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

[schlock]

Originally Posted by 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.

Ya, I'd say a good 99% of copies of "FM" went bad. I own it and mine still played last time I checked it about a year ago, but I'm always wary it will become a coaster. At this point, I'm just going to pretend it's good as there's no replacing it anyway. Will worry about it next time I feel I want to watch it, which isn't very often.

[jscoggins]

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.

I just bought that one, too!

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by timothy ramzyk

Can these threads have stickies?

If so I think it would be a great help to identify the run-numbers and suspected titles in a way that won't involve inevitably weeding through 100+ pages.

It might also be helpful to keep track of how many people do or don't have trouble with a particular title. If one person has a playback issue with a given title, and 20 other people don't, it may be due to an unrelated issue. There's certainly value is noting that someone couldn't play a disc, but there's more value in noting whether it's an isolated incident or not.

[JediFonger]

wow i just checked my walkabout disc and it's bronzing too!

i've kept my dry and not in humid conditions. i'll have to review the other titles on that whole list

[jscoggins]

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).

Originally Posted by Brent L.

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.

Yeah, if he's super careless, all of his BDs (including non-Criterion) would be dying.

[Brent L.]

Speaking of FM...

I used to sell tons of OOP DVDs. I'd find them just all the time, every single day, and I'd then list them on eBay. Anyway I once came across FM at a pawn shop for a couple bucks and was thrilled since it was selling for around $100 or more at the time. I took it home, was gonna watch it first since I had never seen it, and sure enough the darn thing wouldn't load in my computer or any of my DVD players. It was a complete and total coaster.

[phoenixram1977]

My copy of seventh seal is ruined freezes at the thirty minute mark last about 2 minutes before playing normal. Tried two bluray players in the house

[pedromvu]

I don't know if someone said that you just need to check the disc codes to be sure if your item is defective, here is what i would do if i needed to check all my discs:

1.- Separate all the 2009 or 2010 titles (or just the suspects depending on your time)
2.- Check the codes of all.
3.- If the disc has a code starting L0 or LB (or you can't actually figure it out, since they are microscopic) put it apart.
4.- Check each of the discs with L0 or LB for browning and playback.

That's it, if the disc is L0 or LB and doesn't have any issue everything's fine, not all those discs are bad, i only have like 6 of them but only 2 are bad.

[Brent L.]

Originally Posted by jscoggins

Yeah, if he's super careless, all of his BDs (including non-Criterion) would be dying.

I wouldn't likely even be on this forum, much less in this thread, if I was any sort of super careless collector. I rarely let anyone even borrow my discs, much less store them in a way that would lead to damage. I doubt anyone here would do that.

Originally Posted by phoenixram1977

My copy of seventh seal is ruined freezes at the thirty minute mark last about 2 minutes before playing normal. Tried two bluray players in the house

Is there any sort of visual damage?

[jscoggins]

Originally Posted by pedromvu

I don't know if someone said that you just need to check the disc codes to be sure if your item is defective, here is what i would do if i needed to check all my discs:

1.- Separate all the 2009 or 2010 titles (or just the suspects depending on your time)
2.- Check the codes of all.
3.- If the disc has a code starting L0 or LB (or you can't actually figure it out, since they are microscopic) put it apart.
4.- Check each of the discs with L0 or LB for browning and playback.

That's it, if the disc is L0 or LB and doesn't have any issue everything's fine, not all those discs are bad, i only have like 6 of them but only 2 are bad.

Thanks, I've added this info to the OP.

Originally Posted by Brent L.

I wouldn't likely even be on this forum, much less in this thread, if I was any sort of super careless collector. I rarely let anyone even borrow my discs, much less store them in a way that would lead to damage. I doubt anyone here would do that.

[Crimson King]

Originally Posted by schlock

Ya, I'd say a good 99% of copies of "FM" went bad. I own it and mine still played last time I checked it about a year ago, but I'm always wary it will become a coaster. At this point, I'm just going to pretend it's good as there's no replacing it anyway. Will worry about it next time I feel I want to watch it, which isn't very often.

Not even sure who has the video rights to FM these days besides Universal if they were to re-release it

[jayembee]

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.

[kenobi]Josh Zyber. Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. A long time.[/kenobi]

(I remember Josh from the days of alt.video.laserdisc and other Usenet newsgroups.)

[Brian81]

Originally Posted by pedromvu

I don't know if someone said that you just need to check the disc codes to be sure if your item is defective, here is what i would do if i needed to check all my discs:

1.- Separate all the 2009 or 2010 titles (or just the suspects depending on your time)
2.- Check the codes of all.
3.- If the disc has a code starting L0 or LB (or you can't actually figure it out, since they are microscopic) put it apart.
4.- Check each of the discs with L0 or LB for browning and playback.

That's it, if the disc is L0 or LB and doesn't have any issue everything's fine, not all those discs are bad, i only have like 6 of them but only 2 are bad.

The codes just tell where it was pressed at. Myself and one other poster brought up that you can also identify these discs by reading the raised four character code on the plastic around the spindle. You don't even have to remove the disc from the case to check. The code for these L021 and LB42 disks will say 10K* with the * being a number. Save yourself the hassle of reading microscopic text under light.

[Crimson King]

Originally Posted by Brent L.

Speaking of FM...

I used to sell tons of OOP DVDs. I'd find them just all the time, every single day, and I'd then list them on eBay. Anyway I once came across FM at a pawn shop for a couple bucks and was thrilled since it was selling for around $100 or more at the time. I took it home, was gonna watch it first since I had never seen it, and sure enough the darn thing wouldn't load in my computer or any of my DVD players. It was a complete and total coaster.

Sounds like you used to be a flipper

[jayembee]

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?

Those of us (or at least some of us) with a BD-ROM drive are using freeware applications to scan the disc sectors, and possibly do a file check.

Speaking of which, yesterday I posted the results of scans I did on my copies of some titles with reported problems.

For one of them, Pierrot le fou, I got some warnings:

2014-10-01 12:12:22 Warning Reading of "D:\AACS\Content001.cer" required 10 tries
2014-10-01 11:31:11 Warning Reading of "D:\BDMV\STREAM\00265.m2ts" required 10 tries
2014-10-01 10:52:25 Info File Test started
2014-10-01 10:52:25 Info Surface scan complete
2014-10-01 10:52:25 Info Good: 100.00%, Problem: 0.00%, Error: 0.00%
2014-10-01 10:10:08 Warning Reading of sector 11976096 to 11976112 required 2 tries
2014-10-01 09:27:33 Warning Reading of sector 404032 to 404048 required 3 tries
2014-10-01 09:26:59 Warning Reading of sector 401504 to 401520 required 2 tries
2014-10-01 09:26:35 Warning Reading of sector 399104 to 399120 required 2 tries

I was going to watch the disc in its entirety today, but I figured first I'd give it another check with VSO Inspector. This time, it read cleanly on both the sector scan and the file check. So

[Holmes]

Even with a magnifying glass, I felt as if my eyes were going to bloodily implode trying to decipher the ultra-tiny code on my Walkabout disc. The code might start with LB. It is not displaying any bronzing nor does it freeze when I fast forward through the film, so I hope it is fine, even though this is one of the most common problem discs.

[Brent L.]

Originally Posted by Crimson King

Sounds like you used to be a flipper

You have no clue, I don't care who knows it. I was out of work, helping to raise my two nieces full time, so I did what I could without needing to get a full time job so I could be with them.

Heck, if I find an OOP title for very cheap, or anything else regardless of what the item is for very cheap, and it's worth something you better bet your bottom dollar I'll make whatever I can off of it. I just don't do it every single day anymore like I did back then. Now it's just a case of if I happen to stumble across something at a pawn shop, thrift store, antique mall, or auction. Right now it's a lot of photographs, posters, and other such things.

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by Brian81

The codes just tell where it was pressed at. Myself and one other poster brought up that you can also identify these discs by reading the raised four character code on the plastic around the spindle. You don't even have to remove the disc from the case to check. The code for these L021 and LB42 disks will say 10K* with the * being a number. Save yourself the hassle of reading microscopic text under light.

Quite frankly, I've found reading the pressing SID relatively easy. It's the mould SID on the plastic inner rim that I have trouble with.

[Brian81]

Also, of all the disks I have checked that are not LB42/L021 (10K# in plastic), they have all been Sony discs and each has an easily read L3** code within the matrix.

[Brent L.]

I'm testing The Seventh Seal by letting it play for a little while in the background.

Man, I freakin' love this movie so much. I know a lot of people seem to have trouble with it but I just love it. It never fails to catch my interest, pretty much every single part of it.