Good point. But I'm more concerned with this idea that there is an affected title list, and that list may need to be added to in the future. Unless they actually don't know the root cause, they really should know all the titles that are affected now.

So far I've seen at least 4 or 5 titles not on their list that should be given multiple reports of defects with the same title.

I saw the list of concern that spans over a year and a half or so period of time and it is quite a lengthy list of possibly affected discs. I know that I have more than a handful of those discs myself and they are in bad shape or are getting there.

"Gets away with"? Do you know anything about the pressing plant that allegedly caused this problem? Do they have a track record or reputation for shoddy manufacturing and high defect rates that Criterion could have known about in advance, or is this the first reported instance?

Which begs the question; what other blu-rays from other studios did they press during that time that are affected similarly that we don't know about yet?

It's shit like this that has me looking at my collection and asking myself why I bought it all in the first place.

The same thing is apparently affecting a bunch of Well-Go discs. I think it's mostly kung-fu stuff like Ip Man and some of their Shaw Bros. titles.

I wonder how long these discs have been unplayable.

Since we're just now finding out about the problem, can we assume that Criterion discs don't get played a lot?

Either these Criterions only just started exhibiting problems, or it happened a while back and nobody noticed until now.

A lot of Criterion's customers are people with very large collections. I have almost all of the affected discs. I've only actually watched a third of them before these reports. I never even got around to opening my copy of Howards End.

People have been experiencing isolated issues with some of these titles for years. It's just now that the scale of the problem is coming to light. As much as I rag on them, it really was blu-ray.com catching wind of this that caused all of the OCD pyschos to start going through their entire collections and begin documenting manufacturing codes and the like. Without them, most of us would still be blissfully ignorant. It's also reasonable to assume that a specific amount of time had to have elapsed in order for the chemical reaction that's causing this to do its damage. Therefore, it may not be a coincidence that all of these discs suddenly became unplayable within a relative narrow window.

Based on reports, the BDs were working at one time. Very few of them were unplayable within 18 months of their initial release. Most people probably bought them at launch, played them once successfully, and then filed them away. It was the few hardcore fans that would play a copy multiple times over the years that caught this problem.

This reminds me of those discs you could rent for a day or two then they would go bad. What a terrible idea that was.

i think i heard of that.

I really worried about sending Pierrot and Howard's End back to them ... I have this fear that they won't replace them... come someone calm my fears here... ?

I thought everyone had heard of DivX.

Paging Alan Smithee...

I don't think anyone knows for sure yet, but Criterion hasn't said that they won't replace them. Either way, if the discs don't work, what do you have to lose?

That's actually different. DivX discs were locked via software, the players had to be hooked up and dial into their mothership every so often and certain discs were able to be viewed for a certain number of hours each time you paid.


There was a separate format that actually physically degraded (as in a chemical reaction in the disc, like these Criterion discs) after a day or two preventing further play. The name of that escapes me now, I'll try to find it later.

I'm in the same boat as Giles.

If the my copies of Pierrot and Howard's End were completely unplayable like Walkabout, yeah, nothing to lose.

With Howard's End, it seems playable so far. So, I'm going to hold on to it even if it is a ticking time bomb of unplayability.

But, with Pierrot...I rather have half a film and the supplements (still seem to work) than no film at all.

In either case, I'm holding off on sending them anything until I hear people are starting to get replacements back since a) I'd like to send one big shipment in (counting on the exchange expanding beyond the listed titles) and b) will be sending in all eligible titles even if playback is not unaffected [I]yet[I] since there is no foolproof way to know if you have a bad pressing or not.

Yeah, which why I was wondering if it just happened or if someone just noticed it. If it has taken the discs four years to deteriorate to the point they won't play, then this could just be the tip of the iceberg, and we'll see more and more Criterions (and potentially discs from other labels) fail in the next year or two. Whereas, if the problem is only now being brought to light and the discs crapped out a couple of years ago but nobody noticed, then we should be in the clear. If people have been reporting isolated occurrences of failed Criterions for a couple of years, it looks the latter scenario might be the case.

Flexplay.

I have 6 for sure discs on my list for exchange and I'm still looking. Walkabout is the most bronzed of them all and it doesn't even attempt to load on my bd players but my laptop loads it up. Weird!

Has anyone exchanged any discs yet?

I sent the 5 I had from the list in a couple of weeks ago, they received them the next day. From calling them a few days ago I was told that it will be at least another week before they send anything out (they're still waiting on corrected discs) and that the out of print titles will also be replaced.

So far they are still sending out their canned response to the issue and they have not added any new but obviously affected titles to the list. Also, their lack of a 100% clear answer on whether or not they will replace the affected OOP discs is a bit disconcerting to me.

Obviously this is one of those believe it when you see its, but they were very clear with me on the phone that the OOP titles on the list were being replaced with the same title. I explained my question so there was no doubt as to what I was asking, even adding that there were numerous people across varying forums I frequent who had their doubts. I mentioned having sent in my Howard's End and they even went as far as to bring up Pierrot le fou without me mentioning it as another that they were sending out that was OOP.

so you receive your replacement soon?