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DVD: Degradable Versatile...
jomaree writes "The SMH online reports that some DVDs are starting to corrode or "rot". Although somewhere between 1 and 10 per cent of DVDs are affected, it seems the distributors don't want to know.
One list of affected movie titles reveals what might be a sinister pattern emerging:
"One DVD website lists 18 titles known to have at least one bad batch, among them Planet of the Apes (1968), Men in Black: Collectors Edition, Independence Day and the Alien Legacy box set."
Or maybe the person compiling the list only buys sci-fi movies."
After all, isn't making a backup somewhat illegal under the DMCA??
Man...I can't wait for another round of forced upgrades...or replacements in this case!
Woohoo! I'm glad to be a consumer!!
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Or maybe the person compiling the list only buys sci-fi movies.
Yeah, or maybe his DVD player is knackered, and it's damaging all his disks...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
I had a DVD that was released in 2000 start to lose quality, also I noticed that the layers seemed to be seperating. I take good care of all my cds and dvds, so I knew it was no fault of mine. I contacted the company who pressed the dvd and they offered to send me a replacement as long as I sent in the original.
There is no spork.
Or could this be "planned obsolescence," i.e., Sony's PlayStation2 hardware problems? (The PS2 breaks more often than the GC and XB combined, and usually Sony wants $100 just to look at it)
conspiracy theorists... start your engines!
.. in the original story. course, i'm sure the editor read the link 'n all. *cough*
Planned obsolescence. Companies know that as long as a consumer has somethign that works they are inclined to keep using it. They can't make money selling you one product once. The whole goal of these companies is to have you buy thier product again and again. Why do you think so few quality products are available today?
Just thought I'd point this out
For a minute there I thought that it might affect the porn titles but luckily it didn't happen. I think we could have been looking at riots and possibly martial law.
You can steal my car, rob my mom, and beat my brother but DON'T FUCK WITH MY PORN!
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Or maybe this only happens to bad sci-fi movies.
Christ, you've posted every single story that's on the front page right now. You've been incessantly surfing through the queue submissions since 1pm yesterday.
;-)
Take a break man -- you deserve it!
*nix.org -- Latest article: "Tablet PCs As Mobile *nix Workstations"
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Ok NOT Trolling;
But I find it oddly convenient that I am not legally able to dupe my DVD collection, and THEN magically they start to break... total boon to the studios and MPAA!
Although, in an odd way this could be the YRO savior... think of it... this is a perfect reason to extend 'fair use' rights to digital media... DVDs break...computers crash, all necessitating backups... with DVDs rotting, it becomes alot harder for the RI/MPAA to argue against allowing 'perfect digital' duplicates...
Mr. Valenti, I now have a perfectly valid and (IANAL but seems) legal reason to dupe my DVDs. I would love to see someone go to court and sue because the product was faulty and they are not legally able to make copies, and the studio wont replace it because the DVD is out of the 90 day warranty period... this could be very interesting!
_CMK
Bad spellers of the world untie!
see subject
...at Wal-Mart for Under 10 Dollars.
Dolemite
Save the World! Use a Quote!
(5 * 6 + 9) / ( 5* (3-9) )=
/
18 keystrokes, vs
5 Enter 6 * 9 + 3 Enter 9 - 5 *
13 keystrokes.
Eat that, TI borgs!
As much as this sucks for the people currently affected, I can't help but think of this as a good thing overall. It's only when Joe Schmoe starts to feel the fact that his fair use rights have been taken away by the DMCA that there will be enough outcry to repeal it.
Linux, isn't sexy. This, however, is the stuff those stupid segmants on the 10 o'clock news are made of.
After 10 months of owning the Collectors Edition of this movie, I was annoyed to find that it, in fact was unplayable at all. After closer inspection, it looked like the center of the first disc had been cracked in several places, while other DVD discs that I have played (for longer periods too) have stayed in perfect shape. I never noticed this because, until they are being viewed, my movies stay in their respective containers. This is the primary reason why I often resort to DivX and shifting formats of video. Other movies, I find, are very sensitive to layer changes, and once again, when I play back a DivX copy off a CD, I don't experience such problems (except the lack of extra features I probably won't use).
This site appears to be the original source. This guy puts his bad DVDs under a high powered microscope and documents the damage.
Wasn't it in "Men in Black" when Mr.Agent K shows a little silvery disc and says something like: This little thing will substitute the CD in the next years. SH**, so i havce to buy "The White Album" again. Maybe this is a similiar plan?
... whenever a text is transmitted, variation occurs. This is because human beings are careless, fallible, and occasiona
I'm going to have to keep recollecting my collector's editions!
If it became commonly known that not only do DVDs degrade, but also you can't legally copy them to preserve the content that you already paid for, maybe there'll be enough disgruntled people writing to their Congresscritters that the DMCA will get a serious review.
That won't help Joe Sixpack until legally licensed DVD-copying shops start to appear, but until then us geeks might be able to legally help out our buddies...
the above is not a troll... mod parent up
Hmmm... problem is *not* with the data itself.. I've examined my extensive DivX "backup" collection, they all seem to be fine. What gives?
My theory is that Divx compression somehow protects the data from potential ruination. I guess this means that (Kazaa/gnutella client/IRC/whatever) is basically taking on the role of "backup medium" now, instead of "piratical menace."
just like the humble blood clot... turboporsche@telus.net
Yes I saw this with CD's back in 1998. I saw cd's rot away from the inside. And I have always said dvds would suffer the same fate.
Yeah, it's supposedly illegal, but why not archive your DVD's as DivX movies? Potential DVD damage seems like a pretty stinkin' good reason to me.
DivX quality is pretty good, it's playable under linux (I like Mplayer, myself), and you don't have to worry about your DVDs getting scratched/broken/lost/stolen when they get handled.
Nothing like having your entire DVD collection available on every computer in the house, served straight from your file server.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
There are no walmarts in .au.
*bzzzzt* Thankyou for playing. Please come again.
Okay, so this is the stuff that if you throw it in the landfill it'll be around for a million years (give or take), but if you make a disc out of it it'll decompose in two years. Pretty uncooperative of it, if you ask me.
Well, personally I don't worry about DVDs degrading. I just rip them to my hard drive, bit for bit, minus copy protection (so come arrest me, why doncha). Takes up a lot of space, but what the hey...it's cheaper than buying them, especially twice!
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
[Sarcasm]
All of the titles are associated with aliens in some way? Coincidence? I think not.
Using the best fuzzy logic that caffeene and sleep-deprivation can provide, I can prove this fact.
The DMCA is evil, and has long conspired against anyone actually enjoying their information. It's also meant to make more money, and since people will have to purchase the "non-defective" discs, or more than likely pay twice the DVD cost in handling costs for a replacement, it makes them more money. The MPAA/RIAA is the main driving force behind the the DMCA.
The government has supposedly been covering up the existance of aliens for decades, and usually does everything they can to make it fictional. They tend to distroy anything with truth in it.
The government passed the DMCA, and it prevents these Discs from being copied.
The movies are all about aliens, and the government hides things about aliens.
Therefore, the people at the RIAA/MPAA who back up the DMCA must be aliens.
And that makes aliens evil.
[End Sarcasam]
but I do know that CD's and DVD's are both the same in that the are physically constructed of several layers.
Each layer consists of various polymers, and although sealed polymers are susceptible to degrading. Even though they are realtively robust compared to say, videotape, the weakest part of a CD or DVD is the side where information is made available to the reading device.
Polymers can react with moisture or UV light, and once that reaction starts (this is where a *real* chemist should start to add some meat to this discussion) it throws off by products that cause further degradation.
CDs and DVD's do ship with a protective layer that is intended to shield the delicate, information carrying sublayers but once damaged (i.e., scratched), the degradation process can begin.
Apparently if you store them properly - low humidty and at about 8 to 10 C, even damaged CD's and DVD' s will remain stable indefinitely.
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http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_328113.html?m enu=news.quirkies
CD-eating fungus discovered
A Spanish scientist has discovered a fungus which eats CDs.
Geologist Victor Cardenes says he stumbled across the microscopic creature while visiting Belize.
The discovery came after friends complained that one of their CDs had developed an odd discoloration that left parts of it virtually transparent.
Using an electron microscope, Cardenes and colleagues at the Madrid-based Superior Council for Scientific Research later observed that fungi had burrowed into the CD from the outer edge.
It had then devoured the thin aluminium reflecting layer and some of the data-storing polycarbonate resin.
Cardenes said: "If you look at the CD from the shiny side, in the places where the fungus has been you can see all the way through to the painted surface on the other side.
"It completely destroys the aluminium. It leaves nothing behind."
Biologists at the council concluded that the fungus belonged to a common genus called Geotrichum but had never seen this particular species before.
They add that, fortunately for Europeans, the fungus only survives in the sultry weather conditions that prevail in Belize.
Story filed: 16:53 Friday 15th June 2001
IIRC, there seemed to be some question back when DVDs were introduced ('96? '97?) whether the discs would suffer the same fate as laserdiscs. It was thought that the materials used and the assembly process would prevent DVDs from getting laser rot. Apparently that's not the case.
I think I've found the site that shows the list of "rotting" DVD titles mentioned in the article:
http://www.pnc.com.au/~jmcmanus/dvdrot.htm
I'm surprised Titan A.E. isn't on the list. Both I and a friend of mine own this DVD, and we've both had our copies degrade to be nearly unplayable. Mine has spent its entire life in a 200-disc carousel, where none of the other discs have had any problems.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
We heard the same thing twenty years ago about CD's.
-- Cheers!
Studying for a masters degree in conservation and restauration of visual media, we've just hit the subject of digital conservation. guess what... 'It is recommended to make backups of DVD's every FIVE years, since the format cannot be considered stable for more than 10 years, even in ideal storage conditions' the cracking of the plastic layer is inherent to the prodduction proces, figure that! Seems that the alu/plastic bonds cause excessive strans because they have different expansion characteristics, so everytime they get a bit hotter/colder, the risk of cracking occurs. furthermore, some plants use 'glues' that affect the alu layer, so it starts corroding. kinda depressing all that...
your dvd's and then freeze them, it's the only way to be sure
the hub-rings in the DVD cases are brutally tight, much tighter than on CD cases? Perhaps, as we remove them from the case, the flex of the disc causes microfractures. But, it doesn't explain the guy who left the disc in the carousel, nor does it explain why only layer two cracks. Differential thermal expansion? I can remember from way back when (I bought one of the first CD players to market) CD's started having pinholes in them, and also became see-through (aka cheap manufacturing). And the price of CD's has only gone UP, when the record companies promised that they'd go DOWN. BTW, aren't CD's and DVD's vacuum deposited?
that movie was degrading!
Is there anything in the works for use as a true archival media? I'm talking something with a shelf life of hundreds of years, or is that just sci-fi right now?
On a kinda related notion, I remember reading an article in Analog sci-fi (maybe) about how you would leave a message for people 20-30,000 years from now. Such as to mark a storage site for nuclear waste. Not easy...
Safe to say your DVD collection would be dust.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
I haven't run into this problem myself (yet), but some of the DVDs I have are in cases that require you to BEND THE DISC to get it out. What a horrible design!
Consumer (cheap) goods are supposed to break so that you have to replace them. That is how consumer businesses stay in business. On the other hand, the Roman public works (or any public works) are not created with the intention of selling you another identical one next year. These things cost huge amounts of money, and are usually key to the municipality being served. Well, you CAN get crappy infrastructure projects is the purchaser is unwilling to pay the going rate, by requesting only enough infrastructure to cover *immediate needs* with no excess reserved for greater future demands to be placed on the finished work.
... well, you hope better. Expensive consumer goods are still *mostly* crap, though.
In short, cheap price == crappy toy that breaks. Huge price ==
--Ash
this brings a whole new meaning to the hardcore recycling story
YarrRrr
"Symptoms of the rot include picture break-up and freezing at a specific place on the disk. The main cause is believed to be poorly designed cases. Delamination shows up as a coffee-like stain that prevents the disc from playing."
you know, picture break-up could be caused by scratches and puup on the dvd, and the freezing in a specific place could be attributed to the delay in switching layers during playback.
i've seen funky "stains" on CDs and DVDs, but haven't had problems with playback. i'm not saying that dvd rot doesn't happen, just that there are other reasons for playback problems.
Otherwise you might not be able to view your film collection 30 years from now...
Ok that's it, now I *am* getting the new Alien Quadrilogy box this year.
Anyway, if this is true, then I guess we'll have to watch out for our Columbia/Tristar releases - they had a some track record with laser rot on the LaserDisc format.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
I own a DVD of Gladiator (with Russel Crowe). There isn't a single scratch on the disc, but now when I put it in the player, it can't get beyond the menu (even on the computer). I'm not sure why these companies can't have a return policy since they're so cheap to make (ie, they tell you to send some type of SASE) but I suppose it's the whole thing about getting people to buy the same movie over and over again. I thought I had a license to view it by owning it, but if I can't do that, what do I have?
1. Fundamentally, starting from the playback side, the disc consists of data layer 1 (the first layer as played back by the DVD player), backed by a semi-reflective metallic coating (often gold)
OOOOOhhh! I read on slash a while back about people in 3rd world countries pouring acid on the electronic junk we send over there for gold.
Now i'm trying to think of a chemical that could melt a DVD, Anyone? I'd guess turpintine or paint thinner could do it. Jasco definetly could melt it (when I was 5 I ruined our plastic vacuum cleaner by pourin jasco on it)
So you could have like a 1000 of those suckers mailed round to you easily. Make a few phone calls posing as a screwdriver shop (Oh yes, my customers like AOL!)
Now take these 1000 or so AOL DVD's, and put them in a stainless steel container, add in turpintine, jasco, whatever and let it melt.
Hopefull if you can use a thin enough solvent it will be enough for the gold particles to float down to the bottom, drain off the top and you got instant gold.
In this fucked economic downturn i'll cook up all kinds of crazy idea's like this to make a buck.
He works as a failure analysis engineer, with access to an optical microscope.
An optical microscope huh? Wow. He must be a really important guy. You can't just by that kind of technology in a high street store. No, wait, actually, you can...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
is to go back to the store and buy another copy of the disc! DON'T DO IT! The monopoly, anti fair-use, stifle technology companies get you twice. Instead, complain, complain, complain. Music and movie prices should be going down. As long as we as consumers continue to buy these products, the companies will continue to rip us off. They know what prices we are willing to pay, and they are toeing the line (similar to this: research has shown that it would take a 4x increase in gas prices (at the pump) to make people reconsider driving their car). Stop supporting these industries with your wallet.
The layer is so thin you wouldn't get much gold from the CDs.
If there was any sizable amount, then you wouldn't be able to buy them for pennies (I'm in the UK).
I havn't seen rot, but I have seen a co-worker's music video DVD start to delaminate. It was visible as interference patterns in a "blob" shape about 8mm diameter starting at the spindle.
Careful probing with a fingernail showed that the layers weren't the same diameter in the spindle hole. The "lip" had been catching on the retention spindle in the case, and had eventually separated the layers.
By *eventually*, I mean a week or so...
R4
10 Things I Hate About You
101 Dalmations
Abyss SE
Alien Boxset
Bad Boys - repressed
Contact - repressed
Gremlins
Notorious
Independence Day SE
Hercules
L.A Confidential - repressed
Little Mermaid
Men in Black CE
Moonraker
Planet of the Apes 1968
Pinnochio
Stuart Little
Tarzan
R1
Antz
Boogie Nights - first release
Bone Collector
Chicken Run
Contact
Dances With Wolves
Galaxy Quest
Devil's Advocate
L.A Confidential
The Negotiator
Stuart Little
T2:UE (Dual Sided Disc)
War Games
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
I thought it was just my MAC.
I just have to buy the DVD's again, not the player?
Since when were these discs glued togther?
CD's, DVD's...they are not 'glued' together, as the article states. This guy should be shot.
Anyone that knows will tell you why they refer to the 'stamper' when they talk about mass duplication. I'll wait for a more knowledgeable source to comment on DVD 'rot'...Sure, if you keep them on the dashboard of your van, or floor of the basement...but falling apart just by laying around in a case...not sure about that one. I can see delamination from a faulty stamping procedure, but these machines are expensive and are operated in clean rooms. Each disc is verified, etc. You'd know if you had a chronic problem, and then you have a different issue, such as fraud for selling bad goods. To say that 10% of the DVD's in general use are now faulty sounds like a bit of FUD.
You, like many others, have a dirty lens (laser). In most cases, a swipe with a lens cleaning disc will do the trick...in some cases, the unit will need to be opened, and the lens area dusted with compressed air..that stuff in the can. If your player lives in a dusty or smoke typical area, you might want to think about opening it twice a year and cleaning things out.
I'd give this a shot before I started returning DVD's.
http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdripping
I'm in Nigeria at the moment, and people I work with have had CDs ruined by some sort of fungus that gets inside the disk.
It can be avoided, so they say, by keeping the disks cool and dry. One risk is taking disks out of an air conditioned building into the hot, humid air outside. Water condenses onto the disks and gives the fungus a hospitable habitat in which to grow.
If it is common in Africa, it's probably only a matter of time before it moves to other hot, humid countries. South America and Asia spring immediately to mind.
And who knows what will happen as global warming continues to have an effect.
Maybe that's why Disney is taking DVDs off the market for a number of years. Once your discs rot, you'll have to buy them again, right about the time they are re-released.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
IF you think that life span of DVD's is short, what about hard drives? Hard drives are only *designed* to work for a year. I don't store anything critical on a hard drive without a CD backup.
Laser disks experienced a similar problem - which generally showed up as snow on the video, or freezing at a particular frame.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
What if everyone in america reading this phones up/writes letters to the producer of their DVDs asking for them to provide or make available a system for making legal same quality backups of their DVDs. My reading of the DMCA implies that the producers of these DVDs must allow for or provide systems that allow continued fair use backups. As this medium turns out to *require* backups of the media, then it is upon the producers to provide a solution.
Get your letter writing campaigns underway. And remeber, if they send you back something saying that they have no systems available, thats just them saying 'well you have to find your own systems'... Heck, thats a licence to use of DECSS.
But that was out of the box, and it was only the second layer. Only chapters 16 and higher did not work.
Planned obsolescence? I doubt it, as the idea of a rotting disc is not without precedence. It used to occur on laserdiscs (where it was refered to as 'laser rot')
The only time I've ever seen it on that format it showed up as snow, although I have been told that it could also cause playback to halt at a particular frame, much like is being mentioned for the rotten DVDs.
"I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
So let's end the Angry Mob Justice and give the MPAA and movie industry a big, warm, fuzzy bear hug!
Now with CD's they got around that with a really sweet error-correcting code. It will continue to play properly with up to 40 continuous errors in a row. The problem is that cracks tend to be a bit wider than 40 sectors on the disk. You will find that same sort of error correcting code on a lot of digital media.
Now with CD's, you were storing the virgin signal. Even when a pop occured, it was recorded at twice the frequency humans could percieve, so most of the time you just don't notice. DVD's store a highly compressed, lossy version of the signal. You don't have as much information redundancy, and you have a much higher information density, AND you have an extra layer on each playable side of the disk.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Also, even though Divx is pretty good you can still tell a major difference in picture quality (especially if the DVD is like 720p originally).
The maximum DVD resolution is 720x480, however that is 480p. 720p would be 1280x720, and there are no such DVDs. While divx rips usually have almost the same resolution (640x???), they have to resize the pixels (4:3 or 16:9 on DVD, 1:1 in DivX), which is the biggest cause of problems, particularly with lines that get jagged. Even with anti-aliasing, it's quite noticable if you look for it. But, I don't irritate over it, so for me it's completely ok.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Ok, you're not a troll, but you're not correct, either.
This is indeed a sign of something, but not the fact that there is a conspiracy afoot to make us buy more DVDs or prevent fair use. It is more a sign that quality of manufactured products overall is degrading. Few things last as long as they did before anymore. It's not limited to DVDs. When you live in a disposable society like the US, long term quality is not a priority. There's a reason why many warranties cover only the first 90 days.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
The forums at www.dvdtimes.co.uk lists the following problem discs:
Just a little conspiracy theory.
1) Produce degradable discs (say 50 years lifetime, tops)
2) Prevent anyone from making a copy (DMCA)
3) Sell new "special/extended/edited/remastered" versions under constantly new copyrights
4) No working copies ever hit public domain - as good as infinite copyright
5) Make people buy the same thing over and over again forever
6) Profit
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
it's time to go back to vinyl...
I have an extensive collection of Laserdiscs (LDs), largely anime imports. Many of the early ones produced by certain companies suffer from rot, because they weren't quite manufactured properly. Any impurities in the disc eventually result in the disc's deterioration. Od my 500 or so LDs, I know of only a small fraction that are rotting. Let's see... Penn and Teller Get Killed is in the worst shape (not anime). Blue Comet SPT Layzner OVA 3 is beginning to go, as are some of the Dancougar OVAs (I have the original -disc release, they were later reissued on one disc).
Now, for my $50, I usually get about 4 good showing of the movie before getting bored with it and putting it on the shelf. The Matrix is an exception. Every time I tweak something on my PC I whip out the Matrix for a benchmark. A) I never get bored of watching that movie. B) There are so many scenes where the entire picture is shifting that it will immediately expose ANY flaws in a DVD playback implementation.
Now $50 buys me, on average, about 7.5 hours of enjoyment. And, if you have multiple people watching the movie, the cost is divided by the number of sets of eyes.
Now $50 is dinner and a movie for me and the wife. $50 is less than the admission for one person to an amusement park for one day. $50 is the less than the minimum charge for taking you car to the shop. $40 is a cable modem for a month. $50 is a set of fillings at the dentist. Shit, people spend more than that filling their prescriptions.
Now you are trying to tell me I should get all bent out of shape about how a flimsy plastic disk I bought for less than $50 isn't going to last forever?
Crap people, a DVD is a lossy compressed version of the original. It has no archival value. The crispest frames (every 8) use inverse cosine compression similar to JPEG, and the rest store varying levels of what changed in between frames. With some tweaks to compensate for motion. It is a consumer playtoy, to be watched and turned into a coaster when you are finished.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
somebody posted a link, not the main story, but since the main story doesnt mention the region of the DVD's, i would like to add
that if it has ANYTHING to do with the region, it REALLY REALLY sucks!
for what i have seen, dvd's are not cheaper in Mexico than they are in the states (with the change of region, that is)
and imported DVD's have been to raise price as much as 50%.
Whould any of ou pay over 100 US for a special edition of tLotR?
Now, what is the cheapest backup media out there that can get a full DVD at the least?
tapes? any other?
errera hunamum ets
This DVD situation is much worse but:
I've actually purchased CDs that are labeled correctly and have the proper CD liner inserts, only to play the CD and hear a whole different band coming out of my player. I think that last time this happened to me, I bought Bob Dylan's "Times are a Changin'" CD and ended up listening to the Black Crowes (which wasn't so bad actually).
Man what an annoyance.
So hmm.. Planet of the Apes, Men in Black: Collectors Edition, Independence Day.. they're all degrading, the pattern is clear: Do not buy crappy crappy movies on DVD.
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
Is yet to be determined - expert are currently examining the Alien Legacy boxed set to see if only the first two DVD's survived.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
hm i bet porn movies degrade even faster
There's no DMCA in Canada, so I'm going to start ripping my DVD's right now.
Now if somebody can recommend a good DVD ripping program for either Windows or Linux...
This space left intentionally blank.
so that we can backup our DVDs and avoid this problem!
I've noticed the same thing with CDs, albeit under a certain degree of abuse:
I use unwanted AOL and other CDs as "bird chasers" -- that is, I hang 'em outside in a tree to help keep the starlings out of my yard. Normally they pretty much last forever, or until the wind fairy steals 'em.
The newest "bird chaser" consists of one rather old AT&T Connect CD, and one newish AOL 7.0 CD (the "rainbow" version). The AT&T CD still looks like new. The data layer of the AOL CD started flaking after about 4 months, and had completely peeled away after about 6 months; all that was left is the naked clear part of the disk. I'd never seen that before, but it sure looks like "made real poorly" to me. Contrast this to an AOL 3.0 CD that had hung outside for over a year before being rescued because a friend needed that particular version. It still installed just fine.
Now, not that we care if AOL CDs fall apart, but I think it's probably a warning as to the current manufacturing quality of CDROM disks in general.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Wow, that's a lot. The submitter seems to say that "it's not that bad", but if every 10 are faulty, you're likely to be affected if you regularly by DVD's.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The problem is the same as the laserrot problem with laserdiscs. Even before DVDs actually hit the market, there was a great deal of discussion on some laserdisc sites about how the manufacturers didn't care enough to fix the problem with manufacturing dual-sided laserdiscs. And consequently didn't care enough to fix the same problem with DVDs, which use a very similar manufacturering process due to the dual "layers." The problem with laserdiscs was the glue used to bind the two sides together - the glue over time corroded the disc.
Either that, or an idiot.
Here in the US, it's common to pay $19.95 for a dvd. When you buy it, you expect to be able to have it to watch for years, not for months.
Yes, $19.95 is less than going to see the movie and getting dinner once, but you don't get dinner when you buy the dvd. Including dinner in the price of the dvd is ridiculous. You are comparing apples to oranges.
Buying the dvd means one watches it at home. The price of the theater ticket (about $10 here) includes the whole theater experience. Seeing it at the theater is usually much much better than watching it at home. That price also assumes that it's a brand spanking new movie. Kinda hard to go see "The Matrix" at the theater again unless it's at one of the dollar theaters.
So for $19.95, I'm buying the rights to see a movie at least 6 months old (or more) on whatever consumer quality television/theater system I buy myself. I also get the right to watch this movie whenever I want, for however many times I want, for as long as I take reasonable care of the dvd.
It's not acceptable for the dvd to rot out from under me when I follow all the mfr instructions.
Your suggestion that shelling out up to $50 to watch a 6 month or older movie only once is all one should expect is utterly ridiculous.
Each disc is verified on manufacture? I think not.
At most a disc is checked at beginning of a run, and another at the end.
LPs were far less reliably manufactured - d'ya think someone checked each one? And the plastics used for LPs had notorious quality problems, particularly in the 70s.
(Reality suspended)
The media companies know that they can't just get people to punch up all their content through the internet. The consumer is too used to buying a physical movie, so something else must be offered.
And so, DVD comes into play after VHS tapes. Value added includes not having to rewind, higher image and sound quality, and advanced playback features. What they don't tell you is that the DVD discs degrade over time, faster than you would stop watching them in your lifetime. So you need to buy another disc.
So then, online content is introduced, with all the same features as a DVD, except that there is no physical content that can degrade! How convenient! And of course you pay for it every time you watch it. Also convenient. Ha! I know their plan!
(Reality resumed)
Wait a minute! Cable and satellite fill this niche right now! Physical media and sat/cable coexist! Arrrgh! -1, Redundant for over-usage of the exclamation point.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
Download and install mplayer. Compile it yourself: do not use a binary. Enable the win32 codecs (untar w32codec.tar.bz2 to /usr/lib before the ./configure step). All other installation options can be left as defaults (do not enable the gui, it's not worth your time). Then perform the following two commands:
Files don't rot. Enjoy your DVDs for a lifetime.
...wait for the result of lens cleaning... Being repeatable only proves there is a problem, and speaks not to the actual issue.
You mean more than the 10% claimed in that sham article for DVD's?
I worked for a large record retailer during the '70's, and I don't recall a 10% return rate related to defects. The returns were usually buyer remorse. Defects at the retail level were more like 1%, and that's what we have here for DVD. Think about it...
This is why digital media is superior to analog media even though dense analog media stores more data; you can copy it over and over again. Of course, they try to make it illegal to copy DVDs but who does that stop? Fuck 'em.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My Kentucky Fried Movie DVD rotted out. I thought it had more to do with the content than the media itself, but that's what I get for liking the "Catholic High School Girls in Trouble" skit.
No I'm not trolling.
CDs have been around since 1984, so shouldn't CDs have suffered the same problem? Or are CDs and DVDs made with very different processes? Does the fact that DVDs use smaller pits than CDs make DVDs less durable?
I may be thinking a bit out of context, but what is your SI? ...and why does it suck?
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
I read tha part about the coffee stain-like patches on disc. I've noticed many of my DVDs have discoloured, irregular patches, sometimes there are multiple clearly delineated shades. It's not like I'm doind anything to these poor things, they come out like that out of the shrinkwrapped box.
Would this be an indication of a (future) problem disc?
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Fun, dumb, disposable movies like MiB and most SF are definitely in the "rent, not buy" category, so that's one safe way to avoid the rot-factor.
Dammit! CSS does not prevent making copies.
It's not a copy protection measure.
It's not a copy protection measure.
It's not a copy protection measure!
Don't even joke about it. You're just helping the MPAA cloud the issue.
What about Mission : Impossible
"This message will self-destruct..."
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you buy a license to the content, but do not actually own the media, the content owners should be obligated to replace worn out/defective media for the lifetime of the license purchaser. Any publisher/copyright holder who refuses to do this should not be able to prosecute anyone for making backup/archival copies of data that they legitimately own a license for.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
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Actually, this has happened before to CDs.
World Serpent Distribution, an experimental record label based in the UK, unknowingly released a fairly large quantity of discs that would later degrade due to disc rot. This wasn't the fault of the label, but their manufacturer, PDO. This occured between 1988-1993.
The signs of disc rot are fairly easy to recognize:
A sort of bronzing around the disc, leading to deterioration, beginning from the last track and moving inwards. From what I understand, this generally occurs because the actual disc underneath the plastic wasn't properly sealed to protect against oxididization. Acids from the liner notes also play a part.
You can find the full writeup about it on Current 93's website (they're a band on WSD): http://brainwashed.com/c93/music/discrot.html
But what we have here is a claim of 10%, and if it was closer to 10% the industry would be at a halt right now and that's my point. 1% is not acceptable. 10% is a crock.
This is not primarily a DMCA issue. For the vast majority of DVD buyers the right to make backups is moot - few people would want to go to the trouble and expense of making a backup or providing extra storage space for it.
Instead what the average DVD buyer wants, and what they have been led to believe they actually have, is a medium that will last an indefinitely long time - long enough that it won't expire before they tire of it anyway.
Bearing in mind the huge number of DVDs that many people own and the huge investment this represents I predict that if this problem turns out to affect a significant proportion of retail dics less than ten years old, there will be scandal, class action lawsuits and massive payouts.
To give you an idea of how much bad news this would be for the media companies responsible: suppose there are 300 million households in the Western hemisphere and say one in ten of those owns 100 DVDs bought at an average of $10 apiece. Further suppose that one in ten discs goes bad. Thats 300 million bad discs. The DVD producers then have to pay out compensation on a disputed figure of $3 billion. Thats gotta hurt.
Don't know if it is rot, but a disc of mine in an expensive box set is delaminating or something around the outer edge. It's really annoying. Since replacement means about a hundred dollar investment, I decided to contact the manufacturer to see if I could do an exchange (no warranty, beyond the retailers money-back guarantee) and the answer was of course, no, not so long as there is no mass reported defect, they will not do replacements.
Now I think movie studios shouldn't be able to keep things going as they are. If we are truly being sold the right to view the contents, and not the disc and its contents themselves and are denied a sufficient legal backup mechanism, we should be able to trade in bad discs for good discs, especially if they are still being actively pressed.
I truly understand they have no obligation, but it makes me mad that they fight against us being able to back up the media, yet provide no alternative when a disc goes bad. It would be one thing if available as a 10 dollar disc, but these $100+ DVD Box Sets are really annoying when one disc goes wacked..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
At the Univ of Tenn, I once stood on top of the hill where the Math, Phys Sciences, and Engineering buildings are located. I could see a migrating flock of starlings. The front of the flock disappeared in the sky at the horizon in one direction while the tail end of the flock disappeared at the horizon in the other direction. I walked home a mile or so to the top of another major hill more or less following the same route the birds were (but not under them, fortunately). When I got to the top of the 2nd hill, I still could not see the start or the end of the flock. This is a flock 4 or 5 miles long and 20-25 birds wide! A rough guestimate puts the flock at over 100,000 and perhaps as many as 250,000.
The Great Smokey Mountains used to have a pidgeon population that was estimated to be in the billions. I think that starlings have just taken over the niche that used to be occupied by the passenger pidgeon.
FreeSpeech.org
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Masters degrees vary around the world. They all have a large research element, but many have a considerable taught secion as well.
For instance, in the UK the Masters degree is a one-year course, about 2/3 taught and 1/3 research.
Hey, I'm working on a master's in library science, and as such the issue of digital conservation is of great importance to me, particularly this semester as I'm working on digital archives.
You put the five year recommendation in quotes, so I'm assuming you're quoting either your own work or somebody elses'... Is that work publically available (in whatever langauge)? If so, where? (As I'd like to use it, heh.)
p.s. I'm in the US and studying, so don't listen to those whackos who tell you you're using the wrong word.
-- r . m o s q u i t o --
As a 20 something, I agree that most things aren't meant to last - that's because of greed, pure and simple. It's up to you to seek out the brands which are still worth purchasing. I have no idea what a Sunbeam toaster is, but in the UK we have Dualit toasters. Designed for the catering trade, they have a clockword timer, a replaceable heating element and styling which can't really be called retro, since it hasn't changed in the last 50 years - and none of this modern bimetallic strip nonsense. I'm hugely pleased with mine :)
On the subject of laptops. I have a 500MHz PIII StinkPad which is a constant source of irritation (not only because of it's battery technology - that sucks anyway). It's just that little bit too slow to play DivX files (MPEG4 encoded films) - I've encoded much of my collection of Western films into DivX and it'd be nice to be able to view them on the move...
# init 5
Connection closed.
Oh...
Heh, OK, I'm an idiot. Thanks. :)
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
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"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of
that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put
more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it
might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
otherwise.'"
-- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"
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