Ash Ketchum

I finally experienced what I believe is my first encounter with disc rot: Sam Peckinpah's THE GETAWAY (1972) from Warner Bros. I purchased it in January 2011.

kd5

Final Destination: Triple Feature (FD1, 2, & 3, FD1 & 2 are on a flipper disc, FD3 is on its own disc). Tried to watch FD1 this evening, movie froze at the 1:02 mark, would not FF, took awhile to get it to stop. Tried to skip the chapter, it froze up again at the menu in the process of skipping. Pissed me off, that was to be our horror movie for the evening.

Edit: Ended up buying the 4-Movie blu-ray collection and threw the DVD collection in a box.

PhantomStranger

Flippers were a mistake from the beginning by studios looking to cut corners.

Josh-da-man

From what I recall, some of the earliest flippers (like Seven and Amadeus, where the movies are actually split over two sides like a laserdisc) were made that way because it was the early days of the format and they hadn't worked all of the kinks out of RSDL/DVD-9 manufacturing yet. I can also sort of remember the early DVD-9 discs being prone to being defective.

Some flippers also had the widescreen on one side and the fullscreen on the other; I believe a double-sided DVD (DVD-10) has room for more data than a DVD-9, so that has the advantage of giving both versions a higher bitrate.

DVD-14 and DVD-18 flippers, though, were a mistake and have a high failure rate, both not working straight out of the box and rotting over time. But certain studios like Universal really seemed to like them. As far as cost-saving goes, I would think that it would cost as much or more to manufacture a single DVD-14/DVD-18 than it would two separate DVD-9s.

morriscroy

Most likely the movie companies cut corners on quality control, to kept manufacturing costs lower.

Universal only really did multiple DVD18 flippers discs sets over mid-2004 to about mid-2006. They likely got a lot of returns of defective tv season dvd sets over 2005 and into 2006, and changed their minds about using DVD18 flippers.

kd5

I don't like flippers because they're too easy to scuff/scratch, I feel like I have to be extra cautious with them, and it was just a damned stupid idea to begin with.

orangerunner

My luck with double-sided DVDs has been pretty good although I don't buy TV box sets which seem to be problematic for a lot people. I still have lots of the original 1998 Columbia/Tri-Star widescreen/full screen single-layer flippers which, after 24 years, have not given me one bad disc so far.

The only rot trend I have noticed is:

HD-DVD from Warner Bros.
Warner Bros titles pressed between 2005-2007
MGM/20th Century Fox pressed around 2007 (Platoon 2-disc, Invasion of the Body Snatchers 2-disc, Species 2-disc are samples)

morriscroy

The Sony/Columbia/Tristar double-sided flipper discs from that time period, were typically DVD10 flippers where each side had a respective independent single-layer DVD5. DVD10 flippers were not really problematic.

The nasty problematic double-sided flipper discs were the DVD14 and DVD18 ones.

DVD14 = sideA is a two-layer DVD9, with sideB is a single-layer DVD5
(a total of "three" layers)


DVD18 = sideA is a two-layer DVD9, with sideB is a two-layer DVD9
(a total of "four" layers)

mallratcal

My Tales From the Crypt season 7 discs have the same issues as my season 6 ones.

Creepshow 3 has also died, at least there is a blu-ray I can upgrade to.

Surfinhank

Another WB TV series bites the dust: Life Goes On: Season 1

Discs 1, 2, 3 and 4 play perfect
Disc 5 freezes at the layer change
Disc 6 is completely dead, won't even load


Also, just watched all 7 series of Prime Suspect. All played fine except series 5. Both discs in that set froze at the layer change.

joe_b

Just discovered my Artisan DVD of Earth Girls Are Easy will not load. Played fine when I last watched it about a decade ago.

Surfinhank

Two more for the recycling bin:

Bliss: Season 2 - freezes at the layer change

Waking the Dead: Series 2 - Disc 1 is completely dead, won't even load / disc 2 freezes at the layer change


... just found another: Fame - Season 1 - disc 1 is completely dead, won't even load. All the others are perfectly fine.

kd5

Attempted to watch Lethal Weapon: The Director's Cut from the 4 Film Favorites (flipper discs) but it froze at the 1:06 mark, and no amount of cleaning resolved the issue.

Warner Bros. Pictures/Warner Home Video

Josh-da-man

Man, I hate this thread.

I'd like to check all of my DVDs and Blu-rays, but I have so damned many that I'd be sitting in front of my blu-ray player for weeks taking discs out of their boxes, inserting discs in the player tray, waiting for them to load, waiting for the unskippable menus and warnings to end, chapter-jumping through the movies/episodes, ejecting the disc, and putting it back in its case. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat...

orangerunner

My two-disc DVD Digipak version of "A Christmas Story" will not proceed beyond the widescreen/full screen option menu on three different players. The disc is absolutely mint.

orangerunner

I look at it this way; if they're gonna rot, they're gonna rot. Going through every disc for some piece-of-mind is temporary as the disc may very well start to rot after you check it.

Another reason why I like to keep both a Blu-ray and a DVD of my favorite movies.

Alan Smithee

DVDShrink on a computer is a quick way to make sure your discs haven’t rotted.

Master O

https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec5/ lists suitable environmental conditions for CDs and DVDs.

Surfinhank

A couple more:

30 Days of Night ( last few chapters start to pixelate and eventually it stops playing)

Tracey Takes On: Season 2 - disc 1 & 3 are fine, but disc 2 has a number of spots on the second layer that are pixelating and stuttering.

Alan Smithee

Checked my Larry King box set which I got in the Great $6 Big Lots Box Set Bonanza of 2009 and the first disc is rotted near the edge. Looks like really great stuff too, this was one of those titles I was stoked to find but just never had time to sit down and watch. A bunch of sealed copies are on Ebay for a few bucks so ordered another one to roll the dice on, if this one also crashes I may just give up. Really pathetic that Warner was the main company pushing DVD and they made so many faulty discs. A few here and there I could understand, but this is an epidemic.

etching

Does the player matter too, that is, are some models/brands more
super-sensitive to playing suspect discs, or others more forgiving to them?

mickey65

Just discovered my "The Fugitive/US Marshalls" double-feature disc went out. Kept freezing up during the last 30 minutes. Not a mark on the disc! Replacement copy on the way...

Josh-da-man

Probably, depending on how pervasive the rot on the disc is.

I've had a scratched rental DVD that would freeze and skip on one player but play fine on another.

I would assume that some players are better at error correction than others, so a disc with a minor rot problem or one that is just beginning may not be noticeable on players with better error correction. A disc with severe rot won't work on any player.

joe_b

Several of the defective WB discs I didn't get replaced are still sitting in a drawer. I put Twilight Zone: The Movie (now out of print) in my player last night and it wouldn't even load. I could at least watch it up to the layer change when I discovered the problem five years ago, so the rot has gotten worse with time.

I'm sure there are other discs in my collection that have gone bad since my last check, but I'm too burnt out to worry about it. In fact, the whole rot situation with the Warner/MGM/Magnolia titles really turned me off to physical media in general. I still enjoy the collection I have, but I've only picked up three or four new titles a year since (it used to be dozens if not hundreds before).

Alan Smithee

Does ANYONE here have a Larry King set that isn’t rotted? I’ve tried two copies now and they both crap out during John Travolta on the first disc. Would like to have a playable copy of this, normally I’d just give up but there’s some important stuff on here.