DVD Rot or How I learned to begin worrying and hate the format (1 Viewer)

[John Alderson]

I don't think we can eliminate the possiblity of accidental damage, no matter how careful we are with our discs. Granted, if it happens at the layer change that's probably not the case. I have yet to have any DVD's go bad on me (~250 all told, including TV sets, starting in 1998), but I've had several CD's stop working (maybe 4 out of 300), and I'm anal about caring for them. However, when I closely inspect the bad CD's, there is frequently a curved little mark somewhere on the disc, as if the damage happened inside a player. I suspect an old CD-ROM drive I used to have, or maybe it was something else I didn't realize.

 

[GlennH]

Same thing happened to my first DVD of Ghostbusters. I ended up exchanging it at Best Buy.

Also have had a few others go bad, including the original My Fair Lady, which Warner replaced after I sent it to them.

I keep worrying about my original (orange cover) Vertigo, but it was okay when I checked it recently. My original Contact was still okay last I checked it too. That one was a common rotter.

All my cases were problems at the layer change, delamination. Confirmed on multiple players. Currently, I have a bad Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame. I think I'll wait till the inevitable Special Edition to worry about that one, since Disney was not helpful in offering a replacement (wanted to charge me $10 for it).

 

[Tony Kwong]

TOO many LD's? That's only 1/3 of my LD collection! I have some at my parents house and some in storage.

Speaking to julian on LDDB.com he does plan on adding a feature so you can see in your collection all the rot reported disc from other users.

As for DVD I dont have any that went bad.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

What the [expurgated] is it that you do, anyway? More LDs than you could hope to watch in the rest of your life [my personal definition of too many], stacks of U-Matic tapes, D-5, D-VHS, God knows what else...
That is a good idea, though, particularly for those with many left-over LDs which they have not viewed in years. I guess that I'm a bit unusual in my habit of only buying things with a high rewatch value. I know there are any number of people on the Forum here who have stacks of "backlogged" DVDs they haven't even watched yet!
Today is quite unusual in that I actually have unwatched discs, new arrivals which I am, yes, checking for rot aming other things. Image and Lumivision releases, and at least one is a Technidisc.

 

[mikey ra]

Has anyone out there experienced a case of "rot" for a disc manufactered after 2001? I mean where the disc played fine the first couple of viewings and then deteriorated sometime thereafter.

 

[GlennH]

Yes, as I mentioned above I have a bad Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame, which was released (and I bought) on 3/19/2002. It played fine at least 3 times before I found it to not work anymore several months ago. The disc is physically perfect. Not even the usual discolored pattern I've seen on some other "rotted" (delaminated) DVDs. It just won't play.

 

[Grant H]

Man, I'd better try my Ghostbusters DVD. I bought it when it first came out and haven't watched it a heck of a lot since then.

These threads make me nervous. My DVD's are like family, except I like them more.

 

[GeorgePaul]

My disc of "Midnight Cowboy" is unplayable halfway through the film on all of my family's DVD players. It pixellates, freezes, then goes black right before Voight and Vaccaro's love scene.

Talk about an old disc that needs a SE...:

 

[Bruce Morrison]

As far as I can gather, these problems appear to be linked to the WAMO pressing plant. Is there a way of telling whether a DVD was pressed there - something printed on the inner rim of the disc perhaps?

 

[TomWoodward]

My copy of Tomb Raider 2: The Cradle of Life packed up a month or two back. A very noticeable oil slick on the back! Bit worrying though as that ones only a year or so old. I should probably check some other recent Paramount discs...

 

[Vader]

I just finished watching my copy of Ghostbusters (purchased in 1999) with no problems around the layer change or anywhere else. I guess I dodged a bullet (rot does not appear to be inherant to ALL discs presed by WAMO - they must have had several bad pressings, though)...

 

[JohnOPR]

The more I read, the more concerned I'm becoming about the longevity of the recordable dvd-r. Over the past three years or so, I've been transferring most of my VHS collection to these discs, using discs manufactured by Memorex, Panasonic, Pengo, etc. Now, I read that these recordings will likely not last more than five years, as the data will begin to fail sometime betweent the second and fifth year. Memorex is coming out with a new disc, the Pro Gold, which is supposed to be state of the art in preventing this problem. Recordings made on those should be around for 100 years or so. But that's little comfort, knowing that my current collection might soon be disappearing. Anyone out there having problems with discs you made, that once played well, but are now showing signs of the ageing process (pixilation, freezing, etc.). Just wondering what others have experienced.

 

[David_B_K]

While I have lost a few DVDs to...something, it has never looked like classic "laser rot". A laserdisc that was rotted would begin to develop colored sparklies all over the picture, and would get worse over time. However, those laserdiscs continued to play, albeit badly. I lost several such discs through the years. The worst ones were from Columbia Tristar. In a few cases, I replaced a title twice, and each version rotted.

I lost two DVDs that began to jump and skip. These were the Universal version of Spartacus, and WB's Gettysburg. Both are long dual layer movies.

I lost two other DVDs that simply seemed to have been wiped clean. All my players said "no disc". These were the original non-anamorphic Vertigo, and Criterion's A Night to Remember, also dual layer. Criterion was nice enough to replace ANTR.

I, too have transferred old VHS to DVD-R. I have been doing this for a couple of years or so, but have not seen any go bad yet. However, some players are more DVD-+R friendly than others, so when I see pixellating or freezing, it's usually a finicky player. My Sony upconverting play will play anything I throw at it, but my JVC will not. Besides, I no sooner back up a tape before it gets released on DVD with much better bitrate.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Well, the differences between "DVD rot" and "LD rot" are just natural. LaserDisc stores a continuous analog waveform, so little dropouts caused by the loss of a few pits here and a few there show up as speckles in the picture, where the FM demodulator sees loss of carrier = "whiter than white" and the dropout corrector tries to kick in. With a digital format, you're losing data codes, and the error correction circuits will handle that up to a point. Beyond that point, the block seems to disappear. If the reader can't find enough valid checksums, it won't be able to recognise the disc as having data on it.

 

[Bob Cashill]

Disc 1 of my JAWS: 30th ANNI edition (the movie itself) just went belly up. I tried it on several players and it pretty much refused to work at about Chapter 7, recovering at about Chapter 11, then dying again. Most frustrating, as it was movie night at my in-laws and I was left holding the bag...

I had several LDs rot on me, but very few problems with DVD.

 

[Mike_Richardson]

Interesting discussion. While laser rot was a very real problem with laserdiscs, the extent of the problem was often exaggerated by people who blamed every glitch they saw on "laser rot." I have lots of laserdiscs which have imperfections, but out of 1500 or so laserdiscs I only recall two (HOUSE OF WAX and PLAY MISTY FOR ME) which genuinely had laser rot.

I had fewer than 1500 in my collection but saw a LOT more discs with laser rot. Heck I can name a dozen Columbia titles right now that had rot literally weeks after they came out (SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION being one).....that Sony plant that pressed their LDs in-house was notorious for turning out utter garbage.

 

[Paul Anthony]

The only laser rot problem I ever had on laserdisc was "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (the rainbow snow effect). Now, I just bought "Dawson's Creek Season 5" on DVD, and experienced laser rot on the 1st disc (pixelation, lock-ups, etc.), and I played this disc on 2 different players. Unfortunately, I have to go back to Suncoast and exchange it. :frowning:

 

[walter o]

I looked over som of my older LD's and sure enough some more started to rot, most notably some Columbia stuff (FRIGHT NIGHT, EYES OF LAURA MARS) and image stuff. But I noticed the majority of the Image LD that has gone bad were pressed at 3M and Technidisc. I recall reading at LaserCraze newsletter that 3M and Technidisc was notorious bad for pressing LD's at the time.

 

[PatW]

I've had only two in my large collection that had dvd rot. I just re-placed Apollo 13 and now my Criterion A Night to Remember has the same problem. The disc has the tell-tale slick on the surface. I've tried it in four different dvd players and no-go. It will be expensive replacing that one. At least I've only got two out of 800. That's not too bad.

 

[Shawn.F]

I popped in my copy of "Excalibur" on the Fourth of July and about halfway through the film, the picture broke up and wouldn't play. I popped the disc out and gave the machine a lens cleaning. That seemed to do the trick on that one. However, my old copies of "L.A. Confidential" and "Apollo 13" simply ceased to play at all a while back.