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Has anyone ever established a common pressing plant code or other identification on the affected discs? That would make it much easier to predict, monitor and back up any DVDs likely to fail (as in the case of slowly "bronzing" CDs from the UK PDO plant in the early 1990s).

Nothing last forever.
With streaming, the library can lose some titles, or the platform close altogether.
With physical medias, discs can rot, players can break down at a time when you can't find a replacement easily anymore.

In France, a pressing plant have produced somewhere around 250 Blu-rays releases that rot overtime, some in a matter of a couple of years. Since some releases date back from 2008, it can be hard to hunt down the label in 2018 and ask a replacement disc (the label sometimes has lost the video rights for the movie inbetween). The manufacturer went bankrupt since, and has been bought (twice), so good luck hunting them down for a replacement, when the label and the manufacturer don't just trow the ball back at each other. The manufacturer only officially recognized 24 titles to be concerned. That's a far stretch from the totality of the titles now found to be concerned.
I found a few of mine to have rotten, but managed to have them replaced. That was a few years ago. However, I found just a few days my Akira BD copy to have rotten and being unreadable. I've emailed twice the label, and they just don't answer. No surprise : the disc was pressed at this manufacturer.

There just isn't any eternal solution, but at least, with discs, they can't contractually remove the title away and just say "Hey, that's just business". It's actually the other way around : they probably have to replace it if it becomes unreadable in a matter of 3 years.

Jonathan S wrote: Wed Oct 31, 2018 2:27 pm Has anyone ever established a common pressing plant code or other identification on the affected discs? That would make it much easier to predict, monitor and back up any DVDs likely to fail (as in the case of slowly "bronzing" CDs from the UK PDO plant in the early 1990s).

I don't believe so, but I'll post the one from whichever round of Russian Roulette I lose next. The worst is when it's a dual layer dvd and only the second layer fails, so you get halfway thru the movie and it freezes!

Ahh I upgraded a huge number of my WB stand alones when they had the dvd to blu program, probably explains why I hadn’t run into it until I went digging through rarely accessed boxsets

Hey, it could be worse. Many years ago I opened a factory sealed DVD copy of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring only to find no discs inside! The paper inserts were though!

Jonathan S wrote: Wed Oct 31, 2018 2:27 pm Has anyone ever established a common pressing plant code or other identification on the affected discs? That would make it much easier to predict, monitor and back up any DVDs likely to fail (as in the case of slowly "bronzing" CDs from the UK PDO plant in the early 1990s).

There is a whole thread on Home Theatre Form. Some pressing plant in Canada screwed up a stack of Warners disc from about 2005/06 to 2009. Read it and weep:

https://www.hometheaterforum.com/commun ... ay.351260/

I am in the process of watching all my Warner DVDs before they start to fail. I have over a dozen that have so far. As I'm only watching one a week its going to take me up to another 6 months to get through the lot.

Thanks for that link, Aunt Peg. A page 1 poster mentioned my most recent WB disc failure, REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE, which plays fine until about the halfway mark. It then pixilates across half the horizontal frame and freezes. Tried skipping frames and chapters, "backing in" via reverse skipframe, rebooting etc all to no avail. And this was a boxset "exclusive"!

This makes around a dozen WB discs I've had problems with. Can't recall all my affected titles but ANCHORS AWEIGH is the by far the worst. It started out with random intermittent freezing that seemed easy enough to work around and now won't play at all. None of the affected discs were visibly abnormal. No "bronzing" or other discoloration, warping, label "bleeding" or imprint damage. They just stop doing what they're supposed to do.

A slightly paranoid post from a /r/boutiquebluray user

One interesting bit of information is Shout! Factory stating that the recent delays are "due to the consolidation of almost all major Blu-ray and DVD manufacturing at a single facility." Am I reading this incorrectly or do most Blu-rays get manufactured at the same plant?

Boosmahn wrote: Tue Nov 13, 2018 3:17 am A slightly paranoid post from a /r/boutiquebluray user

One interesting bit of information is Shout! Factory stating that the recent delays are "due to the consolidation of almost all major Blu-ray and DVD manufacturing at a single facility." Am I reading this incorrectly or do most Blu-rays get manufactured at the same plant?

I would assume so. It would be an enormous cost saving measure.

Good time to remind folks that the brain evolved to process patterns and not probability. That Reddit post is a DOOZY.

I think that post is dead on.

This eight-minute video about the last Blockbuster store standing is worth watching. They were a local (Bend, OR) video store before being swallowed up by the Blockbuster chain as a franchise, and now they're the last one in business, servicing their customers' needs and buying their rental discs at a local big-box store.

Boosmahn wrote: Tue Nov 13, 2018 3:17 am A slightly paranoid post from a /r/boutiquebluray user

One interesting bit of information is Shout! Factory stating that the recent delays are "due to the consolidation of almost all major Blu-ray and DVD manufacturing at a single facility." Am I reading this incorrectly or do most Blu-rays get manufactured at the same plant?

Haven’t read the post, but for the Americas, I understand that to be correct. Everything tends to get manufactured at Technicolor in Mexico.

Sony DADC in Terre Haute, IN is manufacturing the UHD100 triple layer discs and PlayStation games.

Gregory wrote: Wed Nov 28, 2018 10:06 pm This eight-minute video about the last Blockbuster store standing is worth watching. They were a local (Bend, OR) video store before being swallowed up by the Blockbuster chain as a franchise, and now they're the last one in business, servicing their customers' needs and buying their rental discs at a local big-box store.

I thought there was one in Alaska as well?

It closed.

Getting back to the WHV defects issue from up-page: folks this is becoming a catastrophic epidemic! Seriously, this is no longer an issue of an isolated title or a short run but possibly every WHV disc from their two primary pressing plants used at the height of their deep supplements/mega boxset era circa 2006-2008. I urge all of you to use the link provided by Aunt Peg to see for yourself just how many titles are involved. There is a WHV contact person to email but they are requesting that customers make every effort to confirm purchase with physical receipts and/or electronic invoice (after 10-12 years!) to facilitate replacement. If the pressed discs are OOP then MODs are the default.

I just this weekend found the time to do a systematic check on some of my boxsets and so far I'm running about 50%! I generally sold off or gave away unwanted titles from my sets so the roster is a little skewed but after checking my Brando, Newman & Classic Musicals from the Dream Factory Vol. 2 I've found 7 defective discs out of 14 extant. Most of the defects are attributable to layer change freezeups around mid-feature as per Domino above but at least one was failure to load (MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY disc 1) and another (BELLE OF NEW YORK) started intermittent skipping and freezing within the first half dozen chapter stops. I've only tested on my Oppo by scanning chapter stops with occasional real time viewing but HTF members have been trying discs on every available piece of hardware they own and meticulously watching complete features. Several are considering a second or third batch of replacements and are wondering if they'll be "cut off" at some point despite continuing to find defective product.

Again, I urge everyone (or at least those of us with substantial WHV titles from 2006 - 2008) to take the time to scan the linked thread and then spot check their inventory asap.

Wired.... Streaming Isn't Everything, and Blu-rays are back to Prove It

The guy who runs an entire subreddit devoted to Blu-rays only owns 300 movies?

That's what I thought too. The amount of Arrow releases I own is already just a bit more than 300 titles (306) and it's even more for the Criterion (360).

The article also exclusively talks about US labels.

Folks really need to "get on our level"

We are the real BDE of home media

domino harvey wrote: Wed Dec 12, 2018 5:26 pm The guy who runs an entire subreddit devoted to Blu-rays only owns 300 movies?

I don't think this is too surprising, given his age. I'm not sure I've got over 300 on my shelves, largely because I haven't been collecting all that long.

Also in what way in Maniac "obscure" when it recently had a remake starring Elijah Wood?

I know (IRL) a guy who goes to Best Buy and picks up all the new releases every Tuesday. He has a wife and a kid and it seems like a totally inexplicable waste of money, but he's a "Blu-ray collector" and doesn't see anything unusual about it. Normie Blu-ray collectors are definitely a thing

mfunk9786 wrote: Wed Dec 12, 2018 8:55 pm I know (IRL) a guy who goes to Best Buy and picks up all the new releases every Tuesday. He has a wife and a kid and it seems like a totally inexplicable waste of money, but he's a "Blu-ray collector" and doesn't see anything unusual about it. Normie Blu-ray collectors are definitely a thing

I'd have a bigger issue with the crappy movies one's getting this way (like Peppermint and The Equalizer 2 this week), but I'm pretty much buying every BFI, Arrow, Criterion and Eureka releases and that's already quite a lot, so I'm probably not too far away, only on a different market (I guess).

On the other side of that, I've known several people over the years who have used purchasing as some kind of alternative rental system, buying up all the new releases at Target or wherever, watching them and then turning right around (often that same week) and selling them on ebay. I've never understood this process at all.