Add 8 out of 9 discs from Alfred Hitchcock The Signature Collection Box Set by Warner Bros. Released 2004.
7 freeze at the layer change and 1 wont even load.
Tested on 2 players. What a joke!

My 6 year old Blu-ray copy of The Simpsons bit the dust on me yesterday. My 2 Blu-ray players would not read the seemingly flawless disc.

The blu-ray release of The Road from 2009. Released by Icon in the U.K.
The disc appears new but refuses to load in 2 players.

The biggest advocate for DVD who brought the other studios together to agree on a final format, was gone a long time ago.

Warren Lieberfarb was pushed out of Warner back in 2002.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-...d21-story.html

Once he was gone, the Warner home video division was largely "coasting".

I've just gone through a large portion of my collection ripping discs to Plex to make watching easier and have confirmed with MakeMKV and testing in a real player that I have a huge number of defective Warner discs. Most of my HD DVDs and about 30 DVDs. I haven't found a single defective Universal or Paramount disc. Even those terrible old Universal flipper discs all work.
My William Powell and Myrna Loy collection, my Classic Comedy Teams set, my Alfred Hitchcock set, My Gangsters set and on and on with Warner. I can only imagine my Warner Archive Blu-rays will start exploding on the shelf the way their quality control is.

I've been on my own Plex journey. I'm just starting out and putting a priority on my DVDs. I've only finished the As, going alphabetically, and I've found two discs that won't work. The Apostle is from Universal, and Ararat is from Miramax. As an aside, I think all of my old Universal Hitchcock DVDs rotted a long time ago. It's funny that you've had so little trouble with Universal when I've had so much. No issues with Warner discs so far, but it's still very early. It's also likely true that a much higher percentage of WB DVDs have been replaced by Blu-rays over the years.

And as I've now looked over the posts for the last page or two, I'm bracing myself for unplayable discs from WB.

I still have hundreds of DVD to go through so I'm sure I will find stuff from other companies. I did just go through my 14 movie Universal Hitchcock DVD set and all were good so I lucked out on that. Also had two other Warner DVD box sets from the mid 2000s that also were fine. Guess it depends on luck of the draw and where the discs got manufactured.

I just bought a used copy of "Species" (1996) Collector's Edition which was released in October 2007 and found that the Feature disc (dual-layer) was defective and did not play in several different DVD players. The disc was mint, no scratches or marks and no appearance of bronzing or rot patches.

It's interesting because a couple of years ago I bought "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1978) Collector's Edition which was released around the same time by 20th Century Fox/MGM and it too had a perfectly nice condition yet unplayable Feature disc.

Since this thread was bumped, I'll share the latest on my discs. Disc 1 of The Critic has one side that looks like cloudy. I take it this is what DVD rot looks like. The disc will still come up, but there are about three episodes that won't play. The other two discs in the set look perfect.

I can also add another Miramax title to my list as Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is now a dud disc.

And then the other recent discovery is Alias Season 2. Not one disc in that set will play. All of the discs look perfect, but no player can recognize them. Very frustrating.

Decided to look through a few more MGM titles and found the Platoon 2-Disc Sony/MGM Feature disc stalls at the layer break as well. Bear in mind I am from Canada so this may or may not affect US versions of this title.

Not necessarily. It can look pristine without a mark or scratch on it and still not play. I've had to replace a few of my discs that looked like that.

And I've had discs with the cloudy film on it still play fine, even after cleaning them off.

Most of the ones that don't work don't have anything wrong with them. It sucks.

And I found another Miramax title that won't work: Frida.

The main thing to look for in a rotted disc is bronzing, where the playing surface of the disc starts to turn brown, usually from the edges in. But this isn't present in every case of rot.

There are two kinds of "cloudy" discs. One is like a layer of film that develops on the surface of the disc; this seems to primarily effect DVDs that came in clear slim cases, and is likely caused by the cases outgassing. This can be cleaned off of the disc and doesn't seem to effect play, though reports vary.

The other kind of cloudiness is inside of the disc itself. It's a sort of a faint swirly, milky appearance on the playing surface. From what I recall, this was a cosmetic flaw that happened during the manufacturing process, and did not effect playability. (Though this may have changed over time; I haven't heard anything either way.)

Most of my discs that have rotted do not seem to show any outward signs of damage or discoloration. They look brand new and flawless. One exception would be the early run of certain Criterion blu-ray titles that obviously bronzed.

You might want to try to clean the surface of your Critic disc with some isopropyl alcohol and a microfiber cloth, and see if that removes the film and makes the disc playable again.

Verified my Critic set and all three discs have errors and about eight of the episodes can't be watched. Also, checked my Mel Brooks Blu-ray set and Young Frankenstein freezes and skips half way through the movie.
This journey through my collection has been discouraging as I have found a few more duds and from other companies than Warner. The vast majority of my discs are fine, but overall I'm really doubting I buy physical discs going forward when digital is an option. The idea of things like triple and quad layered UHD discs lasting seems doubtful.
I know there is no guarantee Vudu or Movies Anywhere will last forever, but I have been putting hundreds of movies and TV shows on Vudu for 12 years and every single one of them still works.

Which set do you have?

I checked my Alias Season 2. It's the original pressing with the discs in three 2-disc cases and a slip-box, not the one in the single slim 6-disc case.

Discs 3 and 4 are deader than fucking doornails. The other four discs -- 1, 2, 5, and 6 -- seem to play flawlessly. Discs 3 and 4 wouldn't even load; an error message came up on my blu-ray player and the disc icon had a question mark on it. So it knew I had a disc in there, but it couldn't recognize it.

I bought this set new many years ago when Best Buy had seasons 1 and 2 on sale for $20 each and watched it then, so the discs did become unplayable some time after I bought it.

That's the same edition I have. I believe it has a reproduction of some of the Rambaldi drawings on the packaging. I know I watched it back in the day when I first got it, but it hasn't made its way out of the packaging in a while. Not sure when it might have died. I still can't believe all six discs in the set wouldn't work.

You guys scared me into checking my Alias sets, I have the original release pressing as well.

Season 1: all bad, none of the six discs would load
Season 2: all bad, none of the six discs would load

I also have the complete series set, all of the season 1 and 2 discs in that set were fine - except for season 1, disc 5. It loaded, but the picture was broken up from the start and eventually froze.

Guess I better check my Alias season one, too...

Man it sucks ass that so many of these things are boxed sets. I wonder what the deal is; I can sort of understand that a boxed set has more discs to fail, so the law of averages says that some of them probably will go bad, but when you have multiple discs from the same boxes eating shit and even entire boxes, something is up.

I'm just curious if box sets are more prone to rotting because they were pressed as DVD-18 (dual-layer / double-sided) and maybe more vulnerable to defects?

Gave my Alias Season One a quick scan.

Discs one through five seem to be okay. Disc six didn't want to load (uh-oh!), but I ejected the disc, put it back in, and it loaded right up and all of the episodes seemed to play fine.

Yeah, DVD-14 and DVD-18 are prone to failure.

But most of these DVD sets with high fail rates -- Alias, Veronica Mars, Tales from the Crypt, Stanley Kubrick box, Harry Potter, Superman -- are all single sided, so they aren't DVD-14 or DVD-18s.

Uh oh. Veronica Mars is also prone to failure? I haven't checked mine yet. That could be a problem.

While I certainly don’t wish people to have discs that don't work, I'll admit it makes me feel slightly better that I'm not alone in having issues with some of these titles.

Veronica Mars Season Three is problematic; not sure about one and two.

Another one to report - completely dead disc, won't even load:
John Wayne Triple Feature: Telegraph Trail / Somewhere in Sonora / Man From Monterey

I also have the triple feature with Big Stampede, Ride Him Cowboy and Haunted Gold so I check it too and that one plays fine.

I've been on a run of good luck and have only had The Quiet American from 2002 turn out to be a dud. I'm currently going through T alphabetically in my DVD collection. I've skipped a few TV shows with the intention of going back once the movies are completed, though.