A new product just on the market was reviewed at BigPictureBigSound.com and the writer showed that this disc repairing machine had a good success rate of 70%. During its announcement the machine was priced at $249, but 18 months later VenMill industries introduces their Skip-Away Pro for $499. A serious price increase...

For those with little children or huge CD or DVD collections this could be a great product. It cleans discs and repairs minor and some serious scratches allowing them to be playable again. It works on CDs, DVDs and HD DVDs, but isn't capable of doing the same with Blu-ray discs since its protective layer is too hard.

Other disc cleaning and repairing machines work with a simple wax that fills the scratches to make the disc smooth and flat again. The Skip-Away Pro uses VenMill's OptoClear Technology which uses a combination of heat, pressure and time to simply iron out the scratches and the so-called "valleys and peaks".

Badly scratched discs always showed improvements after the Skip-Away Pro did its work, but not all of them were fully playable later. With these really bad CDs and DVDs the Pro had a success rate of 35%, while this was 70% on more lightly scratched discs.

This product would definitely work for parents and the rental shop near my house. If the Skip-Away Pro would've been $249 it would be a more interesting and nice gadget in many households. Now, it's probably a good product for businesses.