Sorry, A Night to Remember DVD.

I have been pretty lucky so far, i have only had problems replaying dvds with universal titles:

Kojak
Kolchak: the night stalker
&
the monster legacy gift set

all 3 of them had skipping issues, i got 2 different copies of kolchak and they both skipped, i gave up and will never buy a dvd-18 title from Uni, the las vegas first 2 seasons i didn't have a problem with and they finally stopped using dvd-18s for las vegas seasons.

Mine also died on me and Criterion fortunately replaced it.

my OOP YELLOW SUBMARINE DVD stopped playing, sadly. Only played it once.

I returned a faulty copy of Anchor Bay's original HALLOWEEN IV dvd because of the problem. I later heard it was a bad pressing issue and my next copy was fine.

Happened to my copy of OH BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?, too.

That was the movie that didn't work for me also. I've watched it only once many years back, and suddenly got the urge to watch it again and found that it no longer works.

Thanks for everyone else. I really have to check out my Anchor Bay DVDs also as I have a number of DVDs from them. I also have quite a number of old Universals. Sad that such a big studio would have such poor quality control back then.

Thanks for the info. I'll have to check some of the titles you mentioned.

The Anchor Bay ones were down to a manufacturing problem. The discs were sealed correctly, but the lacquer layer used to protect the metallic data layer was either the wrong stuff or contaminated, anyway it was this that chemically reacted with the metal, causing it to oxidise and become unplayable. The discs turned a uniform bronze colour (air contamination would likely not be uniform, but would start at the outer/inner edges).

Many of the other titles mentioned in this thread are relatively early discs that were manufactured by WAMO (Warner Advanced Media Operations). Their early dual layer discs suffered from a problem too which meant the discs slowly became unplayable, usually starting to fail at the layer-change point.

Single layer discs were fine (and in fact most dual-layer ones were too).

Many studios used WAMO to make their discs, including Warner, Image Entertainment, Universal...etc. But not Anchor Bay oddly enough.

It was a limited number of titles and the problem was down to an error made by the company that manufactured discs for Anchor Bay.

AB ran a program to exchange all faulty discs, and switched to another manufacturer.

Also, when the titles were re-issued as their Double Features, they were not affected.

The problem is instantly recognisable, the discs turn a dark bronze colour! Any disc that was going to do this would have done so by now.

You aren't alone, do a search one these forums (or Home Theatre) and you will find a whole bunch of complaints about Universal's releases on DVD-18 type discs (these are double sided discs with two layers on each side).

This is not DVD rot but appears to be something else.

I have 3, Universal's The Thing , Apollo 13 and Buena Vista's Mission to Mars will not play anymore.

Just to let you know, you can get this title at Target

I think my copy of 'Street Fighter' (based on the video game, not the Sonny Chiba series) is even before the time of DVD-18 and I definitely know it's only a single-sided disc.

As far as you know, Universal never did a replacement program similar to Anchor Bay's, right?

I guess I'll read up on the complaints.

My Raging Bull 2-disc died after a year of loneliness!

A lot of you may remember the huge problem with The Matrix when it originally was released on DVD. For some unexplained reason, a large number of people discovered that this release simply stopped working after about a year (at least it was a year for me). I remember reading somewhere that it was because the original Matrix disc had so much information on it that the technology that existed to manufacture DVDs at the time was not advanced enough to write the information to the disc with the quality required. Now, the preceding answer may have been B.S., but all I know is that one day the disc simply stopped playing (in any and every DVD player), had no visible disc "rot", and had to be replaced. I then went online and discovered this was happening to people nationwide.

So far...

Devil's Advocate -- will not play
American President -- will not play

Will Warner Brothers Home Video provide replacements?

Fortunately nothing (yet) on mine. Recently I popped in my old Das Boot DVD and it freezes, but upon closer inspection it was caused by mold growing on the surface of the disc. Once I cleaned it, the problem is gone.

Guess i'm gonna be checking all my discs in the next two weeks.

Is this the old Orion-released DTS set? I have it but I have yet to actually see the movie.

I recently had this happen on Disc 2 of Godfather II. I had planned a whole weekend marathon to see this with my girlfriend and it starts going to hell about 20 minutes into the second disc.

I'm not rebuying the box set for it.

iirc the Orion DTS release is not a flipper. The newer MGM Director's Cut is.

yes i work in a buy and sell shop.had person from kingston,having two different copies of kenkucky fried movie.won't play in any ps3 or dvd player.
But i have a differnt color copy that does work.it's is red on front cover compared to defective ones that are blue.

I bought Kentucky Fried Movie when it came out and it still plays. Halloween IV went bad on me (disc changed color), also Boogie Nights stopped working after more than 10 years, and Training Day started having problems after the layer change.

As I've posted in the Hi-Def area, Warner HD-DVDs seem to have a problem with rotting as well if not a very high defect rate. I have nearly every Warner HD-DVD title and have just gotten around to playing some of them and a lot are freezing in the middle or not playing at all. I've heard on other forums people have checked discs that played fine when new and are now having problems. (Being an obsessive media collector, I'd advise anyone else considering collecting HD-DVDs not to bother- you will end up extremely frustrated!)

Have not run into that problem myself yet thankfully-

I've only had one disc go bad all these years, Blues Brothers 2000. Bought a new copy though.

Yes, I know a lot of people don't like the movie, but it had some great music in it!

My copy of Fellowship of the Ring (theatrical) that I bought on release day went bad after a while, most of it would play except it would freeze and skip at the layer change. I even tried boiling it to fix it, but I ended up just buying a used copy for $4 to replace it.