The Bela Lugosi Collection and related dvd problems (1 Viewer)

[Richard_Gregory]

AFAIK, there is no technical difference between playing a side of a DVD-9 and a DVD-18. They should look identical to a player - just like the two sides of a common DVD-10 are DVD-5's

IMHO, the problems being encountered are entirely down to manufacture problems, DVD-18 discs are by far the most difficult (and expensive) to produce. Universal are not being "cheap" by using DVD-18's. They may cut down the number of discs and the packaging, but any gains are lost in the expense of producing in the first place. There are few factories set up to make 18's.

Indeed, I can imagine that in the UK there are no such facilities. Everything so far released in r1 on DVD-18's has been released here on DVD-9. I have never seen any DVD-18 here.

It may be that certain brands of player or newer players are better able to cope with inherent faults than older players.

It is even possible that cheaper or less sophiticated players will ignore things that more expensive ones won't. I've seen that happen before.

I really wish someone could put one of these discs, particularly one that is known to have caused problems, through a disc checker. There are numerous freeware checkers available.

I'm willing to bet it would show up the equivalent of CRC errors or flaws in the data layer.

I am made particularly suspiscious by conflicting reports of "good discs" and "bad discs".

 

[Michael Elliott]

For starters, I didn't give it to a friend to try out. He was interested in the movies and wanted to watch them. As I've said since the first thread here, I planned on waiting for THE BODY SNATCHER to get released so I could watch the Lugosi/Karloff titles together. I was going to break this sometime this weekend or next week but I don't think I will now. I'm really not worried one bit. There's not a single fear in me that these discs won't play.



Which is always an option as you and I say. The funny thing is that I sold over 1000 of my video back in 1999 but for some reason I kept these Karloff/Lugosi titles. However, as I said earlier, I've got no fear that these won't play in at the very least one of my machines.

The bedroom has a regular and region free player. The living room as a regular and region free player. Now, if all four won't play these then I'll certainly start bashing Universal. Considering the play rate of skipping through this title and watching all of the others, I'm fine with them.

 

[Dave Scarpa]

With these Universal DVD18's you cannot spot check them cause more than likely they will look OK you have to watch them all the wa thru to see the freezes, break up's etc

 

[John Stell]

On my Panasonic DMR-E20 I use the 100x scan (which scans a minute in one second) and have been able to find the problems if they exist without having to watch the entire film. If the disc has a problem, my player will stop scanning and start playing the film in real time, at which point the film will freeze, jump, or whatever. So far all the discs that scanned OK have played OK when I've finally had the time to watch them. I now use this scanning on any new DVD 18 from Universal.

 

[Richard_Gregory]

This suggests that a scan with a disc error checker would also find any problems.

I'm convinced that there are manufacture problems, which is why the troubles are not all occurring at the precise same spot on every disc (and some, not at all) - it may well be that some players have better error correction than others.

I have an r2 "Thunderbirds" disc that displays pixellation on my Pioneer. It plays flawlessly on my Panasonic.

Sadly, the Panasonic is not multiregion, and there are no "codes" to make it so, only an expensive mod!

 

[Joe Karlosi]

I'll bet:

A.) Your discs will play fine.

B.) Even if they don't, you'll find some way of letting Universal off the hook.

 

[Richard_Gregory]

Just to add to the joy, the first post about someone's copy of the Hammer Collection freezing up has just appeared on thedvdforums.com...during Evil of Frankenstein.

I can only hope that if (not when knowing Universal) some of these films appear in r2, they'll be on DVD-9.

We got a very raw deal on the horror Legacy films though. We never got the Legacy sets, just random picks of some of the movies.

r2 has never seen the full collections of any of them AFAIK.

 

[TravisR]

I wish Universal would stop using DVD-18s so I can stop reading complaints about them.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

What took so long?

 

[Michael Elliott]

Right. Your old player wouldn't play then yet the new one did. For me, this is the end of the subject.

I had a Toshiba SD-3109, which wouldn't play DVD-R, DVD-18, double sided discs, Alpha, Anchor Bay or Synapse products. Got a new player and all the discs played fine.

Now, did I have bad discs or would my player simply not read them?

 

[Jeffrey Nelson]

Michael, if DVD-9s will play in more players, I say put'em on DVD-9s. It's a no-brainer. Universal isn't saving any money putting them on DVD-18s, and two DVDs will fit inside one regular-sized keepcase.

 

[Michael Elliott]

Jeff, I have no idea why Universal would continue using DVD-18s since I'm sure they're aware of the "issues". Perhaps they feel the issues are too small to worry about? The problems Anchor Bay had were very big issues that pretty much had their discs not playing in ANY machine. That doesn't seem to be the case here so that might be why Universal continues this. I believe their TREMORS set will also use DVD-18s.

Either way, I'm going to hold my comments about the disc working fine until I can watch all five films straight through. It's certainly strange how the same disc will play in one machine and not another one.

Wasn't the first DVD-18 used in 2001 or 2002? I remember not too many early machines being able to play them so could that be the problem here?

Again, I think it would help if people would list the machines they are using and if the disc froze or not. There has to be some sort of science to figure why certain machines are playing a disc while others aren't.

 

[Mathew B]

True, but one exception springs to mind. Superman: The Movie from Warner Bros. is one of the very few discs to be DVD-18s. I believe there are few other examples in Warner UK's catalouge that are DVD-18s too, like U.S. Marshals.

 

[Richard_Gregory]

If the issues with Universal DVD-18's could be singled to a particular model or brand of player then I too would say it's the player.

Evidently, the problems are not like that. People have had issues with these discs over a very broad spectrum of players - models, makes, "high end", "low end". Further, it has been possible to exchange the discs for ones that work perfectly.

This points me in the direction of thinking: manufacture errors. It may be that newer/certain makes of player cope better with a higher error rate.

In any case, it seems to me to be common sense that Universal release stuff on the type of disc that plays without problems on the broadest possible range of equipment.

At the moment, they're paying a premium to release on expensive to make discs that have a high rate of returns and which create bad publicity (someone at Universal needs to read the Amazon reviews).

And all this for the small gains of reducing the number of discs and saving a bit of packaging.

The ways of studios are indeed mysterious.

Mathew B: I wasn't aware of the UK edition of the Superman Movies being DVD-18, but then I have the r1 set. And the first disc is DVD-18, which I have played without problems. On my 1999 Pioneer 717! Indeed, I hadn't even noticed it was a DVD-18 until I looked at the box just now. I assumed it was a good ol' DVD-10!

Lastly, AFAIK, there is no difference between one side of a DVD-10 and the play side of a DVD-5, or between one side of a DVD-18 and the play side of a DVD-9. The exception being: the flippers are more difficult to produce and get damaged more easily.

 

[Peter M Fitzgerald]

I posted this a few minutes ago in a thread at another forum, before reading the last two days' comments in this thread:


:frowning:

 

[Joe Karlosi]

I hope Universal reads this thread - or perhaps there's a way to get some sort of group petition to them. This is just unacceptable.

 

[LaurenceGarvey]

I didn't find any freeze-up problems on this set (or the Hammer collection, but I also didn't find the beautiful pictures I expected from DVD Drive-In's review.

From my www.inthebalcony.com review:

Normally, I would recommend this set without qualm or trepidation, but the fact is that Universal dropped the ball on this one, showing a profound lack of respect for important vault titles.

Now, I’m not naïve enough to think that each of these films deserves its own DVD release, with commentary and documentaries and all that stuff (although at the very least The Black Cat certainly does; the only actual extras are Realart re-release trailers for three of the films), but Universal has dumped this on the market in a very condescending manner.

“The Bela Lugosi Collection”? Excuse me? Was that moniker slapped on it by some airhead who’s a fan, not of classic horror films, but the movie ED WOOD? That’s an insult, not only to Karloff, but also to us. I’m not sure whoever put this package together even watched the films: the box’s description of BLACK FRIDAY attributes the wrong part to Lugosi. Further, restoration on the films was kept to a minimum: there are a lot of vertical lines, speckles, and graininess, especially on the earlier films in the set.

Warners Bros. has raised the bar for vintage film releases, as shown by The Thin Man Collection’s best-seller status. Imagine if Universal had restored these films properly and released these as a multi-disc set (all five films are crammed onto one disc now) with Walter Lantz cartoons and bonus episodes of THE PHANTOM CREEPS serial.

I’m going to recommend this set, because I do like the films on it, but without much enthusiasm. A wasted opportunity for Universal to do something special.

 

[Dave Scarpa]

Ok Just FYI checkingNetflix they seem to have special Double feature versions of Both the Hammer Horror and the Lugosi set. With the Hammer set they rent 4 disks with two movies on each. So did they get some sort of Special rental versions of these? I let everyone know when I get the ones in my Queue

 

[Richard_Gregory]

It wouldn't surprise me. Even the muppets at Universal know how much more fragile DVD-18's are and how long they'd last in the rental environment.

But it is galling to think that there are DVD-9 editions that have been manufactured...

 

[Robert Crawford]

I played the Lugosi dvd yesterday and didn't have any problems with it freezing up or skipping. The dvd player was a Denon-2900.





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