E Unit

I wouldn't say deemed unnecessary by the public as they were simply not educated on what benefits blu ray offered. Most of the people I know have HD TV's yet still play DVD and VHS on it.

orangerunner

I think there was a lot of emotional investment involved as well. Many people started their collection around 2000 and by 2006, sorry, but something better has come along.

Everyone knows that's the way technology works but it's very different if you make a one-time purchase of a computer and five years later you have to replace it. People can handle that.

With DVD, people made the one-time purchase of a DVD player for $300 and then over the span of four or five years bought hundreds of DVDs averaging, say, $12 a piece.

That's several thousand dollars spent on something you're told is now garbage. Of course this number doesn't include the amount of time invested in shopping around at various stores trying to find the titles you wanted.

Many people said "screw it!" and stuck with DVD, maybe bought the odd Blu-ray when the players were $50 or streamed.

morriscroy

(On an unrelated tangent).

There's also the case of some poorly manufactured discs becoming garbage anyways, when they start developing bad sectors many years later after the original purchase.

I've been noticing quite a few music cds and some older manufactured dvds I have, which have been developing enough bad sectors to be largely coasters now.


I remember several friends who were hardcore into dvd back in the day (circa late-1990's and/or early-2000's), who ended up having too many discs which became useless coasters due to too many bad sectors developing over the years. These friends were stringent about taking good care of their cds/laserdiscs/dvds discs, and storing them properly for many years.

Some of these friends never moved on to bluray, for this very reason.

morriscroy

I remember before I started buying a lot of dvds/blurays in 2011, a few of these friends gave me a stern warning about optical discs becoming garbage due to bad sectors developing over a long period of time. (Mostly from their own first hand experiences). They had much larger cd/laserdisc/dvd collections than me.

I didn't take their advice at the time. (In hindsight, I should have taken their advice more seriously).

bruceames

Very good point about people feeling resentful of their newly-acquired collections becoming obsoleted by a better format. I was slightly taken back when I learned about the HD DVD/BLu-ray launches (which I learned about in early 2006, just before launch). But since I just upgraded my HDTV, the excitement of seeing HD on disc on my new set was a lot stronger than any resentment I otherwise would have felt.

Plus the upscaling on my new HD DVD player was an added bonus and I was enjoying my DVD collection all over again. I've always felt that Blu-ray's worst enemy was DVD upscaling. When people finally get an HDTV, instead of thinking "oh man, I gotta get some HD material, these DVDs look like crap", they think "wow, my DVDs look better than ever. I'm good with this, so no need to upgrade."

morriscroy

(Some tangential rambling).

I was hoping to either buy bluray or hd-dvd, at least for something like Star Wars. (At the time I was making a decision whether to purchase a Sony PS3 or Xbox360 console). Though unfortunately I delayed that decision for several years, and largely forgot about it in the meantime.

By the time I was looking to buy a video game console again, there were stories about earlier Lionsgate blurays having playback problems. There was nothing definitive stating whether it was due to firmware issues or discs developing bad sectors. But nevertheless, I wanted to believe they were just firmware issues and not due to bad sectors.

Eventually I purchased a bluray player at the end of 2011, and also a large number of Lionsgate released blurays. Unfortunately some of these discs developed bad sectors over the years.

orangerunner

Over a certain period of time people forget how much money they spent on something or they feel they have "gotten their money's worth".

Once Blu-ray players were under $100 and titles could be found for $5-$10 it eased some of the resentment. Although, I think I only replaced about 25 titles that I had on DVD, averaging $5 a piece.

morriscroy

Wonder if this happened too with the hardcore laserdisc crowd, back in 1997.

bruceames

I don't think they felt DVD was a better format, so no, at least not in 1997.

dvdshonna

Have you tried cleaning them? Windex and a cloth (or whatever you usually use).

I turn over a lot of DVDs and havn't noticed any problems. Even discs that are full of scratches, usually play without problems if they're cleaned.

morriscroy

Of course. I've tried many ways.

For a few discs (mostly rare ones), I even went to a nearby indie record store which did disc restoration. They told me they couldn't fix them. Their analysis was that my particular discs were problematic ones, where the reflection layer was decaying away. They couldn't fix discs with that sort of problem.

For the discs in question from my collection with newly developed bad sectors, they look just like they did when I first purchased them. (Brand new). Most likely something is affecting the reflection layers on these discs, which is not easily repairable.

morriscroy

(For a bit of background, for those who haven't heard it previously).

I have an extreme paranoia of bad sectors on optical discs.

Back in the late-1990's, one of the first dvds I purchased was defective with bad sectors. My copy of Terminator 2 froze within 20 minutes into the movie. This abruptly curtailed any possible "dvd hobby" I could have had in those days, since at the time I wasn't aware of any easy ways to check dvd discs for bad sectors. (ie. Copying the undecrypted vob files straight to the computer didn't work at all).

More recently over the past 4+ years since I started buying a lot of dvds and blurays, I have checked every single newly purchased disc on the computer for bad sectors. (Sometimes I even checked them two or three times). If a newly purchased disc has bad sectors, I returned the dvd/bluray disc to the store for another copy.

(Previously I've been doing this for many years with music cds).

But more recently over the past six months, I've been noticing quite a few of my dvd discs and some music cds in my personal collection, which have been developing bad sectors over the last several years. Two or three+ years ago when I first purchased these cds/dvds/blurays, they were checked on the computer with no signs of any bad sectors. When I checked them more recently, on both my newer and older dvd/bluray drives, they had many newly developed bad sectors.

I understand that some of these cd/dvd/bluray titles may have been sitting in a warehouse for many years (or even over a decade) before I purchased them.

Sub-Zero

I wonder how much the arrival of the Blu-ray Disc (and HD-DVD) format itself actually hurt physical media sales? In other words, when DVD was first introduced, compared to VHS it was so advanced and so much better that it seemed like a lot of people thought that the DVD format would not be replaced with a better format for the foreseeable future, especially considering that VHS itself had been around for about 20 years at that point. I think that a lot of people probably believed that DVD would remain the only format for a similar amount of time, and were therefore comfortable amassing a large collection of movies on the DVD format as a result. However, less than a decade later, Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD were introduced, and a lot of people that had been big DVD collectors were surprised that a new format had been introduced so soon after the DVD format was introduced, and many seemed determined to not get "burned again" with yet another new format if they decided to upgrade to Blu-ray Disc, fearing that Blu-ray was only going to be an interim technology until the next "big thing" came out. And with the arrival of 3D Blu-ray Discs so soon after "regular" Blu-rays were introduced, which was technically a new format since someone had to buy at least a new 3D TV and new 3D Blu-ray player to be able to properly watch 3D movies on the Blu-ray format, along with talk of Ultra HD Blu-ray coming soon, it seems like it is going to be much more difficult for companies to convince consumers that their new state-of-the-art offerings are not just some interim technology that is going to be "outdated" in a few years, but something that people can really invest in for the long-term.

bruceames

That's true. People think that Blu-ray slowed the decline of physical media by contributing "X" amount of sales. But what's missed is that DVD sales were hurt by the existence of Blu-ray. Not only by people converting from DVD to Blu-ray, but by people forgoing physical media altogether for the reasons described above. So the "net" sales benefit of Blu-ray is really a lot less than what it appears, and it's possible (but very unlikely) that it could be a negative number.

That said, it would seem ludicrous to not have an HD format just so DVD can ride out the 20 years of exclusivity. It was unfortunately introduced right before HDTVs came out, so the timing was bad. So that explains why Blu-ray/HD DVD came out so soon afterwards.

BuckNaked2k

I encounter this as well. Apparently, ignorance is bliss.

Alan Smithee

Maybe they should bring back that promo video that says "Without Blu-Ray, your HDTV is just a TV." Before I had an HDTV I was a little confused about the whole upconverting thing, thinking that it MIGHT make DVDs near-HD quality, but it really doesn't. There's just no comparison on most titles. Doesn't mean you have to throw away DVDs you've already bought, but everyone really should be buying new titles on Blu-Ray.

Josh-da-man

How many of your DVDs that you have checked have developed bad sectors? What percentage, like xout of y discs that you tested?

I have, so far, had one regular DVD that rotted, the DVD-14 special edition of The Howling. and that one, I'm sure, was down to fact that it was a 14 disc that, like the DVD-18, is double sided with multiple layers.

Also had a couple of porno DVDs rot; that's probably down to the production companies utilizing unlicensed replication facilities.

PhantomStranger

DVD manufacturing did have some bumps along the road. Pressing quality declined when manufacturing shifted from Japan to the US, and then really took a hit when they finally shifted manufacturing to Mexico.

The DVD-18 configuration should have never been foisted on the market. I believe it was Universal pushing that terrible boondoggle. They tried something similar when they attempted to push dual-sided BD flippers on the market. I immediately steer clear of any engineering solution pushed by Universal.

orangerunner

I played my old DVD of "Final Analysis" which is a 4:3 title from Warner, released in 1998.

I played it up-coverted at 1080p on my 46" HDTV and looked really bad. I tried it on my 36" 4:3 CRT at 480p and it looked considerably better.

Bit of an apples and oranges comparison but I prefer to watch my DVDs on my CRT and leave the HD titles for my HDTV.

davidlynchfan

Where's the new Hollywood movies are basically shit and not worth owning theory? That definitely applies to me.

Even when they're good they're just NOT THAT good (just soulless) and no way in hell do I actually want to own them. I don't rent or stream either (I just gooble up the good ol' classics most of the time).

morriscroy

I don't have an exact percentage.

(This is strictly anecdotal).

No movie company is "immune".

For bluray, some early Lionsgate blurays going bad such as Lord of War, The Eye, various Rambo, Basic Instinct, etc ...


With respect to dvd (excluding double-sided dvd14 and dvd18 type flipper discs):

Fox - various James Bond, White Collar, Boston Legal, etc ...

Warner - Babylon 5, Dukes of Hazzard, etc ...

Universal - Law & Order

Paramount - CSI, Jackass

Disney/Buena Vista - Alias


For pornos, too many botched dual-layered dvd discs. (ie. Holding more than 5 gigabytes of data)


These are the just the ones I bothered checking over the past six months or so. (I dread checking anything else from the rest of my collection).

morriscroy

Wonder if Made In China is any worse.

Mill Creek seems to have been manufacturing many of their dvd titles in China over the past year or so.

Josh-da-man

What program do you use to check them?

I have one on my PC - can't recall what is called, I think it's from Nero - and it always returns errors on my commercially pressed DVDs; I think it doesn't like the CSS encryption. I mainly use it to check DVD-R discs I've burned.

DaveyJoe

Do you live in a humid climate?

morriscroy

Not excessively humid.

The room I store my cds/dvds/blurays in, is a cool dry room that has a dehumidifier running over most of the non-winter months. It is also the same room my tv is in.

The dehumidifier has been running for over a decade in this room, before I started buying a lot of dvds/blurays. Previously, this particular room was where I keep my electric guitar collection.