Question is pretty simple, but:
Have you ever contacted a studio or distributor about defective or sub-par discs?
What I mean is, if you've found a particular issue that may have been overlooked, have you ever been the one to take it upon yourself to contact them about it, or do you always wait for someone else to do it?
What about if you're just fed-up with their shitty output and want to make a general complaint?

I ask because there's a particular studio in Canada that, time and time again, is releasing discs that just aren't as good as they really should be. On the ones I've seen in particular, there are issues such as:
- audio on disc (DD) does not match what is listed on packaging (DTS HD MA)
- special features are unplayable or audio-only on most players
- more...

If this were some tiny group releasing b-grade material, I might not care so much. But these guys have the distribution rights to some of the bigger "indie" films released in the last few years, in addition to a bunch of high-profile world cinema. I never had issues with their DVD releases, but in the Blu-ray world, they're kind of pathetic.

On their website, they appear to be a small group of people who are in love with cinema and take great joy in bringing so many films to Canadian audiences. On that point, they DO bring stuff out theatrically that we may not otherwise get, and that's awesome. But their Blu-rays suck. Period.

My argument is: they don't HAVE to put out discs. No one is forcing them. But if they're going to bother, they should put some effort into it instead of what seems to be an intentional effort to release crappy discs, despite the fact that their US counterpart exhibits none of these same issues. Sometimes, their discs are direct ports of the US versions, but as soon as they "touch" it up in any way, things go south in the areas I mentioned.

So... back to the main question:
Have you ever contacted a studio about the quality of their discs?
Do you think I should even bother?

I've done it three times years ago : Blue Underground - Bad Boy Bubby, Anchor Bay - The Wicker Man & Criterion - Jigoku. All three were defective and I was sent replacements.

No.

If we're just talking defective discs rather than trying to get them to improve their overall quality, only once. One disc in my Star Trek: The Original Series Blu-ray set arrived with a scratch, tiny but enough to make an episode skip. I contacted Paramount, sent them the relevant information, and they got back to me instantly. I had a new disc in the mail, totally free, within days. Awesome.

I looked into the possibility of getting replacement discs for my Universal Monsters Blu-ray set since the awful packaging scuffed them up, but Universal's customer service page said that they charged $8 for each replacement disc. Typical godawful Universal service.

As for defects that aren't scratch-related, I have the double feature Blu-ray of Presumed Innocent and Frantic with the audio problem on Frantic, where the "English" audio is actually the French track, which is mostly in English but with a few scenes dubbed into French. I never bothered trying to get a replacement, because I bought the thing for Presumed Innocent rather than Frantic.

The only time was when the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation came out and the audio was messed up, but that was a mass issue and not something only I contacted the studio about.

I did contact the manufacturer of the packaging for Curb Your Enthusiasm because my season one case broke. They sent a new package to me promptly (like two days after I sent the email).

A couple of times. Warner Bros. is by far the easiest to deal with when a proper replacement program is in effect. Disney is okay but they don't trust their customers at all. The other studios are very hit and miss, hiding the easy ways to contact them. I will say that Shout Factory was very responsive in replacing the wrong disc on my Bruce Lee BD set.

In this day and age of declining manufacturing quality and zero checking before a release ships, the studios should have a more responsive customer service solution for their many defects. They want you to go through the retailer, but that is not so great anymore when places like Amazon will actually cut you off if there are too many returns on your account.

Never, I'm too lazy and often when there are major issues with a release I typically see some mention of it online. I don't think i've ever had to send a disc in for any recalls or anything either.

I guess there are three categories:

- Manufacturing defects. Discs being damaged, scratched, unplayable, etc.
- Authoring defects. The audio on TNG that Mike86 mentioned, where a recall/replacement plan is put in place
- General quality.

The last is the hardest to put into a proper complaint, I guess. The issue is just that this studio is grabbing licensing to some fantastic American and international films, doing some great things with theatrical distribution of such films, then dumps them onto sub-par Blu-rays that don't even compare to the studios releasing them in other countries.

This quote isn't from them, but it perfectly represents the mindset that I imagine these guys have:
In regards to the quote above, there was enough backlash for that particular studio to make a change. There's no backlash against the studio I'm talking about, though. At least, any backlash I've seen has just been in amazon.ca reviews. But I feel like what they're doing is worse than that other studio's mistake.

In the case of the studio I'm talking about, I'd say the biggest offending issue isn't subtitles, but instead they're dropping lossless audio, despite advertising it on the artwork, then when people do notice, they claim that the artwork is the problem, not the disc. But the problem is lazy/incompetent people authoring their discs.

So I think... why bother?

No matter what I say, they'll likely
- not care, or
- think I'm just insulting one of their colleagues

But like I said, I want to be able to purchase the discs in Canada, and not pay nearly double (in some cases) to import from US, UK, or elsewhere.

ehh. whatever. Maybe I'll just drop it and go drink some craft beer.

I contacted Universal for replacement discs when Back to the Future Parts II & III were framed incorrectly and they offered new discs with the correct framing.

I contacted Disney last year for a replacement Roger Rabbit DVD, since the ones included with the BD were Full Frame but were supposed to be widescreen.

I've never bothered contacting them when it's a shitty transfer.

You have to understand, Canada is a very small home video market. That company has paid money to retain exclusive distribution rights in that country but the market there isn't really big enough to support incredible editions which cost actual money. Move to a bigger Western country. I hear there is a very successful country to your South.

True, true...

I don't expect incredible editions, though. If it was ONE thing I wanted them to nail down, it's lossless audio. There's literally no reason I can imagine for them to be dropping that, especially since their video encodes appear to be identical to any US releases of the same films.

I guess that would explain the high prices for Canadian discs. I've bought one movie from Amazon.ca by it was almost $25.

I didn't know Mexico had a great BD market. The more you learn, right?

Twice and both were many years ago. One was with Universal for the framing issue on the BTTF box set. The other was for a defective Kentucky Fried Movie disc (forgot the studio).

Never on my own...just as part of an existing exchange program.

A few years ago, I made some inquiries in regard to defective Universal and Fox double-sided flippers dvd18 (or dvd14) discs used for various tv shows they released back in 2004-2006. (Stuff like Magnum PI, Knight Rider, Airwolf, The A-Team, Miami Vice, Remington Steele, etc ...). Apparently it was less expensive to just buy a new copy of the same flipper discs sets at a local store, than to deal with the Universal or Fox disc exchange/replacement service. So at the time, I didn't bother with replacing these defective flipper discs.

In the meantime, I figured out how to deal with some defective discs which involved using several dvd-rom drives (made by different manufacturers) and programs which did dvd sector extraction. For about 99%+ of such annoying defective discs (both flippers and single sided discs), I was eventually able to extract the isos in their entirety without any problems. (Essentially I now watch these particular extracted isos on the computer connect to the tv via hdmi, instead of playing the actual defective discs on a standalone player).

For the remaining less than 1% of basketcase discs, I found another copy for $2 (or $5) in the local dump bins which were not defective at all. Less expensive than going through Universal's or Fox's disc exchange/replacement service.

(At the present time, I only have five basketcase discs which I have not been able to extract the isos in their entirety, due to disc manufacturing defects. Four of these discs I largely don't care about. The remaining disc is a really crappy movie that I have only watched once, where the unreadable sectors just happen to be in the video section that played during the menu selection, while the actual movie itself played fine with no technical errors).


It turns out in recent times, Universal has been re-releasing a lot of their previous double-sided flipper disc sets, as new single-sided discs sets. (Such as Knight Rider, Magnum PI, Miami Vice, The A-Team, etc ...). Apparently it's also less expensive to just buy such single-sided discs set re-releases, than to deal with Universal's disc exchange service for the original defective flipper discs. (I picked up most of these single-sided discs re-releases for $10 a pop or less).

Easier to deal with these single-sided discs re-releases, than having to use a lot of elaborate elbow grease to deal with the original flippers.

More generally, I can overlook stuff like crappy transfers, lossy audio, etc ... when such bluray discs are $2 or $5.

For almost the last two years (with a few exceptions), I have not paid more than $7 a pop for bluray movies. The only ones I paid more than $7 for, were the recent steelbook re-releases of the Bourne trilogy movies which had the single-sided bluray disc versions, and not the original double-side flipper discs. (I largely held off on buying the Bourne trilogy movies for several years, until I could find the single-sided discs versions).


I would imagine Universal, Fox, Warner, etc ... largely don't give a damn about the customers that are scavenging through the $2 (or $5) bluray dump bins.

(Another ocd rant).

On the other side of the coin (as a way of "reverse engineering" my ocd behavior), I heavily exploit the fact that some bluray movies have major technical and/or disc defect problems (as well as prices higher than $7), as another way of severely constraining my ocd compulsive collecting/hoarding and "impulse buying". (ie. Keeping a list of blurays "not to buy" due to technical and/or disc defect problems).

This requires doing a lot of prior "research" on various message boards and amazon comments, to see which bluray titles have the biggest complaints and the most 1-star reviews related to technical/disc problems. (For example, this is the main reason why I have not bothered picking up the season 1 bluray set of "Spartacus: Blood and Sand", due to tons of 1-star amazon complaints about the discs being defective. Nevertheless, awhile ago I picked up and watched through the Spartacus prequel and season 3 bluray sets which didn't have any technical or disc defect problems).

Same here

I contacted universal about not licensing Kansas' Carry On Wayward Son for Heroes (1977) but no response.

Hi, new poster here, wishing to learn, share, and vent as required.

I have looked around quite a bit trying to find the answer to my essential question: "Why aren't all commercially sold entertainment DVDs authored to automatically Marathon Play/Repeat Title until the user hits Stop or Main Menu?" I thought I'd chime in here because this touches on it by way of trying to get the license holder/author house to send a replacement set.

Specifically, I bought the Adam-12 series. Only S1 is from Universal. As I'm seeing in various threads, Universal's flipper discs (which S1 is) are routinely faulty. Skipping, stutter, freezing, blurring. That is the issue and it is being returned for refund.

Hello MorrisCroy.

But: it does Repeat all the titles on a loop and it is Closed Captioned (which I need).

S2-7 are from and licensed only to Shout Factory. None of the single side discs Repeat Title correctly (it only repeats the single episode playing during the button press), Repeat Disc makes the DVD cramp up.

S6-7 have no Closed Captioning. WTH?

So here's why I think I should put this here: I did contact Shout Factory via email. Their answer? Tough toenails.

So I contacted TCM.com, whose agents seem to be off-shore, and they offered me a refund. A consolation choice to me, because I really want the series to keep. Ok, fine, but... the postage paid USPS label they emailed is a .doc file (a file format notoriously vulnerable to infection). And the return address is the Post Office in Shepherdsville KY, Postage Due Unit... and I need to give them 30 entire days to refund to my card.

Combined with what I'm learning here, I suspect TCM.com paid for the brand name from Turner and have been spoiling its reputation cache ever since, with poor quality inventory, and overly frequent price slashing sales on DVDs and ancillary products like t-shirts.

I've also been looking for an industry trade group or member organization to see if anyone is trying to standardize not only physical quality (packaging, labeling, disc integrity) but format and feature uniformity (standard menus, Marathon Play (Repeat all main titles in a row on a loop) menu choice, 100% Closed Captioning, base level a/v playback quality, single push Play for single title play, minimum four episodes per disc save season end, and mandatory listing of all such features on the case jacket and retail web page--which, btw, would save them great overhead by merely linking to the originating studios page where all now standard features are listed, no need to reinvent the wheel at each and every retailer).

In the case of the Star Trek Original Series set I also got from TCM, I am gobsmacked that I must issue 6-8 Play button pushes to in fact watch 3-4 eps per disc. *headdesk* A sign of very old formatting. No one even dreamed of putting the Preview Trailer in the Extras section. To me, why not flip this kind of set: Side A is modern format, B old school.

But just based on how Shout responded, and the fact that there is no governing industry agency that can pull certification for their "sucks to be our customer" business decisions, it looks like we're all S.O.L.

As I said to them, with streaming being the shiny new game in town, you'd think they'd up their game and pull out all stops to maintain market share and better, regain lost share, by doing what I and I'm sure many thousands of others suggest and request. Especially as many of us are cord cutters and don't do streaming, and more and more of us don't do theatre attendance, either. So that part of our money is ready to spend on DVD/Blu-ray.

Until then, I'm looking for a way to hack the DVDs I've got to make them marathon play so I can watch my classic TV favorites throughout the evening and drift off to them into the night, waking up without being haunted by my own dreams. This hack is just for me, an insomniac from way back.

Exceedingly long first post, my apologies. I will appreciate greatly any pointers and co-venting.

Regards,
Miles

On that note, I'm annoyed that newer players don't have the programming feature anymore, where you could program whatever chapters or titles you wanted them to play. This let you watch a movie followed by all the extras with no use of the remote needed, but with the Program feature gone you can't do that anymore. One of the few flaws of the Oppo players.

Agree. Another upside to keeping "old" equipment. My Sony is easily 20 years old. For ages, just a spacer whilst waiting for me to get over TiVO. It has the programming features you list, and they actually work on S1V2 of the "Perry Mason" series, the odd ball subset of discs. Old school was built to last decades, new school follows the Microsoft model: fast track planned obsolescence.

Still scouring the interwebs for the hack.....