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

mikey ra

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Oct 6, 2004
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Last night I began watching my Lonestar DVD. After the layer change it became all glitchy and won't play. Bought it in 2000, watched it 3 times since purchase (b/4 last night) and no glitch. Now I do believe the "rot" has set in. Its a 1999 pressed disc (dual-layered) manufactured at the infamous WAMO plant.

I suggest everyone check any dual-layered discs they own that are Warner Bros. discs manufactered in the period 1999-2000.
 

Christopher_P

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Ugh that sucks I know your pain. I had a ps2 game rot on me. Had the game since the ps2 launched (Armored Core2) pulled it off the shelf the other day to find it was toast. Kind of looked like this pic (linked below). Its the first and only disc so far I have had rot (CD or DVD).

http://www.geocities.com/everquestmonks/Fdcd.txt

But DVDs will last 100 years or so right? :angry:
 

Vader

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Derek

Most of them will, assuming they are not used as frisbees (excepting the occational bad run in manufacturing and poor QA). Both of you seem to have gotten discs that were defective from when they left the plant. Since you are on this forum in the first place, most likely your misfortune is not due to anything you have done (or not, as the case may be).

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...hreadid=197510
 

Jack Briggs

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Mikey, you could simply try playing that disc again. Probably the glitch was a one-time occurence. Reason I say this: I've had the occasional similar problem occur. But the second time I try playing the disc everything's fine.
 

Paul Hillenbrand

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Jack Briggs wrote:This has happened to me more than once. Another experience I've had, IMO, more serious (costly) than a "disc rot" problem, is when the laser in your DVD player ages, getting weaker and faulty, and causes this same symptom.:frowning: Try playing the disc in a new player, or if that's not feasible, at least a different player or even a different model.:wink: This may solve the problem.

It takes several different tests to verify total disc rot.

Paul
 

mikey ra

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Thanks for the tips Paul and Jack! But sadly I did try it on two other players (plus cleaned the disc as recommended with a lint free cloth - from inside to outer edge!) and it still exhibited the freeze and skipping at the same places. Even b/4 the clean, I did not notice anything on the disc (i.e. dirt, fingerprints or cloudiness).

I think its just another case of the "rot". My Vertigo disc (orange cover) crapped out on me a couple of months ago - wouldn't play at all on any of the three players I tried. Universal replaced it after I sent the disc to them to test.

I've read in some other posts that the dual-layer discs pressed around 1999-2000 by WAMO had some issues with becoming glitchy after some time. I think that I'm just in the catagory.

Now I'm paranoid that my other discs (particularly the ones pressed in 1998-2000) may be rotted. I have had 2 discs (that I know of - time to start testing others) out of a collection of 850 exhibit the "rot" problems. Time, I need is more time!!!!!

Interesting thoughts on the weak "laser" (imagine finger quotes here) idea. That's the first time I've seen someone suggest that as a potential cause. I just don't think its my player though, based on trying the glitchy disc in two other players.
 

Richard Gallagher

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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.
 

Jeff Ulmer

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I have had several rotten discs, which in most cases was visible on the disc surface as a kind of pitting or oily look, and not the normal smear seen on a lot of discs. All of them were WAMO discs.

However, a couple of newer discs have gone bad, including The Wicker Man and How the West was Won. I have yet to contact anyone about those. The rest I simply returned to the store years later and had them replaced. That won't be an option with OOP titles.
 

Glenn Overholt

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OOP? That would suck the big one! The two I have had that have gone bad were both discontinued, but a newer, corrected version replaced them. At least with Universal, if they had two pressings and you have the first one, if it hasn't rotted out yet, expect it to.

I just consider that a bad batch of glue. As for the LD's, not all of the rotten ones were reported, and I can see some LD adopters opting to tossing the whole LD mess out and writing it off to - a lesson learned.

Percentage-wise, the DVD's have been much better then the LD's ever were.

Glenn
 

walter o

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I hve 1,358 LD, and so far, these rotted

LADY BEWARE
BIRD WITH CRYSTAL PLUMAGE
VICE SQUAD
GETAWAY
ANOTHER 48 HOURS
COUNTERFORCE
DEVIL'S RAIN
STONE KILLER
GAMERA BOX SET (japanese import)
FRANCESCO (japanese import)

anyone elses same title as above rotted?

and alot of the older discovision LD
sgt peppers lonley heart club band
gray lady down
FELLINI'S CASANOVA
HEROES
LAST REMAKE OF BEAU GASTE

but i heard discovisions are pretty much dying.
 

mikey ra

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Walter O:

Have any of your DVD's had a "rot" problem? It appears that you've been fortunate in the % of LDs that have "rotted" based on others who have stated here at the Forum that they lost practically their whole collection.
 

Anthony_De

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My Ghostbusters disc has gone bad, as has my copy of Deep Red from the double pack with Tenebre. The Deep Red disc actually turned bronze, compared to the silver of a normal DVD.
 

ChristopherDAC

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"Entire Collection"?
Point me to some of these posts, I thought I had read all the "rot" threads but I don't recall that claim! Of LDs I own, more or less 93, 4 or possibly 5 are rotted, of those 2 are duplicates, and all but the "possible" were made by Sony DADC USA. What is more, I was well aware that these were possible rotters when I bought them -- the 2 dupes cost less than $1 each, and were new sealed, the other 2 definites were bought from people without LD players on a return-guarantee basis. I have 2 good DADC discs, one purchassed new sealed. At one time I had a modest lot of excess discs -- all but 1 of the DADCs were rotted, and none of the rest.
So, unless all of your collection was American Columbia/Tristar discs and DiscoVision [50% reject rate on the floor, 50% return rate as defective, 50% failure in 5 years but the remaining 12.5% are supposed to be just fine today], that is unlikely.
Of course, I've only been buying since after DVD was introduced, and my theory has been that any discs which were going to rot have done so already.
 

Vader

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Christopher,

I agree with you, in that if a disc was prone to rot and has not already done so, it probably won't. In another thread on Laser Rot, somebody made the claim that "rot" is inherent to the format, and that all LDs will eventually go belly-up. I would love to know where he got his information, as many of the known "rotters" are in my library, and none of them, save two ("The Fugative" and "Beauty and the Beast"), have gone bad.... Most significantly, my "Star Wars Definitive Collection", cited by many as definate rotters, is as rot-free as the day I bought it (11 years ago).....
 

PerryD

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But how can you truely know the percentage of rotten discs unless you pull out each of your movies and watch them entirely through? I have several hundred laserdiscs and over 1000 DVDs. I haven't seen a rotten disc, but then again, I tend not to rewatch many of my movies, with the exception of kids movies.
 

Vader

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Perry,

As for me, I watch my library such that each week I watch at least one DVD or LD I have not watched in that cycle. That library is composed of only about 300 titles (currently, not counting TV on DVD), and each cycle tends to be on the order of 3 years. Based on the reports of rotters, I have kept a close watch on the titles I have, and the only two cases of rot I had happened within two years of buying them (ie. the mid nineties). None of the other titles have exhibited any symptoms, and I would be very suprised if they started now. Actually, I am more concerned about how to make them look as good as I can on a 65" HD RPTV... As always, YMMV...
 

Voon Jiet

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My Ocean's Eleven DVD recently failed to play all the way through. After the layer switch, it begins to freeze, pixellate, and skip. Tried it on three different players and on my laptop - same result.

Very frustrating!
 

Chris*W

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Apr 14, 2004
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I had a weird experience with "rot" on laserdiscs. My first player was bare bones. Literally, you would just put the disc in and all you could do was play, stop, and fast forward/rewind. The "laser rot" was a huge problem. Almost all of my discs, some of which had been previously owned but most had been new and sealed, had "laser rot".

I've since bought a more feature laden Sony. Now, almost all of my LD's are free of laser rot. The only thing I can gather is that maybe the player's laser was stronger than my older LD player. Very odd.
 

Tony Kwong

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Jun 20, 2002
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Well Chris some LD players are noisier than others. Also the aligment might have been a bit off, producing the noise you thought was LD rot.

I found out about a majority of my rotted LD's by making a collection listing on LDDB.com. Then in "collection management" making sure all of collection has manufacture info. If not, I update it. Since I know most (not all) rotted disc come from "DADC USA" "Technidisc" "DiscoVision" I selected them. Some were pressed in multiple places so I also selected "Multiple". I printed out the list/s. I seperated all those disc in my collection. I then viewed the detailed listing of that title to see if someone reported ROT. So Afterwards I scanned all of these and marked all the rotted ones and updated the database with that info. I now have a stack of rotted titles and a stack to check for rot.

LDDB.com Rot report
 

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