A little over eightteen months ago at a CES press preview, I saw a promising machine called the "Skip-Away" from a company called VenMill Industries (sounds like something out of a Seinfeld episode, right? Sorry, that's "Vanderlay"). So anyway, this Skip-Away thing is a semi-professional disc cleaning and repair machine that was expected to sell for a fairly affordable price ($249). Two years later, the machine is in production, but now it's the Skip-Away Pro and its price has doubled to $499. Is it worth the money? Read on to find out.
What Does It Do?
The Skip-Away Pro does two things: 1.) it cleans discs of surface grime, fingerprints and dirt; 2.) it repairs minor and even serious scratches in discs, allowing them to be playable again. It supports CDs, DVDs and HD-DVDs (sorry, no repair of Blu-ray discs as the protective layer of Blu-ray Discs is too hard to support the Skip-Away's OptoClear™ repair function). The Skip-Away is designed to work with both store-bought discs and with home-made +/-R and +/-RW discs. It said to work with game discs including those from PlayStation and Wii (among others).
VenMill's Skip-Away Pro disc cleaning and repair machine.
Why Would I Want One?
Do you have kids? If the answer is yes, you want one. The Skip-Away's 15 second clean cycle gently but effectively removes surface grime, fingerprints, yes even peanut butter from CDs and DVDs. And the 3-minutes "repair" cycle can repair surface scratches. This can be useful when the kids get a little rambunctious with an out-of-print Disney DVD or a Wii game disc that may be difficult or costly to replace
Even without children, we all sometimes get a little clumsy or careless and can inadvertently damage a disc which may have irreplaceable data, music or movies on it. And who hasn't settled in on the couch with a fresh bowl of popcorn, popped in a movie from Netflix or Blockbuster only to be treated to skipping or jittery playback from some previous renter's abuse? With Skip-Away, a 15-second clean, or a 3-minute repair can restore perfect playback without a return trip to the store or waiting for a replacement to come in the mail.
How Does It Work?
Traditional disc repair machines either use wax to fill in the "valleys" (scratches) or abrasive sanding which grinds down the "peaks" (the bumps on either side of a scratch) in order to get a flat, laser-trackable disc surface. VenMill uses something called OptoClear™ technology which applies a combination of heat, pressure and time to iron out the peaks and valleys on the scratched disc. Once a disc is inserted, the protective plastic layer is exposed to heat, making the surface malleable. Simultaneously, a precise amount of pressure is applied to smooth out the surface, turning the skipping "mountain range" back into a smooth and playable plane.
How Effective Is It?
I tried about 35 CDs and a dozen or so DVDs in the Skip-Away, many of which would be considered "trashed." Many of the CDs belonged to an 82-year old friend of ours who had no concept that CDs should be treated gently. From looking at the discs, you would suspect that they spent a fair amount of time on the ground, playing surface down, being used as skates to slide across a dirty floor (you should see how his LPs look).
With these badly scratched discs, the Skip-Away repair cycle always made improvements, though it was not able to completely salvage many of the discs, even after 10 or more times through the "repair" cycle. On these badly damaged discs, the Skip-Away was about 35% effective at restoring full playability. On more lightly scratched discs, the success rate was higher, somewhere around 70%. In all cases, the disc surface was noticeably smoother after repair, but some scratches are apparently just too deep to repair via this method.
Toward the end of my review period I began getting the "no cart" message after almost every repair, had to remove and reseat the cartridge to see if that got rid of the "no cart" message. Yes? Great. No? Here we go again… It seems like the tolerances here are pretty tight and the vibrations that the machine makes during cleaning and repair are enough to throw these off.
I later learned that the first sample sent to us was actually pre-production (hence the blue color of our review unit - the Skip-Away Pro is now available only in black). VenMill sent us a final production replacement and the second unit was much better behaved than the first, though its track record at disc repairs was no different. Gone were the error messages and the need to remove and re-insert the cartridge. And this made a big difference in my satisfaction level with the unit. Special thanks to VenMill's support team in resolving this issue quickly.
Update: shortly after completing this review, I tried a few more cleanings, and the "no cart" and then "replace cart" messages returned after a total of less than 20 repairs on the new cartridge. for this reason, we're revising our overall score down from 3 to 2.5 stars. We downgraded it once more to 2 stars after experimenting with a by-mail repair service which had a much higher success rate at repairing discs. Find out more about that here.
Final Thoughts
Conceptually I love the idea of the Skip-Away Pro. For collectors of music and films on silver discs -- particularly those with small children -- and even for frequent Blockbuster and Netflix renters, a home disc repair and cleaning machine is a useful gadget. At $250, I think the Skip-Away would have been a great buy. But with the price now $499, it's a bit of a tougher sell.
Sure, $499 is still a far cry less than the $3500 cost of a professional machine, but it's still a significant cost for a gadget that may only be used occasionally. As an alternative, at $2 to $3/disc (a common price for professional disc repair by a repair service), you could use that $499 to pay for over 150 disc repairs and possibly get better results. We tried one such disc repair service and saw excellent results.
But I admit having the unit around to do a quick clean of a CD or DVD or to fix up a disc on loan from the library or Blockbuster was addictive. I'd recommend the Skip-Away Pro for serious disc collectors or for anyone who still enjoys music and movies on physical media and who has the "scratch" to afford it. Just don't expect it to work miracles on badly damaged discs.
Where To Buy:
Product Specifications:
Manufacturer's Contact Information
VenMill Industries, Inc
660 Douglas Street
Uxbridge, MA 01569
866-864-0210 (Toll Free)
508-278-0091 (Local/International)
web site: www.VenMill.com
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