Old Universal disk problems
 

I got this from digitalbits and i didn't see anything on the board about it:

"One last note today... we've noticed a strange thing here at The Bits. In going back to a lot of our very early Universal DVD releases (released in 1997 and 1998), we've discovered that many of those discs have simply stopped working in our DVD players. We don't know if the discs' bonding layers have gone bad, or if they're simply not compatible with newer players, or what. Affected so far are our original copies of the special collector's editions of Apollo 13, Psycho, Vertigo and others. We recommend that you check the older Universal titles in your own collections for similar problems. Let us know if you're encountering this as well."

and a little later:

"Boy... have we EVER heard from Bits readers regarding the problem of older Universal DVDs no longer working on newer model DVD players. We've gotten hundreds of e-mails from you guys about this issue. It certainly seems that this is no isolated problem. We're going to dig into this and post more over the next few days, so stay tuned."

So anybody else having this problem. I've read that some people have contacted Universal and gotten replacement disks. Or at the very least we can start getting a list together of some of the affected disks, so that people can check.

I noticed a few weeks ago that my Street Fighter: Colllector's Edition died. :( I just bought it not too long ago too, when it hit the $5.50 bin at Wal*Mart.

What a way to get people to buy their re-releases.

That's Universal Quality control for you!!! :horsepoo: :hairpull:

So far my Apollo 13 and The Thing have stopped working.

Has anyone ever thought of initiating a class action lawsuit against this company? I mean seriously. They often refuse to even fix their product (Casino SE, for example).

Something really needs to be done about this company. They are unbelievable.

I have the old Psycho dvd that was released in 98 or so. I'm gonna watch it this weekend. I hope it doesn't die on me.

This should be a good reason to pick up the rerelease of The Thing, which finally has a new anamorphic transfer and snazzy packaging.

I'm not understanding some of the posts...are you guys saying the DVDs stopped working on players they previously worked on? Because I think the Digital Bits story was just saying that these old Universal discs just aren't playing on some newer DVD players, which is an entirely different problem.

I don't think Universal, or any studio, can be blamed for DVDs not working on players that didn't yet exist when they released the DVDs, but if the discs have stopped working on players they always worked on, that's another issue entirely and Universal has some explaining to do...

Oh, and someone please tell those geniuses over at Digital Bits that the proper spelling when referring to DVDs is "discs", not "disks". ;)

I already bought the new Apollo 13 2-disc SE and the new design of The Thing in a 2 pack with White Noise. Both in a keepcase. I don't like the 1-disc digipak they have The Thing in.


I still have my old player and it doesn't work on it anymore either.

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I honestly can't understand why this issue was "BIG NEWS" over at The Digital Bits. I know for a fact that this problem has been discussed for years here and on the Home Theater Forum. I have reliable information that The Digital Bits team even works with HTF from time to time. I can't believe they were ignorant of this issue. Most people I know have long since replaced their old universal/WAMO defective discs from 1998 - 1999.

Past thread titles range from "Vertigo: something bad has happened" to "Born on the Fourth of July stopped playing". Everyone, hit SEARCH. :)

Yeah, they really should've held off on releasing the discs until they could make sure that they'd still work seven years later.

Most new Universal discs do not work, so why are people surprised that the old discs do not work? -wink-

LOL

Good point!

The ones that went bad generally did so a while ago. I think the news is that copies that played fine until recently (I can vouch for that) suddenly don't load at all. If it's important for some of us who had "good" copies to go back and check then it's newsworthy.

I check out my old first issues of Vertigo, Psycho, Thing, War Wagon and High Plains Drifter. All play fine. Also checked out Hellfighters from early '99, no problems. They load fine and all menu functions work. Didn't actually sit and watch any all the way through.

It's not just newer players!!

Earlier this year I tried to play my VERTIGO which I was able to play prior in my JVC player. Thinking it might have just been the player I tried to load it to my computer DVD drive and it didn't work there either!!

Well I just checked all my old Universal discs and my Apollo 13 disc is hosed. will not play in my DVD Player or my computer DVD-ROM.

F-ing Universal. I thought the whole apect ratio lawsuit against MGM was lame, but this is a class action lawsuit that should definitely be filed. DVD's were promised to last a hell of a lot longer than VHS tapes and this DVD didn't last more than 8 years.

No, they shouldn't be so cheapskates and release films in good quality disc. i heard that other companies have had the same problem of early DVDs going sour recently, but there are many current Universal disc that still don't play correctly because of their bad disc quality. And other companies like Criterion, WB and Anchor Bay, who had similar problems, only had it on a small amount of titles. It seems that most Universal discs released in the late 90's had some kind of problem of not working on PS2 or going bad after a couple of years. And that my friend, is called bad quality control.

as mentioned on the hitchcock thread I have two copies each of vertigo and psycho from the big and small box sets....all are working fine. Some warner titles were doing this as well....negotiator comes to mind

Yeah, I think Digital Bits is missing the point by saying it's a problem playing the discs on newer players (did they even try playing them on older models?). That's just part of the picture....they don't play on ANY of my players, including the oldest ones I own....it's not the players firmware causing problems, it's the discs that are no longer playable because of something that's changed with the discs themselves.

As has already been posted, surely this is just the old WAMO problem rearing it's ugly head once again?

I'm willing to bet that all these discs they've discovered are early, dual-layer jobs made by WAMO. (Warner Advanced Media Operations)

The bad news is that lots of studios, including Warner and Image, also used WAMO...

Old discs should play in new machines, new discs in old machines. This is because the DVD specification hasn't changed. So long as disc and machine comply, there shouldn't be any issues.

What did happen is that some early machines didn't fully comply - some makers did things on the cheap (by for example, leaving out support for seamless branching, hence the headaches for some owners when the first DVD's with seamless branching appeared). Plus, some new cheap machines (like Chinese clones) don't comply.

But it shouldn't have anything to do with the age of machine/disc aside from this. The DVD specification hasn't changed. New players may have snazzy functions like playing mp3 files, but the DVD bit is just the same as it was way back when.

Can we just get a Universal Defective Disc subforum?

I'm going to start going through my old discs and see. I've probably got a couple of WAMO discs from 98-99 that are now coasters.

How would you know to hit search if you don't know there's a problem?? I don't happen to own Born on the Fourth of July or Vertigo so I wouldn't have read those threads, but I do have other Universal discs that I will now check out because of this thread. So I for one am glad to see it consolidated into a thread that addresses the heart of the problem.
And if the company is making shitty discs, we should hammer them with as many threads as it takes to get the consumers aware and pissed off.

Oh calm down. :)

Well, it's not really Universal that makes them; it's whoever they contracted to duplicate them.

If it really is very old DVD's - 1998/98 - then it's most likely that they don't use the same company anymore. Universal now use Deluxe, don't they?

If it's a new batch of Universal discs going bad, it;s a whole new ballgame...

Incidentally, I have a load of the WAMO early discs, and they're all fine. Including all the Universal ones.

So far I've found two discs with this problem: Primary Colors and Daylight CE bought in Sep and July 1998, respectively. Neither will play on my 1997 Sony DVP-S7000 DVD player. The Primary Colors DVD has faint, but noticeable blue lines, 5 to be exact, radiating from the outer toward the inner part of the dvd (about 0.5” in length) and the Daylight CE dvd has discoloration. Both appear to be from layer separation on the dvds.

Two others purchased in Nov 1998 don't exhibit this problem. This is one of the reason why I can't wait for blu-ray to be the next format (only one substrate instead of two, like CDs).

..but on the other hand, manufacture tolerances will be much finer than those for making CD's or DVD's. The requirements for things like layer uniformity and defect tolerance are way ahead of what DVD requires. Not to mention dual-layer blu-ray discs...

Early adopters of Blu-ray discs will be in the same position as those buying DVD's back in 1997/8.

Essentially, you'll be buying on faith, an item that hasn't stood the only real test of time - and that's time.

OK, so you might argue "well we know more now from the experience of DVD". Yup, that's what people said when it came to DVD "we've learnt from the mistakes making CD's".

Nearly everything that's gone wrong with DVD's can be put down to manufacture errors. Blu-ray will be just as vulnerable to these, if not more so!

My Vertigo just stopped working! None of the three dvd players I have tried will read it!
Fu.... Universal!

Has anyone here from outside USA had their early Universal R1 DVD die out (due to the WAMO defect), and tried to have it replaced by Universal ?

My 1998 R1 orange-covered Vertigo DVD died recently (last week / last september it was still working when I last watched it), so I wrote to Universal US (using the link given on the HTF forum) and (not unexpectedly) got a negative reply:

From: "[email protected]"
Subject: RE: Vertigo UPC# 2519-20183-2 ( UK ) Inquiry # xxxxx

Universal Studios Home Entertainment sells Region I DVDs, authorized for use in the U.S. and Canada only. Consequently, we are unable to accommodate your request.

Just wondering if someone (from outside USA) has had more luck with Universal...

YES !

I have.

But it was some years ago. I had Dragonheart, Primary Colors and The Jackal exchanged by Universal.

Now, im affraid that Universal just hides behind pre scripted email responses and bullsh*t corporate crap like "if you haven´t bought the disc in the US or Canada, you are fu*ked"

Its really sad really...its a good way to lose customers and get people to look the bootleggers way...

But I guess the money we foreigners spend on R1 DVD´s aren´t worth anything.

I would really like to see the studios actually take some time to figure out how much of their DVD sales come from abroad...my guess would be a substantial (sp?) amount !

This is common to most studios - they will not issue replacements discs to anyone outside of the intended sales region. Some of them state this in their terms and conditions on their "How to get replacement discs" pages.

As I recall, Universal, Paramount, Warner and Sony (MGM etc) to name a few have this policy.

Anchor Bay are one of the few that don't have an issue with it.

AFAIK a sale is deemed to have taken place in the country where the transaction takes place, NOT where the purchaser happens to be when making their purchase - for example, if I (sat here in the UK) buy a DVD on the net from a US store, then the sale takes place in the US.

That is why it is perfectly legal to buy and import DVD's that way; what the stern warnings about "only for sale in the US and Canada" at the start of the disc mean is that the discs shouldn't be sold anywhere but those countries (ie, exported and then resold).

I know in the UK, when BBC Video did a major exchange program for some faulty discs, the explicity said that they would not offer exchange discs for people in (for example) the US.

I suspect that Universal aren't going to budge on this.

Which is strange, because they aren't selling anything. Indeed, when A.B. sent me a replacement disc, the Customs declaration was value $0 because nothing had been paid for it.

But just so you know, I DID have 3 DVD´s replaced by Universal, so this IS a new thing with them

Am I to understand that Universal discs manufactured only in 1997 and 1998 are problematic? I wanted to pick up the original release of Dante's Peak (with Brosnan and Hamilton on the cover), but it came out in 1998, and that gives me pause.

--THX

Galaxy Quest DTS stops at the layer change, and continues - after a long pause, without the sound on. One have to go the menu, selelct DTS, and then find the right chapter to continue.

Very annoying.

The problem was identified as being dual-layer discs manufactured by the WAMO (Warner Advanced Media Operations) plant. Which was mostly done prior to 1999.

The disc itself will have the WAMO ident engraved near the middle of the disc on the play side if it was made by them. WAMO manufactured discs for many studios.

Single-layer discs were not an issue.

The problem usually shows up around the layer-change point at first, getting progressively worse until the disc is unplayable.

Unless there's some pressing reason for you wanting an early edition, it might be better to get a later release of it.

But not all discs were affected, and not even all discs of the same title; for example, my original Matrix disc is just fine even though it's listed as one of the troublemakers.

Most of the early Universal discs were made by Panasonic's PDSC. Meet The Parents is the only Universal title I have that was made by Warner. Most of their titles I've gotten recently have been made at that crappy Mexico factory, though a couple are from Deluxe.