Early Blu-rays that may have playback issues (Criterion, Well Go USA, etc.)

[jscoggins]

On another forum, someone else is reporting a peeling Stagecoach.

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/thread...#post-11156648

Josh Zyber's copy of A Christmas Tale is peeling.

http://www.highdefdigest.com/blog/cr...uray-disc-rot/

Here's the Forum where Days of Heaven is clearly identified:

http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/...hp?f=2&t=13376

[Brian81]

Originally Posted by timothy ramzyk

Again, I've seen a lot of sleuths trying to figure this out by numbers, but it doesn't appear to me that the results have been definitive.

Asking a company to take back a disk preemptively, seems pretty premature, especially since they've not put a window on how long they would replace a defective disk.

I agree, if it has brown foxing in the rim, away it goes no matter how well it plays.

I don't know about that one... so far all the reported failures are linked to the same pressing plant, and this is based on the information that is placed onto the discs themselves. If bad discs were popping up from varying manufacturing facilities, then it'd be a totally different story.

[Brian81]

Originally Posted by timothy ramzyk

If I chapter through with no hitch, and there is no foxing, I'm presuming they are currently OK.

As someone who dealt with HD DVD discs rotting, I will say that this is not too effective. Most of those discs would fail and error out if the disc tried to read a certain point in the film. If I tried replaying the disc, I could skip past that chapter and continue playing the movie in most cases. Well, unless it hit another spot that had become unreadable.

[Brian81]

Originally Posted by jscoggins

On another forum, someone else is reporting a peeling Stagecoach.

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/thread...#post-11156648

Josh Zyber's copy of A Christmas Tale is peeling.

http://www.highdefdigest.com/blog/cr...uray-disc-rot/

Here's the Forum where Days of Heaven is clearly identified:

http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/...hp?f=2&t=13376

I do not like Zyber's list AT ALL. He's just blanket listing every title Criterion released in 2009 and 2010. Some of these titles may have never even been pressed at the place responsible! I certainly wouldn't. If he has discs that prove so, fine, but that's not what I think he did.


BTW, post #541, here's the stampings for my discs as proof that these were made at the same place.

Kagemusha - L021 / 10K7
Playtime - L021 / 10K6
Repulsion L021 / 10K7
For All Mankind - L021 / 10K6
Last Year At Marienbad - L021 / 10K7
The Seventh Seal - L021 / 10K6
The Wages of Fear - NOTHING LISTED / 10K6

[jscoggins]

Originally Posted by Brian81

I do not like Zyber's list AT ALL. He's just blanket listing every title Criterion released in 2009 and 2010. Some of these titles may have never even been pressed at the place responsible! I certainly wouldn't. If he has discs that prove so, fine, but that's not what I think he did.

No worries, I'm using BD.com member Partyslammer's list as the basis for our collective research effort in this thread.

However, Zyber does have a copy of A Christmas Tale that is peeling.

[Clark Kent]

Originally Posted by man_westooth

FWIW, I just visually inspected every Criterion blu I own, including several on the endangered list (Days of Heaven, Howard's End, M, Stagecoach, Red Shoes, Black Narcissus and Lola Montez). Most of these I bought as soon as they came out, so almost all are first pressings. In no case was there any visible bronzing. I even tried playing Howard's End around 1:52:00 for about a minute on either side and had no tracking issues.

I know what some are saying about that not being a guarantee that these will all be playable, or that the rot won't come later; but I think it's significant (to me, anyway) that none of them have bronzing now.

Let me make it clear that each disc won't fail at the same time stamp. An improper chemical reaction has occurred in the bonding between the dual layers of the faulty discs. Even if every copy of Howards End was replicated incorrectly at Sonopress, the failure point during playback will vary somewhat between discs.

I've suggested people find the layer switch for each problematic release and play it all the way through that transition as a simple test. That would be the most likely mode of failure for BD-50s.

[bwdowiak]

Originally Posted by jscoggins

Here's the Forum where Days of Heaven is clearly identified:

http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/...hp?f=2&t=13376

in 2010.

EDIT - never mind.. that's just the first post of a large thread. my bad

[jscoggins]

Originally Posted by bwdowiak

in 2010.

1) The OP has been updated since 2010. After all, they link to this thread. They didn't time travel and pre-link to us back in 2010.

2) Read the entire thread.

[bwdowiak]

Originally Posted by jscoggins

2) Read the entire thread.

it's okay. I'm good. thank you, though.

still not sure how "common" the occurrence is for this particular title. nobody seemed to worry about this issue between November 2013 and September 2014 as there were no posts in that thread.

[Brian81]

BTW, is 'Benjamin Button' even affected? This title was distributed through Paramount Home Entertainment, and they may have handled the manufacturing for this one, using their own facilities. The disc stampings on my copy don't match ANY of the other discs. Heck, it's being handled by Warner Home Video currently, since Paramount has farmed titles over to them.

[timothy ramzyk]

Originally Posted by Brian81

As someone who dealt with HD DVD discs rotting, I will say that this is not too effective. Most of those discs would fail and error out if the disc tried to read a certain point in the film. If I tried replaying the disc, I could skip past that chapter and continue playing the movie in most cases. Well, unless it hit another spot that had become unreadable.

Much as I love my Criterion titles, a don't have the time to watch ten of them back-to-back. Is that what you folks are really doing?

[gpn]

Checked my two titles from the OP, Stagecoach and Walkabout. Stagecoach looks okay, but I'll put it in to be sure. Walkabout on the other hand looked like it had been in an oven and got burnt along the edge and would not even start up when I tried playing it.

[Brian81]

Originally Posted by timothy ramzyk

Much as I love my Criterion titles, a don't have the time to watch ten of them back-to-back. Is that what you folks are really doing?

No. I've noted which titles might be problematic later on, and will wait and see what Criterion's approach will be to this issue. I might watch a couple, but it's TEDIOUS watching a movie, even one you like, when you aren't in the mood to watch it. I want to watch movies as entertainment, not as a chore/task to confirm functionality.

[Brent L.]

I just did a visual inspection on a few more of my discs, going beyond just the bronzing.

I discovered considerable peeling along the edges of both The Seventh Seal and A Night to Remember.

[timothy ramzyk]

So would Criterion have any sort of insurance or reasonable guarantee against this from the plant that press them? Assuming they're still operational.

[Brian81]

Do the "peeling" discs bear the same SID codes?

Originally Posted by timothy ramzyk

So would Criterion have any sort of insurance or reasonable guarantee against this from the plant that press them? Assuming they're still operational.

Don't know, but I hope such thing exists in the industry. It'd stink for Criterion to take the financial hit for some other company's failure. They paid for these discs to be manufactured, after all.

[timothy ramzyk]

Originally Posted by Brian81

No. I've noted which titles might be problematic later on, and will wait and see what Criterion's approach will be to this issue. I might watch a couple, but it's TEDIOUS watching a movie, even one you like, when you aren't in the mood to watch it. I want to watch movies as entertainment, not as a chore/task to confirm functionality.

Especially with the looming cloud of "will it or won't it" in the back of your mind. It ruined watching those crappy Universal DVD-18 sets for me.

[Crimson King]

Not sure if anyone here remembers this
Pretty much all of the dvds of the film FM rotted, that was a title that went oop, and Anchor Bay did nothing for its customers.

[MifuneFan]

Originally Posted by Brent L.

I just did a visual inspection on a few more of my discs, going beyond just the bronzing.

I discovered considerable peeling along the edges of both The Seventh Seal and A Night to Remember.

No offense, but your discs seem way worse than most, if not all others on here. I wonder if there are any particular conditions that are causing the effects to be exacerbated for your discs (e.g. humidity).

[Brent L.]

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

no offense, but your discs seem way worse than most, if not all others on here. I wonder if there are any particular conditions that are causing the effects to be exacerbated for your discs (e.g. humidity)

No offense taken, but I take just as good care of my discs as anyone else on here, and better than many I'm sure. They are all on a shelf in our third bedroom/office/eBay storage/movie room. The blinds are never open unless we want some extra light when we are working in there, the movies are well out of the way of any natural light even then, and we keep the temperature in our house well under control.

Besides all of that I have never had any other disc, have it be CD, DVD, or Blu-ray ever go bad or have any other problems like what we're seeing with these Criterion discs. I simply own over 100 from the collection and buy most of them not soon after they are released, so the ones I do own are almost guaranteed to be from the earliest pressings of each and every title. If there are problems with any of these discs, I'll likely be affected.

Just for fun I've opened all of my Criterion discs just to look at them. The only ones affected, so far, are the ones in the aforementioned time period. I have also went through various other Blu-ray titles in the same time period, and beyond, just to check them out of pure curiosity. There aren't any signs of anything remotely close to anything mentioned in this thread with any other titles, or anything else remotely wrong with them at all.