Earlier today, I was speaking with a dear friend about the problems I had with the audio of THE LITTLE MERMAID DVD last night. He had the disc but hadn't played it yet. When we were talking, he took it out, played it, and had no sound problems whatsoever.
This made me wonder, of course, if I had simply gotten a defective disc. So, I took mine back out, rubbed off both surfaces, and put the DVD in a different player. Lo and behold, there were no sound problems at all like I had experienced last night. It played perfectly and beautifully.
So, some sort of static electricity or something must have built up in my other player last night to cuase the disc to malfunction like that. It certainly played just fine tonight. I didn't take the time to try it again in the DVD player I used last night, but I will do that tomorrow to see if the problems are gone completely or if there is a problem simply with the DVD and one specific player.