Which Babylon 5 sets do you have? The original releases in the thick cardboard digipaks, or the re-releases in clear keepcases? I have the re-releases in the the clear keepcases and checked those discs about a year ago and they're all good. I also have the Movie Collection and Crusade in cardboard digipaks (I don't think those were ever released in keepcases) and they were also okay.

Did a little digging, and according to this reddit, other people have been having issues with Babylon 5 DVDs, too. Sounds like it's the older releases that are problematic. And The Lost Tales.

https://www.reddit.com/r/babylon5/co...yt4k/disc_rot/

Scanned a bunch on the computer and several were bad, was able to get good replacements of most of these:

The set sat on a shelf for almost 20 years, in a cool dry environment, in their boxes in their plastic holders. Saving the series for the future. Well, the future was too long, I guess. One tends to think that you are preserving, but actually, not so much. That is pretty sad. Oh well... Thank you for the info.

Twenty years... Lorien returned and took them beyond the rim.

Nice!

I am thoroughly confused other than knowing that Warners is seemingly unresponsive. Before I get mad at them I understand that the IFPI "2U" is the kiss of death for a disc. I have numerous discs that with the help of a magnifying glass have a faint 2U code on the clear plastic of the disc while there is a much clearer IFPI of L809 on the shiny inner ring of the back side. I have tried discs that have both numbers and they seem to work at this time. I had eliminated numerous discs with the IFPI of L809 and did not search more thoroughly for a faint number. Do I need to go back and search again or is the IFPI 809 a get out of dvd jail free card? Please help. Thanks to all who have worked on this manufacturing issue.

On my WB Babylon Five Series discs, all discs looked perfect. They were stored properly. The strange part was that each disc had a different set of problems. Some were kind of baffling. Such as my Samsung DVD Player would play part of the disc, while my Tobisha Laptop would not play it at all, or the recovery program, (MakeMKV) would or would not recognize the disc. And sometimes the same disc would change up problems. (Play when it would not before or visa versa). I went through all 30 discs and MakeMKV recovered (converted) about 50 episodes (out of 110). I will never go through that again. Wow. What a mess! Now I would be suspicious of any Warner Brothers discs if I purchase more DVDs.

I would say any DVD manufactured during a certain time (2004-2009?) is vulnerable to rot. Many won't rot but a certain percentage will inevitably fail.

Rip any DVD or Blu-ray from that era you truly care about. It doesn't matter how well you cared for them.

Three more WB causalities. Ugh. All three are from 2006

Yeah, those are the original releases. Looks like they were originally released between 2002 and 2004, well before the 2006-2008 window usually stated. They might have gotten re-pressings in the later timeframe, though.

I think the repackaged discs I have (that still play) came out around 2009, just outside of the '06-'08 window.

Yup, the boxes say 2002. I am pretty sure I got them at Macy's. Do not remember when though, but they were new releases.

Looks like we can add the Doctor Who stories "Robot" and "The Sontaran Experiment" to the list.

Did you happen to keep notes about which discs were bad? I have this set and your post prompted me to check mine. Made it through the whole series and it wasn't as bad as expected. I only had trouble with specific episodes and not the whole disc (but it's crazy how some of the most significant episodes were affected: B.J.'s first episode, Radar's last episode). Here's the ones bad from my set:

Season 4 - disc 1, episode 1 freezes after 10 minutes / episode 4 won't play
Season 5 - disc 1, episode 4 freezes after 10 minutes
Season 7 - disc 1, last episode - freezes after a few minutes
Season 8 - disc 1, episodes 4 & 5 won't play past 10 minutes


On another note, Lois & Clark was ok until I got to season 4: discs 3, 4, and 5 were all dead, won't even load.

And... another Warner title: The Arrangement. Dead at the layer change. It has a newer archive release so at least there's that.

Evangelion Platinum Collection disc 1 is having disc rot creep. 4 episodes in and fortunately it only is affecting the intro ads and the credits of episode 3. You do have to try and force it to the main menu or it will hang on the ads, couldn’t get it to work at all in my Series X but my Oppo was able to skip to the main menu after some fiddling.

Looking ahead it seems like only disc 3 has the same funky looking data side (hope I can make it through this watch through).

Which version do you have? Individual releases in regular-sized cases or the boxed set in slim cases?





The boxed set is in slim cases, and those (esp. clear ones) have a tendency to outgas and leave residue on DVDs. You might want to see if you can clean the surfaces of the DVDs that are giving you trouble with something like isopropyl alcohol and see if it can remove the residue (if that's the problem). I've had some luck getting that residue off of discs, but other people haven't been able to remove it.

ETA: I think my wife has the boxed set. I'll check those discs later today or tomorrow.

Individual releases in the silver slips. We start disc 3 tomorrow

Edit: Disc 3 had a few mid episode pauses in the first episode on the disc but otherwise played fine.

If it's not on there already, add Top Hat (1935) to the Warner list. I have the stand-alone release on DVD and popped it in last night, only for it to lock up at what I'm assuming is the layer change (about 27 minutes in).

This is especially grating as there's no Blu-ray release of the film yet.

I just had another WB disc too. Conagher (a Sam Elliott western). Dead at the layer change.

Checked a few discs last night for rot and following crashed at half-way point;

The Departed (2-disc set)
The Invasion
Get Smart 2-disc set
Point Blank (1967)

I checked my dvd of THIS IS ELVIS from Warner Bros. and it freezes up midway through.

THE DEPARTED is pretty much a new movie sort of anyway.

Does Warner Bros. still sell dvds of current movies if yes then should we not buy current Warner Bros. dvds?

Check the back cover- the plastic part of the case should have “MADE IN MEXICO” stamped on it. These are newer pressings from Technicolor which should be good for the most part, even though they turned out some bad Universal discs earlier on.

I’ve had SO many Warner discs go bad (and ones from other studios made by their manufacturer) that someone should be legally responsible for replacing them. I could see maybe one or two titles going bad, but I’ve had a TON of them. I’ve been pulling these discs and scanning them on the computer using DVDShrink, it’ll scan an entire disc in a minute or so and will crash if the disc is bad, so you don’t have to waste time watching them.

Warner hasn’t answered my emails so I’m going to do a video soon packing all these discs in a box and mailing them off. The current management there probably wants to just kill off discs anyways, but Warner pushed DVD harder than any other studio when it was new and this is just inexcusable.