orangerunner

I just noticed my 2-disc 40th Anniversary Edition of "Woodstock" from 2009 just had a layer-break failure on Disc 1. Disc 2 seemed to be OK.

mickey65

My pristine "Somewhere in Time" DVD ended up having a slow skip in the last 30 minutes of it. Had to replace...

clckworang

I'm nearing the end of going through my DVD collection. I encountered one problematic disc on Veronica Mars season 2 that impacted two episodes. I was really feeling good about the stuff that was left.

Of course, that meant doom. I have the old Ultimate Disney Treasure Chest. It might have been a store exclusive. It included seven of the Walt Disney Treasures Collection. Actually, it might have been the first seven. The set is long out of print, and not one disc worked. I had mainly purchased it for the animated stuff, so there were a couple of sets that I hadn't even opened. Those sets wouldn't load either. Big disappointment.

I've got a handful of Walt Disney Treasures still to go, and then I think I'm down to just a few TV series. That's still quite a few discs, but there's a finish line in sight for the DVD collection.

PhantomStranger

That sounds awful. Not one worked? Wow, some of those out-of-print Disney Treasure DVDs are worth serious money.

I don't even want to imagine how many defective DVDs I probably own.

b2net

A concern for me as well. 😲

Surfinhank

Found another one: Blade - the complete series. Discs 1, 2 and 3 are completely dead, they won't even load. Ironically though, disc 4 plays perfectly fine. There was also a stand alone release of the premiere called Blade: House of Chthon and it's completely dead also.

PhantomStranger

I enjoyed that show. I'll have to dig out my DVDs and check them.

Surfinhank

2 more for the recycle bin:
American Gothic - The Complete Series (2005) - discs 1 and 2 are starting to rot, still playable but you have to skip through big sections of certain episodes.

and a blu-ray: Operation Endgame from Anchor Bay... completely bronzed and it has a lot of those little cloudly white dots.

DownSouth

Found this via internet search for DVDS that stop working. I had sold a dvd online, the buyer asked me to see if it would play before I mailed it, as her version of the same movie suddenly stopped working. I tried it in three different players, with the same results, would not load, one player said the disc was dirty, I tried cleaning it, and it still would not play. Cancelled the sale order and will be putting this in the trash.

This was for The Last Mimzy, 2007, by New Line Home Entertainment.

clckworang

None in this set would load up in any player. It was a painful realization. I wish there was a digital trade-in that studios offered, but they'd rather me pay a monthly subscription to access them.

PhantomStranger

Don't ever look into how much those were worth on the secondary market, it would be depressing.

danwiz

Do you know if there are any sites that list DVDs that often end up with DVD Rot?

morriscroy

The only widely known botches were Warner titles manufactured during the mid-late 2000s. These discs have IFPI sid mould code 2U** etched in first inner transparent ring away from the center hole of the dvd disc. (The ** are alphanumeric wildcards).

Otherwise, I generally assume any cd/dvd/bluray disc can succumb to rot in a random manner.

Josh-da-man

There are certain runs of DVDs and blu-rays that are known to be problematic: The mid-2000s Warners DVDs, certain late 90s/early 00s Anchor Bay DVDs, a batch of Criterion blu-rays, and early Lionsgate blu-rays.

Also anything on a DVD-14 or DVD-18, the discs with multiple sides and multiple layers. These were difficult to manufacture and prone to failing. (These are the discs where, if it's a tv season, the discs will be double sided and contain four episodes on one side, and either two or four episodes on the other.)

And, yeah, morris up there is correct; any DVD or blu-ray can shit the bed, though certain runs/titles are more likely than others to fail.

As for a resource, forums like this one where users report bad titles are probably the best resource available. lddb.com has every laserdisc rated on its likelihood to develop laser rot, but I don't think there's any site like that for DVD yet.

Surfinhank

And another: The Adventures of Brisco County Jr - discs 1 and 5 are completely dead, all the others are dead at the layer change.

Mondo Kane

Yup. Some recent casualties of mine are Disc 3 of Jazz Singer and Doctor X/Return of Doctor X on their "Masters of Horror" set.

mallratcal

My Tales From The Crypt: Season 6, discs 1 and 2, have succumbed to this. It almost looks like the disc art has bled into the disc itself.

davidlynchfan

Ugh. Tons of my Paramount Blu-rays stopped working, it would play until around the middle of the movie, around 45 minutes - 1 hour into it. Catch me if you can, Scrooge, The Dictator. I bet more...

Josh-da-man

I really hope we aren't starting to see the beginning of the end of optical discs, like they're starting to hit the half-life mark.

I was an early adopter of DVDs back when I just got out of college, based on the promise that I could build up a large library of movies over my lifetime, and that I could just pull a disc from my personal library and watch it any time I wanted to.

I still have discs from 1998 -- like the original, uncensored copy of The Devil's Advocate -- that still play.

PhantomStranger

I suspect early DVD pressings will last much longer than the slop which started becoming common after 2000. Anything pressed in Japan and the first American factories were carefully scrutinized. But the quality noticeably dipped as the factories became overwhelmed by demand and cost factors.

What's funny is that CD pressing rarely had these issues, despite often pressing more units in their heyday.

Josh-da-man

You would think that, as the optical video disc format matured, that quality control during manufacturing wouldn't be an issue.

But as the format matured, we saw costs being cut right and left in the packaging -- flimsy eco cases, covers being printed on thinner paper stock, and the loss of inserts -- and we can only assume that they're doing the same with disc manufacture.

Every time I pick up one of my older DVDs, I'm always shocked by how substantial the case feels. The covers are printed on thicker stock -- some almost feel like thin cardboard -- and the plastic cases are sturdy and have little give like newer cases do.

morriscroy

Not true.

I've had quite a few audio cd discs which turned out to be manufactured poorly. Though I never knew this back in the day, due to the cd player's error correction handling most of the problems such that they were largely unnoticable.

In contrast on a computer, the disc quality shoddiness revealed itself in plain sight when I ripped these same discs to the computer. In some cases, it took more than a half hour to get an error free rip in a secure mode.

orangerunner

It's an unfortunate reality when a product's production numbers dwindle, profits decline and cutting corners becomes a more common occurrence. The disc pressing machines and printers are also becoming more and more expensive to maintain and repair and yet they don't generate the profits they used to. The experts in the field are retiring and there are no new apprentices getting into a business that is in decline.

PhantomStranger

I'd disagree with your conclusion. CDs were a far more reliable and durable medium than DVD in my extensive experience. That doesn't mean CDs were indestructible or never lost data, but they held up under much tougher conditions.

sracer

This past February I finished ripping my 1100+ films on DVD and 4000+ TV episodes for easy access from my Plex server (original DVDs are stored in binders)… not one exhibited any rot.
Does environmental conditions of how/where discs are stored have any effect on the development of rot?