Wings of Desire (1987)

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I've been following this on both the AVS forum and here. On AVS, the same poster that reported the defective discs said his friend had one copy with the scratches that froze, and he took it back to Best Buy and opened a second copy and saw it had the scratches too - he did not say if his friend actually exchanged for the second copy and tried to play it, only that it had the same scratches. So this is really only confirmation of a single defective disc.

The scratches are on the label side of the disc. For CDs, that would be very bad as the data is right under the label. For DVDs and BDs, that does not hold - with DVDs, the data is sandwiched between the top and bottom polycarbonate layers of the disc, and with BDs the data is extremely close to the bottom of the disc (which is why the anti-scratch protective coating is needed for BD discs). A scratch would have to be very deep on the BOTTOM of the disc to affect playback. A scratch on the label side would have to be extraordinarily deep, to the point where it is some kind of physical gouge. That does not seem to be the case here.

It is certainly possible there is a widespread defect with this title, so I don't intend to come across as a contrarian. But there is only one report of an actual defective disc (the above poster's friend had his initial copy freeze multiple times), vs. multiple reports of working discs (professional reviews here, at HighDefDigest, and at DVDBeaver, and two posters at criterionforum.org said their copies worked fine). Label printing is certainly not always perfect (I have many DVDs and BDs with noticeable gaps in the printing, and they all play and error scan fine), so let's not jump to conclusions over the relevance of these scratches on the label. If you get a chance to play your disc, we would all certainly be interested in the results. I have a copy waiting for me at Barnes & Noble that I will be picking up on Tuesday, and I'll make sure to post my results as well.