DVD Rot! My Sweet Hereafter has gone to the sweet hereafter

StevenA · 01-09-2003, 01:17 PM

I thought it couldn't happen to me!

Whether it really should be called DVD Rot or a more accurate name, this is a phenomenon I had tried to ignore and hope was simply a case of people being careless with their discs and mistaking scratches and fingerprints for more mysterious deterioration of their discs.

Well, my absolutely pristine copy of The Sweet Hereafter (New Line), which played flawlessly a couple of years ago, now struggles to get through the post-layer-change scenes. It pixilates frequently and skips and freezes. Taking out the disc and reinserting it simply results in the same problems at exactly the same points. I have tried other players and, interestingly, a Pioneer played the disc with no problems but an Apex froze in the same problem areas (my player is a Sony). I conclude from this that while some players may be better at others at reading certain "rotted" discs, there is definitely a problem of some kind with the disc, that was not apparent when I first played it years ago.

The disc is a WAMO-produced disc, but then again many of my discs have the WAMO imprint, and (so far) this is the only time I've seen any errors.

Has anybody had any success getting discs replaced by studios years after purchase?

Thomas T · 01-09-2003, 01:45 PM

Take your player in to the authorized dealer, it needs to be fixed. It's not the disc, it's the player.

Both Moulin Rouge! and Snow White And The 7 Dwarfs wouldn't play properly on my Pioneer DV-343 and they put in a new chip and both discs play beautifully now.

If a DVD plays perfectly the first time and then later has problems, 98% of the time it's the player. Hey, it's a machine, they break down, have problems, need to be repaired.

GlennH · 01-09-2003, 02:22 PM

I totally disagree Thomas. Didn't you read what Steven wrote?

Quote:

an Apex froze in the same problem areas (my player is a Sony)

He was able to repeat the problems (which did not exist previously) on a totally independent DVD player. So the problem is with the disc, not his player.

I have about 400 DVDs. I've had a handful fall prey to this problem after some time (pixellation or freeze up at or near the layer change). The discs initially worked fine but later had problems. I attribute this to faulty manufacturing that shows up later via layer separation or something similar.

Discs that this has occurred on for me include My Fair Lady, Yellow Submarine, and Ghostbusters. All were manufactured by WAMO, although my replacement Ghostbusters was not made by WAMO.

I only wonder if I have other problem discs sitting on my shelf that I won't discover until I someday try to play them again. I've never had a problem with my early version of Contact (a suspect since many have had a problem with that one), but I haven't checked it lately.

Jeff Ulmer · 01-09-2003, 02:36 PM

Rot is real, and has nothing to do with the player, other than some players may be able to error correct their way through corrupted data.

I have had two discs so far rot on me: The Postman and the third disc of the From the Earth to the Moon box set. I hope there aren't any more lurking in my collection, but both the above titles played flawlessly when new, but later there was a visible deterioration of the playing surface, and they became unplayable.

I just checked my Sweet hereafter, and it has developed the start of rot, with a visible deterioration between the layers. I guess another one is going back.

Dan Rudolph · 01-09-2003, 03:07 PM

I also had a copy of ghostbusters that had trouble. Not sure if it was at the layer change.

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David Rogers · 01-09-2003, 03:58 PM

My Sony player gets heavy use, and has been wonky for the last eighteen months of its 3+year lifespan. I wouldn't be so quick to rule out player problems. I own over 300 discs and my household averages watching three to four titles a weekday ... so far no discs have turned up bad unless they came that way.

Jim Peavy · 01-09-2003, 04:43 PM

Quote:

Has anybody had any success getting discs replaced by studios years after purchase?

Rob Cooper · 01-09-2003, 05:00 PM

My copy of Blade did this. It was one of the first discs I bought so I watched it quite a bit. Then a year or two later I tried to play it and it pixelated and froze after the layer change (I think it was in chapter 37 or something).

I asked Newline customer services and the customer service line for my dvd player and neither of them were too much help.

Ive since gotten a new player. The new player gets through the disc but with heavy pixelation at various points through the end of the film. I assume the new player just has better error correction.

Jeff Ulmer · 01-09-2003, 05:00 PM

I was just talking to my local retailler about this rot issue, specifically the four disc From the Earth to the Moon, which I bought when it first came out. Their policy is to just take them back and offer an exchange, so if you have a good retailler they may be willing to help.

As for it being a player problem, that is always a possibility, but on all the discs I've seen that have rotted, it is not hard to tell from visual inspection.

Jason Hughes · 01-09-2003, 05:25 PM

Where is the layer change? I am going to check mine later.

Also, here is a phone # for WAMO, 818-638-0401 (another one is 570-383-3291 - I think this is in