I had to exchange my Game of Thrones boxset since there was a total of 2 defective Blu-ray discs out of the 33 Blu-ray discs
Once and awhile even standard DVD discs and standard Blu-ray discs can be defective in the stamping and manufacturing process (however it is very rare in the last 10 years to see a defective standard Blu-ray disc up to 50GB in size). Seasons 1 through 3 and seasons 5 through 8 played flawlessly on my 2016 OPPO UDP-203 Blu-ray player. However, when I reached season 4 for some reason Disc 1 and Disc 2 were partially defective and I ended up exchanging those two discs with Best Buy, and the replacement discs were flawless with no problems. Still this was a frustrating experience to get half way through the series and run into two defective Blu-ray discs. The two discs that were defective were BD-100 (100GB) discs. Out of the 33 Blu-ray discs there is a total of 23 100GB discs in the series. A standard Blu-ray disc uses 25GB per layer, and a 4K Blu-ray disc is harder to manufacture since its more dense with 33GB per layer. Since a 100GB disc has 3 layers its harder to manufacture and contains less error correction since the data is more dense.
Before playing any optical disc including audio CD’s, DVD’s, and Blu-ray discs, I always place those discs in my Pioneer 4K BD-ROM computer drive to make sure Windows 10 and the Pioneer 4K BD-ROM drive can read the disc. Doing this will detect a completely defective optical disc, but one needs to watch or listen to the optical disc to make sure it is not partially defective. What is surprising is that Disc 1 for season 4 would load on my Pioneer BD-ROM drive but would not load at all on my year 2016 OPPO UDP-203. The surface of the optical disc looked perfectly clean, but then I noticed that there was one or two super small dust particles on the 100GB disc, so I cleaned the disc and then it would load fine in the OPPO UDP-203 once the dust was cleaned off the disc (Perhaps 100GB discs are not ideal as rental discs yet since a small amount of dust or fingerprint on the surface will cause the disc not to load). I heard that some RED BOX locations rent 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs, but any scratches, fingerprints on the disc, or minor dust particles will cause customers to complain due to playback problems.
In the future there needs to be improvements in the optical disc manufacturing process for 100GB discs and also there needs to be second and third generation 4K BD-ROM drives that read 100GB discs better. If the optical disc surface is not perfect then customers will run into problems. Once and awhile one can have a brief glitch that lasts a half a second while playing a 100GB disc, but that problem 99% of the time is not repeatable when doing a reverse scan over the same spot several times, and was just a player glitch or a dust particle on the disc. I hope that one day 100GB discs become as reliable as 50GB discs. With a 50GB disc many times dust, scratches, and fingerprints on the discs surface will not effect playback at all. The disc surface has to be really dirty or with a lot of scratches to make 50GB discs hard to play.
The two defective 100GB Blu-ray discs in my Game of Thrones boxset that was verified on 3 different 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray players even after the disc was cleaned several times
Episode 1 Lockup pause at around 56 minutes and 3 seconds and player has to automatically jump ahead at least 40 seconds before disc can be played. Lockup pause is repeatable when reverse scanning and playing again at the exact same spot for episode 1 on two different OPPO players and one Sony 4K player. Episode 2 has a pause at around 18 seconds and player has to skip ahead 10 seconds to around 28 seconds for playback to be normal. (Both problems duplicated on Sony 4K Blu-ray player along with two OPPO UDP-203 players).
Problem fixed when defective 100GB disc exchanged.
Disc 2 90.2GB: Episode 4: Lock up pause at around 50 seconds and player has to automatically jump ahead 12 seconds before disc can be played. Also second lock up pause at around 1 minute and 38 seconds for episode 4 and player has to automatically jump ahead around 30 seconds before disc can be played.
Problem fixed when defective 100GB disc exchanged.
***These two problems were solved as soon as I exchanged the two defective 100GB discs with Best Buy. *** It costs more to manufacture a triple layer 100GB discs. Its harder to stamp and manufacture a 100GB disc, and the failure rate for 100GB discs is still a lot higher when compared to 66GB, 50GB, and 25GB Blu-ray disc. So the studios need to work to improve the manufacturing process of 100GB discs. Some studios have better quality control when manufacturing 100GB discs.
If one does not have time to watch their Game of Thrones 4K Blu-ray series, they can spot check each 100GB disc to see if there is a problem. So far when there has been a problem with the 100GB discs the playback problem is usually 2 minutes at the beginning or the end of the episode. Therefore, if one goes through all their Game of Thrones 4K Blu-ray discs and plays 2 minutes at the beginning and 2 minutes at the end of each episode they should be able to find out if they have any defective discs in the series. If one runs into a defective 100GB disc they can exchange the discs at the retailer that they purchased the discs from. Hopefully this problem I have with this Game of Thrones series is rare, and no one else is experiencing this problem with defective 100GB discs.
All countries
Argentina
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Chile
China
Colombia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Estonia
Denmark
Finland
Greece
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
India
Latvia
Lithuania
Malaysia
New Zealand
Norway
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
Linear Mode
