Warner Bros. Dead Disc Problem

[Matt]

I think the burned Warner Archive discs are a good way to go if you want back catalog DVDs from the problematic time period. I’ve never heard of anyone having trouble with them

Which is a bitterly ironic development as so many of us here went to great efforts to acquire the pressed versions to avoid any potential playability problems down the line with the DVD-Rs.

[Feego]

I did have some problems the last time I played my Great Garrick DVD-R. It froze up during the opening credits, at which point I had to remove the disc and start it over. It played fine after that.

[criterionsnob]

I've had two recent things from my collection that wouldn't play. The Criterion DVD of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and the Gaumont Blu-ray of Renoir's French Cancan.

[dx23]

Warner Bros will replace DVD damaged to rot.

I wonder how they are going to fulfill this, with many of their discs being long out of print but apparently we need to contact them and start the replacement process. I wish they were as lenient with expired digital codes.

[Maladroit Aggregator]

I feel as if I've stepped into a time machine that sent me back 20 years. Why are these Warner DVD rot issues coming up now/again? I worked in a video store 2005 - 2010 and I can assure you that hundreds of WB releases, particularly box sets, for some reason (Marlene Dietrich: The Glamour Collection, for example) were duds right from the start. We went through at least three or four copies each of dozens of titles until we finally got good discs, and even then, those discs would also go bad within only a few months. Record number of customer complaints. We had three different disc players in store, as well as employee's home players, to test these awful discs, and after a while we were testing all discs from Warner the weekend before street dates. Very frustrating.

[dx23]

I feel as if I've stepped into a time machine that sent me back 20 years. Why are these Warner DVD rot issues coming up now/again? I worked in a video store 2005 - 2010 and I can assure you that hundreds of WB releases, particularly box sets, for some reason (Marlene Dietrich: The Glamour Collection, for example) were duds right from the start. We went through at least three or four copies each of dozens of titles until we finally got good discs, and even then, those discs would also go bad within only a few months. Record number of customer complaints. We had three different disc players in store, as well as employee's home players, to test these awful discs, and after a while we were testing all discs from Warner the weekend before street dates. Very frustrating.

I can't find the thread in this forum but I'm pretty sure in one of the previous iterations of this place we had a list of DVDs that had died due to rot. Pretty much, a bunch of Universal releases from 1996-99, including many of the Hitchcock films, failed to DVD rot. Almost every other DVD released by Anchor Bay, like FM and Midnight Madness, failed to DVD rot. Remember that some of the early snapcase WB films and a bunch of DVD's from 2005/06, including one of the Noir sets, had DVD rot issues. Almost every DVD that was released in a CD case back in 1996/97, had DVD rot issues. Playstation 1 and 2 games also have come up with CD/DVD rot issues.

I'm not surprised this is coming up now as it was kind of expected that the durability of these DVD was approximately 20 years. Blu-Rays and 4K have a better coating and physical construct so they may last longer, but it doesn't look good that a Nirvana CD from 1991 still works while a DVD from 2010 is having issues.

[Jonathan S]

I feel as if I've stepped into a time machine that sent me back 20 years. Why are these Warner DVD rot issues coming up now/again? I worked in a video store 2005 - 2010 and I can assure you that hundreds of WB releases, particularly box sets, for some reason (Marlene Dietrich: The Glamour Collection, for example) were duds right from the start...

The Dietrich Glamour Collection was a Universal set, one of several they issued with DVD-18 flipper discs that were indeed often flawed from the start. I have a couple of faulty Universal DVD-18s and they are no worse than when I bought them twenty years ago. I recall they were pressed in Mexico.

The Warner DVD rot problem is different and seems mainly or entirely to be dual-layer DVD-9s that rot over time, mostly pressed at the Olyphant plant in Pennsylvania (though I have Canadian Cinram-pressed Warner DVDs that have also rotted). I dare say that the Warner rot was evident by or before 2010, especially to a store worker processing dozens of copies of each title, but personally I had no problems on first plays with the many US Warner DVDs I imported in the 2000s. The first time I ever read about the Warner rot problem was in 2015 and I didn't find any examples in my own collection until 2019. Some collectors report Fox and MGM DVDs pressed at Olyphant have also rotted.

One of Warner's requirements for replacement is a receipt. When in 2019 I asked Warner (US) to replace my rotted DVDs, their CS department told me that Amazon.com - from whom I'd bought them directly (not a Marketplace trader) - was "not an authorized Warner Bros. retailer" (this was news to Amazon when I contacted them). Warner grudgingly replaced two of my many rotted discs as "a one-time gesture".

So I started to backup all my US Warner DVDs in 2019 when the data could still be extracted even from partially rotted ones that froze or wouldn't load on a normal player. Since then, many more have rotted (well over 50 now). Among the most rapidly rotting sets are the Powell-Loy collection (particularly I Love You Again) and Film Noir Vol.4. All the original discs in both those sets are now unplayable for me, but they were fine when I bought them circa 2008.

[hearthesilence]

FWIW, unless a CD's been poorly manufactured, it will still hold up very well. Unless they haven't been handled with care, the earliest CD's to have been pressed will play with no issues whatsoever. The biggest occurrences of CD rot happened with particular plants that simply did a poor job, usually with poor lacquers that didn't really seal the substrate all that well, and these did not last long at all - you would have noticed this happening many years ago.

I bring this up because I always wondered if the problem with failing DVD's and Blu-rays arose from multiple substrate layers that were peeling apart. To be clear, dual-layered discs should be okay and manufactured well enough that failure doesn't happen, but I think it's much easier to press discs with a single substrate layer that will hold up for much longer, which is why CD's have done so well. The failing discs I've had occurred with a dual-layer DVD or Blu-ray. With at least two of them, the cause of failure is visible (not just bronzing but something like a whitish bubble that grows slowly from the outer edge of the disc) and it's reflected in the playback where things begin to freeze or stall near the layer change. Again, this shouldn't be a common problem, and outside of the massive bronzing headache Criterion dealt with from a specific pressing plant, I haven't had many failing discs in my library (which is a lot more than just Criterion discs).

[DeprongMori]

Don’t know whether we’re maintaining a list of failed discs, but coincidentally I just tried my WB The John Wayne Collection: The Cowboys (1971) Deluxe Edition DVD and it is unreadable on both my Panasonic UB820 and LG UBK90 players, but is readable/playable on my Archgon external UHD drive hooked to my Windows PC. By visual inspection, the disk looks flawless.

[JSC]

FWIW, unless a CD's been poorly manufactured, it will still hold up very well. Unless they haven't been handled with care, the earliest CD's to have been pressed
will play with no issues whatsoever.

Funny you mention that. I recently found the first CD I owned called Steinway and Stradivarius (received it as a gift probably in '91 or '92).
Popped it in the player and it still works perfectly!

[Yakushima]

My Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 6 DVD (first disc) is exhibiting symptoms of disc rot. It was working fine as of last year, but now refuses to play certain episodes, freezing and skipping in places within episodes that still play. I googled it and found that this is indeed a known issue.
Evidently, a huge number of DVDs distributed by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and manufactured between 2006 – 2008 are now crapping out. Here is a list of confirmed discs by WBHE that suffer from disc rot (Curb Your Enthusiasm is not on this list as of now).

UPD: Thanks to the admins for moving this to the appropriate thread. Oh my, how did I miss this discussion?! Scary and annoying, this kind of mass disc casualty event can make one reevaluate the whole approach of collecting films on discs.

[Yakushima]

My Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 6 DVD (first disc) is exhibiting symptoms of disc rot. It was working fine as of last year, but now refuses to play certain episodes, freezing and skipping in places within episodes that still play. I googled it and found that this is indeed a known issue.
Evidently, a huge number of DVDs distributed by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and manufactured between 2006 – 2008 are now crapping out. Here is a list of confirmed discs by WBHE that suffer from disc rot (Curb Your Enthusiasm is not on this list as of now).

UPD: Thanks to the admins for moving this to the appropriate thread. Oh my, how did I miss this discussion?! Scary and annoying, this kind of mass disc casualty event can make one reevaluate the whole approach of collecting films on discs.

Wow, WBHE really came through and exceeded my wildest expectations! I emailed their customer service about my rotted Curb Your Enthusiasm DVD and received a brief reply saying that a replacement would be sent in 4-6 weeks. I assumed they would be sending me that specific disc. Today, I received a heavy box from FedEx. To my amazement, it contained a complete set of CYE seasons on DVDs

[Drucker]

Fire sale. Everything must go.

[Matt]

So there's no way to test for dead discs without playing them and waiting for them to freeze up or skip? It would be much more convenient if they just didn't play at all. Then again, if I never play them then they're still in perfect condition. If a tree falls in the woods and all that.

[domino harvey]

Unfortunately not, though as far as I know this method still works

Look at the underside ring for IFPI numbers beginning with “2U” or “2F” or “60”, as these indicate they came from facilities with known high failure rate. Prioritize testing these

[Grand Wazoo]

So there's no way to test for dead discs without playing them and waiting for them to freeze up or skip? It would be much more convenient if they just didn't play at all. Then again, if I never play them then they're still in perfect condition. If a tree falls in the woods and all that.

I've found the quickest way is to play it, providing the disc loads at all, and just skip chapters. If it will freeze mid way through a film, you'll inevitably hit the spot eventually and no more chapters will load. I usually have to shut the player off entirely at that point. It's still annoying but a much quicker test than watching a film until it locks up at the 57 minute mark.