USHE Press Release: Apollo 13 (15th Anniversary Edition) (Blu-ray) - Page 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jason Charlton 




Did you see the (source) in my post?  There it is again for your perusal - the quote is in the paragraph just above the second picture.  Not that it's a definitive source for all DVD production-related issues, but the fact that the DVD-18 had a unique and technically challenging production process, combined with the fact that for some reason (!?) they stopped making them, in my mind lends a lot of credence to the argument that the cost of production combined with higher failure rates for DVD-18s were enough for the studios to all but abandon the format.


Who said that?  It certainly was not me.  If you are quoting someone else from another post, please cite YOUR source, as I don't appreciate having words put in my mouth (as I was the only quoted source in your post).

Sorry Jason I didn't see the link in your original post. However I've never heard of The Spanner Works website, and they themselves don't site any sources for their information. I never said that DVD-18s don't have some failures; I'm just not convinced that it is a significantly higher rate of failure than a DVD-9. As I said before my own experience is that I've had quite a few failures of DVD-9s and blu-rays, and no failed DVD-18s. I have quite a few of them also because I was collecting the Universal TV shows that used them quite heavily.

No one in particular said that DVD-9s don't fail, but the implication in the whole argument against flippers is that they have a much higher rate of failure than a standard DVD. I don't think anyone has proven this imperially. A production failure by definition is NOT disc that stops working sometime weeks, months or years after it left the factory.

Doug

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joseph DeMartino 



I think people are confusing discs that fail after they've left the factory and been sold, with discs that fail QA tests off the production line.  That DVD-18 had a higher rate of discarded discs in production is hardly a controversial idea.  It was widely discussed when the first DVD-18s were released.  (For that matter DVD-9 had a higher discard rate than DVD-5.)  The simple fact is that in any production process, the more possible points of failure you introduce, the more failures you'll get and the more product you'll have to toss out.  With a DVD-18 a flaw in any one of four data layers means you have a disc you can't (or at least shouldn't) sell and goes on the "discard" pile.  DVD had a single side and a single data layer, so there were fewer places for something to go wrong than with dual-layered, dual-sided or DL/DS discs.  Let's say the discard rate for DVD-5 was 1%.  (Making up the numbers as this is purely for purposes of illustration.)  If DVD-9 has a production failure rate of 3% and DVD-18 a rate of 10%, you can see where it might be cheaper to release a film on 2 DVD-9s than on one DVD-18.  Same logic applies to "flipper" Blu-Rays.

Regards,

Joe
 

This was exactly my point. Which is why I said, "A production failure by definition is NOT disc that stops working sometime weeks, months or years after it left the factory."  Most people are talking about discs that fail after the fact, though I have heard some talk about a disc not working right out of the box.

Universal has been making these kinds of discs, first on DVD now on blu-ray, for sometime. I can't imagine that they would still be pursuing this if it weren't financially advantageous to them.

Doug