Warner DVD's not working thread - watch to make sure they still play

[Aunt Peg]

Just finishing watching Captain Blood and it played fine.

 

[Darby67]

I finished watching Volume 1 of the Warner Gangsters Collection and can report that all of the following disc played just fine:

White Heat
The Roaring Twenties
The Public Enemy
The Petrified Forest
Little Caesar
Angels with Dirty Faces


All of the discs on Volume 2 played fine. The only discs that haven't played so far are The Black Legion and Lady Killer from Volume 3 (I will be ordering replacement discs from Sherri Bogard).

Volume 4 is on its way to me; cant' wait to watch that batch.

 

[TheSteig]

Black Region, San Francisco and Dead End all played fine

 

[Robin9]

I recently ordered Sunday In New York, a Warner Archive DVD. It arrived yesterday and doesn't play on any of my machines! It's going back, boys, It's going back!

 

[Darby67]

I finished watching Warner Brothers Gangsters Collection Volume 4 and all of the films in the set played perfectly:

Kid Galahad
Larceny, Inc.
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse
Invisible Stripes
The Little Giant
Public Enemies (documentary)

I was able to to acquire all 5 volumes of the Warner Brothers Film Noir Classic Collection via Ebay and Amazon and will start posting about those as soon as they arrive and I start watching them.

 

[Suzanne.S]

Thank you Darby67 for keeping us up to date. I wish I had more time to go back and watch more of mine.

 

[Darby67]

You're welcome, Suzanne. I recently bought the entire Gangsters and Film Noir Classic collections via Ebay and Amazon so I am watching them as soon as they arrive to see if there are any defects.

 

[Arthur Powell]

I'm in my new home (which just happens to be in a much drier climate) and have started sorting through and organizing my movie collection - a perfect opportunity to get some discs ready for Sherri! Anyway, here is my tentative list of discs that I plan to send back for replacements within a month or so:
1. Hollywood Legends of Horror set (Dr X, The Mask of Fu Manchu, etc.) - all three discs have rotted
2. Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 4 - all four discs have rotted
3. Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 5 - all four discs have rotted
4. Tex Avery's Droopy: The Complete Theatrical Collection - both discs rotted
5. TCM Archives Laurel and Hardy Collection - both discs rotted
6. TCM Spotlight Myrna Loy and William Powell Collection - seemingly only Double Wedding has rotted. The other discs look fine, but I guess the entire collection has to go back.
7. The Errol Flynn Signature Collection Vol 2 - all five discs have rotted.
8. TCM Archives Forbidden Hollywood Collection Vol 2 - the first two discs have rotted. The third disc (the one with Night Nurse) seems to be fine.
Again, I may be adding a few more titles to the list as I continue going through my discs. My Popeye collections seem to be fine, but given reports I've seen I will really scrutinize those discs when I have a little more time.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

It's been quite a while since I sent my discs to Sherri Bogard via Fedex and have yet to receive anything in return. She is probably overwhelmed by all of this- I will probably send a letter to one of the higher-ups at Warner letting them know about this. It's completely inexcusable that this many discs would go bad and Warner seems to refuse to own up to it and acts like you're the one inconveniencing them. Having several discs in a box set rot is especially pathetic!

Several more of my HD-DVDs have also gone bad, Warner seems to think they're completely off the hook for those being that format is no longer supported.

 

[Matt Hough]

I watched Flamingo Road from the Joan Crawford Volume 2 box set, and I started having some skipping in the last thirty minutes of the film. I shut it down because I had some other things to take care of, but I'll investigate more tonight.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

JUST got my replacement sets in the mail today, right when I was going to take some further action on them. The Tales From the Crypt sets seem to have been re-shrinkwrapped, but all discs are made by Technicolor so they likely won't have problems, and they still have the full-color labels which aren't on the discs in the recently released Complete Series set.

I'll buy the forthcoming Matrix set on 4K as my way of saying thanks, since my HD-DVD set of The Matrix has rotted at least on the first movie.

 

[Matt Hough]

Flamingo Road was still skipping when I went back to it tonight, so I ejected the disc, cleaned it thoroughly, put it in a different player, and it wouldn't play at all! Another Warners disc bites the dust!

 

[TheSteig]

Suzanne - ou should thank me for creating this thread I had a feeling that my problems werent isolated and now all of us are watching our Warner DVDs again to make sure they play without problems
It becomes more apparent as to why they are re-releasing their catalog titles as MOD via WAC. They know some of their titles on the initial DVD release no longer play or have disc rot...not to mention many are out of print
The Laurel and Hardy double feature on MOD is another recent re-release..
My DVD of Black Legion played fine, thankfully !

 

[Matt Hough]

I selected another from the Crawford Vol. 2 set today: Strange Cargo. Except for one slight hesitation, it played straight through, but I'm sure that slight hesitation will blossom into complete rot the next time I try to play it.

 

[Suzanne.S]

Thanks to everyone who has contributed!

 

[Matt Hough]

Another Joan Crawford title bites the dust - Torch Song from the Vol. 2 Crawford DVD set began to go bad around the one hour mark. I'm guessing that it's around the layer change because Flamingo Road began to go bad at around the same time when I watched it the other day.

 

[Mark Mayes]

i have had no luck with getting "Female" (Ruth Chatterton) on the Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 2 to play past 30 minutes. I have tried it on 7 players. This includes a rental I got from Classic Flix to see if it was just something in the pressing. You guys seem to confirm that was the problem....

 

[Darby67]

I have watched all of the films in Volume 4 of the Film Noir Classic Collection (4 discs, 2 films per disc) and can report the following:

Played Perfectly:

Crime Wave/Decoy
Illegal/The Big Steal
They Live By Night/Side Street
Where Danger Lives/Tension

Pixelation Issues:

Act of Violence/Mystery Street

I emailed Sherri Bogard about getting pressed disc replacements for Black Legion and Lady Killer from the Gangsters Collection Volume 4 and the only thing she was able to offer a MOD burned disc replacement for Black Legion; I kind of expected that would be the case for the pressed discs that are OOP. Therefore, I am seeking to buy pressed disc replacements for Black Legion, Lady Killer, and Act of Violence/Mystery Street on Amazon, Ebay, etc.

 

[Arthur Powell]

i have had no luck with getting "Female" (Ruth Chatterton) on the Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 2 to play past 30 minutes. I have tried it on 7 players. This includes a rental I got from Classic Flix to see if it was just something in the pressing. You guys seem to confirm that was the problem....

The Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 2 set seems to be one of those titles that is especially fraught with issues. I'd be curious to know if anyone has a copy of the original pressing that still plays without issues. This all makes me wonder about the nature of these problems - is this a matter where the discs are susceptible to storage conditions but other otherwise "ok" or are all/most of the discs from this time period going bad in general (but perhaps with certain climate conditions acting as an accelerator of the process)? Perhaps some discs are just more prone to problems than others? I'm still trying to figure out why problems are widely reported with Warners but very few problems are reported with Fox (whose discs were manufactured at the same plant at the same time with the bad Warner discs). Other than me, I've only encountered one other person who has had significant problems with both Warner and Fox discs from this period. With all of this said, I think that we can truly commiserate with 16mm collectors and their problems with vinegar syndrome!

One more title to add to the rot list - the original 2007 DVD release of The Jazz Singer. While I'm tempted to include it in my return package, I may not since I have already upgraded to the blu-ray set.

 

[Tony Bensley]

I'm in my new home (which just happens to be in a much drier climate) and have started sorting through and organizing my movie collection - a perfect opportunity to get some discs ready for Sherri! Anyway, here is my tentative list of discs that I plan to send back for replacements within a month or so:
1. Hollywood Legends of Horror set (Dr X, The Mask of Fu Manchu, etc.) - all three discs have rotted
2. Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 4 - all four discs have rotted
3. Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 5 - all four discs have rotted
4. Tex Avery's Droopy: The Complete Theatrical Collection - both discs rotted
5. TCM Archives Laurel and Hardy Collection - both discs rotted
6. TCM Spotlight Myrna Loy and William Powell Collection - seemingly only Double Wedding has rotted. The other discs look fine, but I guess the entire collection has to go back.
7. The Errol Flynn Signature Collection Vol 2 - all five discs have rotted.
8. TCM Archives Forbidden Hollywood Collection Vol 2 - the first two discs have rotted. The third disc (the one with Night Nurse) seems to be fine.
Again, I may be adding a few more titles to the list as I continue going through my discs. My Popeye collections seem to be fine, but given reports I've seen I will really scrutinize those discs when I have a little more time.

I'm fortunate with my TCM Laurel and Hardy Collection, in that only the semi damaged hub on the casing has become an issue. I did successfully play both Laurel and Hardy Features not very long ago, along with the TCM Original Hollywood Shorts Story DVD.

One of these days, I'll need to check my WHITE HEAT (1949) disc, along with some other mid to late '00 Warner DVD releases.

It just occurred to me that the city to where we've recently moved tends a bit towards higher humidity than at our previous address. As such, I'll need to be more mindful of this potential playback issue caused by disc rot moving forward.

CHEERS!