The West Wing did switch after Season 3. The Bob Newhart Show and Dynasty are DVD-10s. I imagine many of the recent wave of FOX catalog TV series sets are DVD-10.

I encountered a playback problem with Disc 3 of seaQuest DSV (Season 1).

Disc 3, side A: Better Than Martians (Episode 13) skipped and pixilated near the end of the episode (picture paused, broke up, stuttered, jumped). The same disc (3) also skipped and pixilated considerably on side B during the final 4-5 minutes of Whale Song (Episode 16). So much so, that the final minutes of the episode were not even viewable.

Amazon allowed me to exchange for another set.

Arnette,

Great thread and thanks for your work.

Did Gord(tvshowsondvd) ever post his data research on this very thing?

He made this post a few days after he started:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...95#post2832895

Gord Lacey

Here's a quick update:

I've received 231 emails (and more coming in all the time). Of those, 150 are for Universal titles, 18 are for Fox, 9 are for ADV Films, 11 are for MGM, 30 are for Warner, 4 are for Alliance Atlantis Home Entertainment, and 9 are for other companies.

Gord

Is "Cleopatra 2525" on DVD-18?

Two suggestions for Paul: 1. I'm not sure if you want to leave "Universal" in the title because we're not exclusing discussing Universal DVD-18s (even though Universal is the main culprit according to Gord Lacey's results). 2. Put the layer change marks (when they are known) next to the titles with potential problems in the list. To me all DVD-18s have the potential for problems, but clearly some have a higher probability than others.

My opinion is that for some manufacturing reason (for which I've found no explanation) DVD-18s are more likely to have problems than DVD-9s. Therefore, all DVD-18s are suspect until error scanned or at least played through all the way. For some reason Universal seems to get a higher percentage than the other studios. It would be nice to know if that's because the other studios who still use DVD-18 use different plants than the infamous Mexico facility or if there is some other reason.

By the way, I found the Dune layer changes from the Home Theater forum:
Side 1 - 1:25:47, Side 2 - 1:22:08

Dallas, Seasons 1-4, are all DVD-18s.

I have them, but have not watched them.

AFAIK the Fox releases of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea are on DVD-14 - which are flippers, with one dual layer side and one single layer side. And surprise! I've already seen complaints about playback problems.

I don't know about their Time Tunnel discs, but they could be the same format.

Which is why I'm curbing my impatience to have these two series, and am waiting for the UK releases to be announced, they willalmost certainly be either 9's or 10's.

DVD-18's are effectively two 9's glued back to back, so it must be way more difficult to manufacture them...each side has to have two layers, with the laser reading both, but on the other hand not reading further down to the other side's layers. The more you stuff onto a disc, the more there is to go wrong....

Isn't Superman: The Movie a DVD-18 disc?

Manzana,

I agree, I think it is about time to change the title of this thread. However, how do you do that?

Also, what does one have to do to get a thread sticky? I would like to see this as a sticky thread.

mbs,

I have added Dallas to the list.

dhmac,

I think so. Maybe we can get some confirmation here. Also, I think that some of the Terminator 2: Judgement Day - Ultimate Editions are DVD-18 as well

All of these posts are about Magnum P.I. season 3:

From post 1 in this thread:

This is from post 2 in that same thread:

This is from post 3 in that same thread:

I don't know if you guys can read those 3 quotes without registering. It's a Magnum P.I. message board with free registration.

There's also this post:

And this post:

I can confirm that one - yes, a number of the Terminator 2 Ultimate Editions were DVD-18. However, since it was one of the first titles (or, maybe the first) to use DVD-18 and processing capacity was limited, this title was also released in a 2-disc case with 2 DVD-9 discs.

Which one early buyers of this release received was a "luck of the draw" thing - mine ended up (luckily) being the 2-disc DVD-9 version.

I have no idea, but I'd guess it takes an administrator, so you'd probably have to send a private message here to one of them and ask if they would change the title and make it a sticky. Hopefully they would agree it's worth being a sticky. Perhaps you could call it something like the "The Official List of DVD-18 releases and problems" given that I haven't seen any other similar threads. Do you think you're going to have time to maintain it (i.e. periodically update the main list based on other people's comments)?

Regarding T2 UE, like dhmac I also got 2 DVD-9s, but later copies were a DVD-18.

Can anyone tell me where the layer change is on the second disc of the Frankenstein: The Legacy Collection?

Well I just came back from Best Buy and made a VERY interesting discovery while exchanging a defective copy of Casino. Universal has quietly reissued Casino as a single DVD-9 and dropped most of the special features. It's got a different UPC and rang up $2 cheaper. Instead of saying Anniversay Edition in the gold banner, it says Special Edition. Still includes the deleted scenes, but looks like it dropped most everything else.

The spine has the gold widescreen label instead of black. I will get scans of these within the next day or so. Suffice it to say, this IMO is a big admission of fault for this title. Why they didn't just keep it a 2 DVD-9 release like they did with some runs of Ray, I don't know.

At least I have a copy that will likely work now.

Thanks for the info on that. I would like to have all of the special features, but having a playable copy of the movie is more important.

Also like to note the new NYPD Blue Season 3 set comes with 4 flippers. Now, I've read elsewhere some Fox TV sets are coming with DVD-10's, but in NYPD Blue's case, they have 4 episodes per side on most of the discs. Unless they seriously compress the episodes, I don't see them putting more than 3 hours of content on a single layer. I'm going to try and blow through the set this week to see how it does.

And on a positive note, my DVD-9 Casino played just fine, as did my Frighteners DC. Just have to spin Carlito's Way UE, Blues Brothers 25th, Dune Extended and Cinderella Man and I should be done checking all my DVD-18's.

Are DVD-10's double sided, single layer? Why would they do that instead of a single sided, double layer? I'm guessing it's the same reason why Warner/New Line used to issue WS/FS flippers when they could have put both formats on the same side of a dual layer and included disc artwork and maybe had a little room for more extras. What's the benefit? Were single-layer flippers cheaper to produce?

NYPD Blue Season 3 is DVD-14. They have four episodes on one side and two on the other, right?

Indeed it is.

Yes, I believe that, at least in the early days of DVD, DVD-10s were a bit cheaper to produce, and probably easier, too, so that's why you saw so many back in the day.

Also, a DVD-10 holds slightly more data than a DVD-9, so that could be an issue as well in some cases.

I think that DVD-14s also have some of the same issues as DVD-18s. I had a Howling SE rot on me (was able to replace with) and I've yet to find an Outer Limits S2 that will work. Both are DVD-14s, so I think that the problem isn't limited to DVD-18s as much as it is a problem of properly manufacturing DVDs with more than two data layers.

I stand corrected. This is indeed the case. The first 3 discs have 4 episodes on one side and 2 on the other. Disc 4 is a 2/2 split, so it may even be a DVD-10.

I have a 2001 MGM SE of Terminator, a DVD-14, so far no problems.

Interesting and disturbing news about Casino. I haven't bought it because of the the DVD-18 issue, but I would like the special features. So this new DVD-9 doesn't even have a commentary track (I seem to remember the DVD-18 having one)? I guess Region 2 is the answer.

Edit: Amazon has this new Casino "Special Edition", released Jan 17th, 2006:
Casino SE

I believe it still has the commentary track-it's called something like "Moments with..."
So that, deleted scenes, and one of the featurettes are still there.