unit because clean up is a little irritating. The problem with clean up is that you have to pick up the 10-pound unit and pour the liquid into a container. You cannot leave the liquid in the machine or else it’ll cake into the tubes. After that you also have to run hot water through the machine for 30 seconds in order to get out all the cleaning solution.

Overall, the Disc-Go-Pod Plus is a solid product that does what it guarantees. The $500 price tag certainly is steep for any in-home user, but if you run a business that utilizes a lot of DVDs and CDs like a rental store, library or office or if you just want to start your own entrepreneurial enterprise the unit will definitely pay for itself down the line. I can say with confidence that I would definitely suggest this product as it works great and is fast and easy to use.

Unit Includes:

• Disc-Go-Pod Plus Repair Machine
• Two Bottles of Cleaning Polish
• Two Replacement Polishing Pads
• A bottle of Finishing Spray
• A Cleaning Cloth
• An Instructional Video
• An Owner’s Manual