DVD-RW drive, lightscribe. When trying to read DVD, you can hear the disc spin up, but after a few seconds, a "chunk" sound can be repeatedly heard as the reader tries to read from the disc.

The disc has no obvious scratches / problems; in fact, it almost looks /too/ clean, as if nothing was written to it, though I don't know whether that is a side effect of a commercial presser or actually indicative of a problem.

You Bethesda guys are pretty damn lucky to also be using Steam to get around screw ups like this.

Have exactly the same problem.

I used a Liteon DVD-RW w/ Lightscribe and it worked. Unless you got a bad disc maybe your drive's laser is failing.

I just ripped a DVD with it; not that it isn't possible that my laser is failing, but since this is the first I've encountered any issues like this, I view it as highly unlikely.

Did it read the burned disc. The burning laser and the reading lasers are different.

No burned disc involved. I ripped a DVD, as in read all content from the DVD and turned it into a m4v. I just put a different dvd in the drive and it read fine.

The Skyrim DVD is broken out of the box.

I had the same exact problem.

at least my bd-rom player could read it

Had similar issues with other games,95 % chance its your dvd drive fault,try to put the dvd on another drive to check if it reads there,or a friend's pc or something.

Is it broken or is it being STEAMrollered? It looks like Steam is causing major install problems for some people. Have a look at the sticky and see if that helps.