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."

Comments

Good for distributors.

[Agent Green]

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!!

Re:Good for distributors.

[MikeFM]

I'm glad that I disregard the law and make backups anyway. I have countless cd's that I would have had to replace if not for backups to my hdd and now that I've ripped my dvd collection I'm sure it'll save me a lot of bucks on replacements also. Keep my disks duplicated so that a hdd dying won't harm things and I'm pretty much set. Just keep adding/replacing hdd's as needed.

I've considered opening a movie rental store. If otherwise good discs suffered this kind of problem I'd be tempted just to burn off a new copy and keep the original as proof of ownership. I'd like to see them take me to court for that. They couldn't do it without publizing that their discs were rotting.

Re:Good for distributors.

[paganizer]

Too bad it's illegal to make backups.
What with the release of the KiSS DP-450 DVD player, which can play DivX 4&5, the backing up of DVD's would have been such a simple thing...

Re:Good for distributors.

[anubi]

I'm glad that I disregard the law and make backups anyway.

Bad Law fosters Civil Disobedience.

Re:Good for distributors.

[Anonymous Hack]

Woohoo! I'm glad to be a consumer!!

Funny, yes, but at the same time... There is perfectly good reason to upgrade. New Technology Is Better(tm). Anyone who lived through vinyl or tapes, barring a few stubborn die-hards, will tell you moving to CD was an amazing transition. Fast track skipping and repeat, no clicks, no cracks, no "blurred" sound, etc. Ditto with going from videos to DVD - fast "fast-forward", no snow, no jammed tape, no "blurred" picture, etc. But when the next innovation in video or audio technology comes along we'll all step up sooner or later and realize how limiting CDs and DVDs really were.

Re:Good for distributors.

[arkanes]

Notice the difference between "Upgrade because the new medium offers greater benefits" and "Re-buying all my content because the disc melted".

Re:Good for distributors.

[MikeFM]

Very true. I've long said that people do, or don't do, things based on their own morals and sensabilities - not because of laws.

People drive 90MPH down the highway although the speed limit is 70MPH. The same people drive 20MPH down the highway in bad weather although the minimum speed limit is 45MPH. People copy music, movies, etc because they feel that they have the right to do so. Even old ladies are cranking out copies of songs for the gals in their church choir. In a democracy what the majority of the public wants is what the public should get. If people disobey a law in large numbers or obey only out of fear (or cus they don't know how to break the law - copy protection) then it's a stupid law. Laws exists to give our judical system guidelines about who to punish and how - not to tell people what is right or wrong.

Re:Good for distributors.

[Skjellifetti]

In a democracy what the majority of the public wants is what the public should get.

Err, the majority of Germans wanted the Jews dead when they elected Hitler Chancellor in 1932. I guess it was OK for him to go ahead with that project then.

People who drive 90MPH are putting other people at risk, not just themselves. And even old ladies cranking out songs for the gals in their church choir are stealing.

There are a lot of people in this world who need laws to tell them what is right and wrong. Lord knows they can't seem to figure it out any other way.

Re:Good for distributors.

[Tuxedo Jack]

I know the feeling. I bought Starcraft: Brood War about two years ago and I've run through eight disks already. Then after the third fail, I got a CD burner and duped the bugger about six times. Much easier than going to the store over and over. And after all, I paid for the software, not poorly done media.

Bad DVD player!

[FyRE666]

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...

Re:Bad DVD player!

[Spellbinder]

no this problems are known...
it is not just his dvd player

Re:Bad DVD player!

[tyrnight]

My Pulp Fiction and Natural born Killers is getting spots in it

This has happened to me

[krin]

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.

Familiar?

[Adolatra]

Not to rain on the MPAA Conpiracy parade I'm sure we'll see from the usual suspects in a bit, but wasn't there a similar problem with early CDs?

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)

Re:Familiar?

[kd5ujz]

could this be that there are more ps2s in circulation?

Re:Familiar?

[SonicRED]

No, they break if you look at them wrong.

I've had to replace mine once already.

Re:Familiar?

[FyRE666]

Well mine was only in circulation for about 3 minutes. I pre-ordered it, and was in the first group to receive mine in the UK. Got home and plugged it in, and the DVD drive was broken. Upon return to the shop I was told there were zero spare units, so I'd have to go back on a queue again. I just got a refund, and I've never bothered buying another...

Re:Familiar?

[Jace of Fuse!]

CAPCOM has made this point about Sony a few times. Seems it's actually a known habit at Sony, but their official take on it is "Game Systems only live a few years anyway."

So, if your PS1 broke, buy a PS2. If you are unlucky and your PS2 breaks before the PS3 is out, you'll just have to buy a new one or wait till you can upgrade.

I know someone who has owned 6 Playstations, 4 original, and 2 PS2s. My PS2 is now making funny noises. :(

Re:Familiar?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I personally have not had that experience, nor has anyone that I know. I know the PS/1's (the little white hockypuck version) has some overheating problems. Having owned one, I can't say I ever noticed.

Hell I drive a Ford Focus. There are websites devoted to telling you how crappy the brakes are. Well with 2 drivers (my wife and I), 2.5 years (woohoo, only 6 more payments!) and 40,000 mile later, we have not had to replace the brakes once. I might add that I, my wife, and most of her brothers and sister learned to drive stick on that car. The clutch is still going strong.

My point is that EVERY mass produced item has a few bad runs. If you produce a million of something you will have a few hundred people who will have a crappy experience. You can match horror story for horror story for any consumer product out there. I don't think people remember the bitch sessions on slashdot about the early Xboxes being DOA, or dieing in a puff of smoke.

I don't mean to take away from your suffering[sic]. I am just trying to give this thread some balance.

Re:Familiar?

[demo9orgon]

I have a playstation2 unit which was part of the first holiday batch (november 2000?--I'm an absent minded professor and it seems like just a little while ago to me) that landed at ToysRus.

I am an avid gamer, and I know how to treat computer equipment, so I rarely used the hard-switch, and for the most part the unit was happily doing it's job. Then when the really nice dynamic 3D render games started showing up (Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, Jak and Daxter and such) my Playstation2 gradually stopped playing anything due to disc read errors. There was also this terrible ratcheting noise that it makes whenever the caddy opens. Really annoying cheap noise reminiscent of cheap-ass matsushita cd-rom units that die after about a month of use back in the day.

Using a dry-brush cleaning kit did nothing for this problem, so I went online and after some serious google-diving I managed to find a site that elaborated on the problems with the DVD unit (lens discoloration reaction to cleaning agents, sensor faults and how to adjust the unit). I was going to give that a try but then I'm a programmer (read:lazy bastard) and decided to just send the bugger in.

My Playstation2 was returned about three weeks later and it had developed a really interesting problem with the graphics...going to the inventory in Baldur's Gate:Dark Alliance would cause all the little objects to throw interesting splines all over the place...the brighter the object the worse the problem.

Sent it back for that issue and three weeks later I was playing games without any problems other than that damn annoying ratchet noise from the media-caddy. That was about nine months ago and now, I'm back to the problem of the unit not reading any media (well, memory cards don't count), no music CD's, no Playstation1 games, and no Playstation2 games.

Now I'm getting ready to send the unit back again, and hopefully they'll have the sense to throw-out the DVD unit and replace it with another...knowing my luck they'll give me a phone call and say something like
"...and we need to charge you an additional $75 in order to replace the DVD unit in your console, do you want us to do this?"
Of course the answer will be "Yeah, I guess so." and I'll be rattling off my CC#.

Why?
Because it's what I play games on.
And it's something of an "evil you know is better than the one you don't" situation. I could go drop another $150-$200 on a new unit, but I figure they've already made at least one engineering mod (for the graphics problem they fixed) and if the unit is stable when I get it back I'll probably spring for a linux-kit for it, or get one of those schweet logitech netplay contoller keyboards.

Initially I was really torqued about this, but then as someone who has to deal with hardware and software issues all the time I have cooled down a bit from the inital "Screw this crap!" reaction.

And as for longevity with the origial Playstations...I have an ancient second-hand playstation1 that has never, ever failed...it's survivied every TombRaider game, CrashTeam Racing, and an army of titles. Great piece of kit. Someday I hope the Playstation2 get's there.

It would be nice if someone (OPM,or other game mags, independent webmaster with hosting in some other country that doesn't cave to corporate BS) could sponsor an impartial site which would track console issues.

Cheers

Re:Familiar?

[Miguelito]

Same here... I've got a PS2, GC and a Dreamcast, and they all work great. I've even banged the hell out of them (knocked off tables, tripped over controller cable, dropped something on them, etc). Not to mention I own a few DVDs and not one has suffered from rot. I bought my first player in '97 just a month or two after they first came out, and even my oldest disks work fine.

I have exactly one disc with play problems.. and that's Star Wars Ep1.. because the case was broken and it was scratched when I brought it home. I never got around to taking it back because I lost the receipt.

One thing I have seen is plenty of discs that (after not being touched in a long time) look exactly like they're talking (appearance like stains), and it turns out to be a buildup of dirt. It's odd though because they're in cases and it seems finer then normal dust.. but it always wipes off and the discs play just fine.

I'm think the rot is either extremely rare.. or people just don't take care of their stuff.

conspiracy theorists

[pizza_milkshake]

conspiracy theorists... start your engines!

Or maybe you didn't catch the "sci-fi fanatic" bit

[westyx]

.. in the original story. course, i'm sure the editor read the link 'n all. *cough*

Say it with me now...

[sn0wcrash]

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?

Re:Say it with me now...

[cbreaker]

I don't necessarily agree.

If a company puts out low quality crap, is the consumer going to purchase something else from them? With so much competition out there for most electronics, it doesn't really make much sense.

As for a product made only by one manufacturer, perhaps this could be true.. I just don't think this is the driving force behind flimsy products.

Seems that to me the reason we see low quality stuff is because it generally means they can make it for a lot less money and sell it for a lot less money. People like to buy things that are inexpensive, even if they know it's not top-grade stuff. /shrug

Re:Say it with me now...

[sn0wcrash]

I think that the desire for cheaper products just happens to be a blessing for the companies in this respect. They want you to buy crap so you will buy it again. Most consumers only want cheap. So your left with a large void for those that truly desire quality. If you seek quality and want somethign that lasts... your less likely to find it.

Still, when it comes down to it, are the profit margines so small that they can't be profitable selling for the same price with even a little more quality? I'm willing to bet that even 1 or 2 dollars extra spent in the construction of many consumer electronics would make a drastic diffrenc ein overall quality. So many things nwo are lowest quality. Simple things that could make a product better for pennies will be passed up. There's creating a product cheap enough to sell easily.. then there is maximizing profits for the sake of the CEO's pcokets.

Re:Say it with me now...

[anubi]

sn0wcrash - you must have some experience to see this.

I guess I was in my mid 30's when I started really noticing how much work it was to have to re-do things that I had done poorly the first time. I think the catch phrase went something like " If you can't find the time to do it right, you will make the time to do it over.".

I have lived through galvanized pipe - I will never have it again. Do you know how much work it is to have to strip the plumbing infrastructure from a house to re-do it? I do. Copper went back in. I soldered it personally. Never again will I have anything to do with galvanized pipe where I can't get to it.

I moved from another house because I discovered it had aluminum wiring.

There are some things I have learned to very highly value, and thats the elegance of things made right. I have a toaster, made by Sunbeam Electric Company, that was given to my parents as a wedding gift. I am no spring chicken either, but I still use that toaster every morning. ( Well, maybe that's why Sunbeam is out of business, they never sold me another one? ), but I really like that toaster. I have one of the very first microwave ovens ever built. It was a prototype, or at least that was what was stamped on its innards. It still works.

When I took my first job in a major oil refinery, I participated in, a huge effort to put all our plant drawings into a CAD system, then powered with DEC computers. I watched as the company then abandoned the computers, going to another system - but the data files were incompatible, so they had to do it all over. What a waste!!! I learned by observation how much effort could have been saved if there had been such a thing as a standard data file. I learned the value of things like simple ascii files and comma-delimited-format database files.

Technology will change. Most of the time, its been for the better, but many of the "improvements" to me are of dubious real value. Is a 1GHz Pentium laptop, which goes through batteries at an astronomical pace really any better than that old Radio Shach model 100 computer which used to get hundreds of hours on a set of penlight cells, albeit it only had a simple text LCD screen? I have a little 386SX laptop I like because it gets around 40 hours on its battery if I use the backlight sparingly. The screen is a little crude for graphics, and admittedly its a bit slow if its a graphics intensive program, such as font mapping under Win 3.1.. but if I am doing text stuff, I drop to DOS anyway because the machine is hundreds of times faster than I am when its using its hardware mapped character generator. But I can have the machine on from the time I leave the house, through the airport, on the plane, through the taxi trip, onto the hotel, and still have the battery running. Maybe Ashton-Tate 1-2-3 is a little dated, but it works. Same with MathCad. And the Futurenet electronic schematic editor. And the Spice analyzer. And the PCB Layout program. And my Borland C++ compiler. And the file sizes are small. And the files were simpler then. Most of the time, even if something does happen, I can usually open the files with a hexadecimal editor and see what the problem is.

I have really learned the value of trying to do things right the first time so you do not *have* to do it over ( usually at the most inconvient of times ). I like having the option of replacing something when *I* feel its warranted, not when someone else gets it into their head they want to commandeer me to do so.

I have worked with enough businesses now that I can see the smart ones do this too. You will see the smart ones configuring things so they get their system in place, then start using that system to make money... not so smart businesses never get their system working, as parts of it are constantly failing and needing to be replaced... kinda like that guy who never figured out what kind of plumbing would run till the proverbial cows come home, and which one would necessitate a constant stream of work to keep it running. Yes, I know one has to know how to solder to install copper, but in the long term, doing it right the first time leaves you free to spend your remaining time doing what was really important, now that your infrastructure is stable.

The best example I can think of for GOOD ENGINEERING is the old Romans. They built roads and water aqueducts which are even in use today. Its not like *everything* needs to last an eternity, but I consider it a really good investment if one designs the Important Stuff to last the proverbial eternity. That way its there until *you* decide to change it.

Re:Say it with me now...

[abirdman]

Maybe Ashton-Tate 1-2-3 is a little dated, but it works

Ummmm... Ashton Tate was the publisher of dBASE (II, III, and IV) and not 1,2,3 (which was published by Lotus, Inc.). They (A-T) tanked when dBase IV came out about the time of Win 3.0, after huge delays, and it didn't have a pretty GUI interface, and couldn't run SQL queries that were repeatable. Borland bought their assets.

I used them all for quite awhile, and all were useful and no less flawed than their current replacements (though they were a lot less resource-hungry than Access, FoxPro, Excel or their ilk). I still have licensed copies of dBase III and IV, and Lotus 2.2, but unfortunately they're on 5 1/4 diskettes, and hence useless. One of the windows upgrades broke my last working dBASE III program.

Good post otherwise... could be a troll, though... hmmmm

Re:Say it with me now...

[Reziac]

I've noticed the same thing. Yeah, it's not evident to youngsters who grew up with everything being disposable, but to us old fogies (I'm 47) it sure is annoying when what I could formerly count on to give years of service now lasts a fraction as long, and is more inherently breakable.

BTW check out http://www.sunbeam.com/ ... not out of business at all, but quality of their products isn't what it used to be either. And you can't get a human response from 'em to save your life.

Rather than buy a new whatever when something that was poorly made breaks, I'm inclined to do without, or find a different brand. So in my case they don't gain an extra sale by cutting corners; quite the reverse.

"Everything is smaller, not as good, and more expensive than it used to be." -- Andy Rooney

Re:Say it with me now...

[cbreaker]

It's relative. Sure, a toaster is a toaster, but "back in the good old days" I'm sure you could get a low quality toaster too.

But as far as technology.. Things are a lot more complicated now, in that respect. A car, with all it's polution controls, has a lot more that can go wrong with it. All the gadgets that consumers demand also add tons of stuff that can go wrong.

Sure, there's times when adding that extra screw may have helped something not break, but as a whole, in today's market, making a product that's of perfect quality just costs too much with the amount of competition.

You can get the high quality stuff. It will just cost you a good deal more money.

Re:Say it with me now...

[anubi]

Ashton Tate was the publisher of dBASE (II, III, and IV) and not 1,2,3 (which was published by Lotus, Inc.)

Whoops, I stand corrected. I made several little boo-boos.

I have the the DOS database too - dBASE III, and I guess I was thinking of it when I was typing, but it was 1-2-3 ( release 3.1) that I used a lot. Both 1-2-3 and MathCad were really neat little spreadsheets - incredibly simple little things. DOS.

I guess those things to me were the equivalent of screwdrivers and pliers.. sometimes I really do not need a lot of sophistication to "get the lid off a can of paint". Or do some plain numerical analysis. If it was really weird, I would hit it with the C++ compiler, which was guaranteed to handle any problem that I ever messed with.

I still have licensed copies of dBase III and IV, and Lotus 2.2, but unfortunately they're on 5 1/4 diskettes, and hence useless

I note the hardware on even the latest machines still seem to support the old 5 inch drives. Try to find an older floppy and its companion cable. Remember, the 3 inch drives use the pins, but the older 5 inch drives had connectors fabricated as part of the pcb etch itself. The connections themselves were in the same order. The trick is having the old card edge connectors on the cable. The old cables had both card-edge and pin socket connectors. The power connectors on those old 5" drives were the same as on a 3" hard drive. Plug it up and your bios should recognize you now have drives A and B. Then, with any luck, you should be able to copy all files from one to the other. Hopefully, the disks are old enough, (pre copy restriction paranoria), that you can recover the program onto your new media. I have a lot of old stuff thats still on the 5 inch media. Some even in the 360K format, and I can still read them on my latest Pentiums. Remember, the one at the end of the cable is Drive A.

Good post otherwise... could be a troll, though... hmmmm

Believe me, I would hardly want to use so much of my own time, as well as everyone else's, to post a troll. These are just observations I have had, and I post them in the same way that I would post a program I may have worked long and hard on for any benefit others may get from it. I guess its my way of trying to repay those who have shared with me. By the time I finished it though, I did have reservations it might be modded ( Score -1: Windbag ) :-0

Re:Say it with me now...

[Hugonz]

Sunbeam is not out of business..I bought an Oster blender today, the manual clearly said "Sunbeam"

Re:Say it with me now...

[failrate]

Hi, I just wanted to reply to this in case you read replies to your own posts. I recently got a Vic-20 as a portable, inexpensive interface device/hobby toy. I'm going to use it to make some electronic music soon. I believe it uses either a VIC or a SID for audio. Either way, the SID is still in use as a commercial sound chip, and it was essentially the first really good sound chip available to the public and hobbyist. My VIC-20 works almost as good now as it did coming out of the factory. Rock-on! Besides, I only ever use simple console text editors regardless of OS, so you're right on the money about performance vs. appearance.

Spoilers

[nukey56]

Just thought I'd point this out

Re:Spoilers

[nukey56]

Yea ok I'm an idiot who clicked on the wrong article. Just ignore me.

Re:Spoilers

[hdparm]

What's your moderation like when you click the right one?

A Near Disaster

[felonious]

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!

Re:A Near Disaster

[ATAMAH]

Actualy porn DVDs ARE the ones that are affected.
the "rotting" effect observed is just what "overuse" got mistaken for.

Re:A Near Disaster

[Ari Rahikkala]

You can fuck all you want in my porn, though.

Independence Day??

[commodoresloat]

Or maybe the person compiling the list only buys sci-fi movies.

Or maybe this only happens to bad sci-fi movies.

Re:Independence Day??

[danielrose]

pls to check your post before to submit kthx!

Re:Independence Day??

[guinnessnwhiskey]

Or maybe this only happens to bad sci-fi movies.

No. Episode 1 is not in the List.

Michael, you deserve a break, man!

[Amsterdam Vallon]

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"

Conspiracy

[cheshiremackat]

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

Re:Conspiracy

[Total_Wimp]

This is a perfect opportunity for the DVD distributors and they are too stupid to see it. If they made gettting replacements to bad, or even scratched, DVDs easy and cheap then they would have very good ammunition against people who say they need to make back-ups. "No, you don't need to get a back-up 'cause you can trade in your scratched disk for $1.00," they could say.

This policy/business model of forcing the consumer to buy another full copy at every chance they can get away with will eventually be their undoing.

TW

Re:Conspiracy

[Tsu-na-mi]

Unless the studios DO offer free replacements for defective media, which many do. It is fun to note, however that if they refuse to replace the media, their argument that they are 'licensing the content, not selling physical product' falls apart. Perfect time to get a statement to that effect on record for upcoming legal battles. ^_^

That's what you get when you buy a DVD...

[Dolemite_the_Wiz]

...at Wal-Mart for Under 10 Dollars.

Dolemite

Good

[kscd]

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.

Re:Good

[Total_Wimp]

Ahmen! I know too many people that would hear this story and freak. It wouldn't matter if they had been using the DVD for a shovel in a sand pit, they'd just assume it wasn't playable because it was poorley manufactured.

People love to blame someone else as long as they have some excuse to take the blame off of them. I'm normally against this, but in this case the pendulum is so out of whack we need something extra to get it swinging back toward middle.

TW

Independence Day did it for me

[C_To]

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).

Original site - karma whore

[Picass0]

This site appears to be the original source. This guy puts his bad DVDs under a high powered microscope and documents the damage.

Re:Original site - karma whore

[westyx]

Please don't spank that server too hard - i know the person involved (friend of a friend) and they only have a 6 gig limit for the month.

I have to buy another copy of "The White Album" ..

[Kong the Medium]

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?

Possible DMCA killer?

[surprise_audit]

Could this lead to the DMCA being overturned? No, I'm serious - all of us here know that the DMCA prohibits us from making backups of DVDs due to having to break the CSS, but Joe Sixpack is less aware of this issue.

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...

Re:Possible DMCA killer?

[gvonk]

The thing is, and everyone on Slashdot seems to forget this, you DON'T have to break the css to copy a dvd!!!!
Your player decodes it when you play it!
Copy it with the CSS!

Re:Possible DMCA killer?

[kilonad]

You can't copy the CSS. The keys (or something like that) are on a region of the DVD that no consumer DVD burner can write to. So we're back to square one.

Re:Possible DMCA killer?

[ebbomega]

Unfortunately, most of us don't have DVD burners/ A couple teras of hd space to store them on.

Not to mention, I've got a plethora of CDs that don't have this same degrading-problem.

But yet, I'm still not allowed to back them up.

Even more importantly, I'm not legally allowed to watch my DVDs without shelling at least another $100, after I've already spent a good $60 on a DVD-ROM.

Re:Possible DMCA killer?

[Hugonz]

MMMhhh but if you actually (in an analog fashion) get the video out and want to copy it to, say, VHS, you encounter Macrovision. Macrovision is yet another system for preventing unauthorized copying and access to copyrighted material, and thus protected by the DMCA.

The MPAA just figured what to use to plug the "analog hole"...they're using lawyers...

Just for the ones who have never tried to dub a DVD. Macrovision tampers with your output video signal so that you will be able to watch it on a T.V. but any attempt to imput it to a VCR will cause severe image quality loss.

dvd rot

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:dvd rot

[Anonymous Hack]

I've owned well over 300 CDs since 94, and i'm sure there are many Slashdotters who've owned some for longer. I have a total of one that has rotted - a Led Zep album that i bought second-hand on usenet and was already rotting when i bought it. Granted i wasn't too impressed with that purchase. That said, on any decent CD player it still plays just fine. I don't really see the big problem here. It sounds like FUD to me - i would guess that a lot of these "rotting" CDs or DVDs come from people who don't take care to keep their houses at sensible temperatures and humidity levels, etc.

Re:dvd rot

[arkanes]

Considering that CDs (and DVDs) look like plastic, something that most people don't associate with being especially vulnerable to humidity and non-extreme temperature gradients, then maybe there should be some sort of publicising of the fact that your CDs and DVDs can rot? Kinda like this article? Or maybe it's NOT extreme temperature and humidity (since you don't know that and are just making it up), and it's something else, like manufacturing defects. Which should also be public knowledge. So where's the FUD?

Let's hear it for DivX :-]

[The Tyro]

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.

Re:Let's hear it for DivX :-]

[ender81b]

There are a couple of reasons why I haven't yet ripped my DVD's.

For one it takes along time. I used to not think I would need a new computer but with my pIII 850 it takes a *long* time (like 8-9 hours) to rip and encode a single DVD, and my roommates p4 2.53ghz it still takes 3 hours to rip/encode a single DVD.

Also, I have yet to really decide what to rip them to. I could rip em bit for bit but that takes up too much space. Encoding them in any codec just means I will probably have to re-encode them in a few years once that becomes obsolete.
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).

I don't know. I imagine if/when I get a DVD burner I might just burn backup copies, that is probably the way to go.

Re:Let's hear it for DivX :-]

[Echnin]

Yes, DivX is awesome. However, the Pro version is either payware or spyware, unless you use the illegal DivX 3.11a which is a crappy hack of an old WMV codec.

I encode lots of DivX files, mostly short music videos, and usually get 11 FPS or so per pass, and I do two passes so that's almost a 6:1 encoding/playback time ratio since I keep the original 29.97 FPS rate. And that's without ripping.

However, unless you have a crappy ISP with bandwith limits, you could try simply downloading the movies you own; most likely someone has made a good DivX version available. Though this is probably even less legal, as if you are using a P2P network you would also be uploading to other users who do not own the DVD legally.

Try reading the story

[westyx]

There are no walmarts in .au.

*bzzzzt* Thankyou for playing. Please come again.

Plastic? Degrade?

[PetWolverine]

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!

It has to be a DMCA Alien Government Cover-Up

[dWhisper]

[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]

Re:It has to be a DMCA Alien Government Cover-Up

[seann]

do you have like...a cult I can join or something?
"Cult Dead Disc"

IANAC (I am not a chemist)

[The Mutant]

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.

Re:IANAC (I am not a chemist)

[Bob.Kerns]

I'm not a chemist either, but I remember enough from my metalurgy class at MIT to add something here -- plus I have practical experience with both polymers and metals in adverse circumstances: boats.

What you say is true, but misses the real issue: Polymers are generally *relatively* stable, compared to most things. And right next to the polymer is something which is decidedly NOT stable!

Have you heard of thermite? The thermite reaction involves the oxidation of aluminum, and aluminum is VERY hungry. It will actually steal oxygen from from iron oxide (rust) under the right circumstances -- and release a lot of heat in the process. (But aluminum oxide is more voluminous and stronger than aluminum, and quickly seals off exposed aluminum behind a thin layer of oxide. That's why your beer can isn't on fire inside your fridge.

But exposed aluminum is very reactive. Freshly-machined shavings of aluminum can catch fire.

It's the aluminum that's reacting. What is it reacting with? Several possibilities that I see:
1) Impurities in the polymer.
2) Impurities in the alumnimum deposition.
3) Impurities in the adhesive.
4) Impurities migrating through the polymer.
5) Impurities migrating in from the edge via the adhesive and/or the metal layer itself.

It could be a combination:

Dissimilar metals in contact set up a battery, if anything is available to complete the circuit. For example, put a brass screw into salt water, and before you know it, all the zinc will disolve and the screw will crumble into copper dust. Either metal by itself will do just fine in salt water -- so long as they're not touching.

Impurities in the aluminum might be stable unless they get, e.g. moisture migration along the adhesive from the outside edge.

Impurities could be in the polymer, or generated from degradation of same, but that wouldn't explain the observed failure pattern, so I think we can tentatively rule those out as contributing factors.

From this, what you say about storing them under low humidity and temperature makes sense -- but I bet this only comes from theory. It would take a LOT of CD's and a LOT of time, and a LOT of work to reach this conclusion validly through statistical observation.

Re:IANAC (I am not a chemist)

[len_harms]

Before we go to far and say "OH boy all my dvd's are doomed". Lets take a step back.

I went and got out the Men in black dvd that they are talking about. There is no layer change. The movie is not 'widescreen' or 'pan-scan' It has both. 1 layer each. The artical is a tad misleading. Perhaps the region 4 dvd is different? Went and looked up the guy who is yelling about this. His web site has tons of pics with lots of little black dots on it. Sure looks like a problem. maybe a problem

Also using the layer location feature of my dvd player most of the things at this area are the menus, extras, and the credits for both versions.

I had this same sort of thing happen with another one of my movies. Time bandits crition edition was doing the same thing. OH god the dvd is busted... I know Ill take it back. Well I forgot to. Just didnt get around to it. So I pop in another single layer movie. Suddenly right in the middle of the movie it freeks out. Always in the same spot in the movie. Hmm maybe there is something to this. It was the player. The player was overheating. It usually would freek out on a layer change. Bought a new player and poof all my movies were just dandy.

If you have been doing this for awhile you may want to look into getting a new player. I think some of the first gen ones were not quite up to spec...

Re:IANAC (I am not a chemist)

[headpushslap]

Low humidity and low temp, low light too, just to be safe. I guess my DVDs will go next to the Cuban's in the humidor.

Next up: Sony releases E-Humidor with SACD compatibility, and other equally nonsensical additional features.

I have some LP's older than my parents. They still work, even after submersion in raw sewage (basement flood) and subsequent bath to restore them to working condition.

Could it be related to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Could it be related to this?

[Accipiter]

Geologist Victor Cardenes says he stumbled across the microscopic creature while visiting Belize.

I read that, and pictured a scene similar to the following.

Man steps off a plane, enters an airport terminal.

"Ahh, Belize! I cannot WAIT to get to..." *trip* (Man trips over something invisible while walking through the terminal)

"My, word! What's this? I say, it appears to be a microscopic organism that feeds on compact discs!"

That's strange, this article didn't start out as funny, but I'm laughing. heh.

Old refrain

[Macsimus]

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.

The site with the 18 titles...

[ChangeOnInstall]

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.

CD's did that too

[tsa]

We heard the same thing twenty years ago about CD's.

Re:CD's did that too

[Zeinfeld]

We heard the same thing twenty years ago about CD's.

You can fix DVDs the same way, just get a blue marker pen and draw a line arround the edge of the DVD.

If that fails send the DVD to Craig Shergold.

Get used to it...

[Rxke]

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...

Re:Get used to it...

[actor_au]

Its a good thing that the government is making it illegal for Americans to copy DVDs and protect the important interests of our hollywood elite now isn't it. Otherwise people might be able to actually preserve the Products that they paid for. I'll admit I'm from Australia, thus this won't affect my until our government get bought out by our benevolent overlords. PS The bidding is starting any day now.

Re:Get used to it...

[Gregg Alan]

Huh? What does that mean, "Studying for a masters degree"? If you are working on your masters there isn't any studying to do. You might be doing research but that's different. Then "the format connot be considered stable for more than 10 years". What is that supposed to mean? You imply that the media is what is meant by 'format' but I can't be sure. If you are really refering to format then sure the format might not be widely used in 10 years...but my CD drive still works... what's your point?

Sorry to rant, but my wife is working on her masters and she doesn't have any study time. What she does have is teaching time and research/analysis time. Any jackass that talks about studying for their masters is just that, a jackass.

Re:Get used to it...

[Rxke]

Suppose I AM A JACKASS... But being from Bergium... Actually, i'm going for a 'meestergraad' and i thought that was the same, but, nope i was wrong (did some confusing reading on our national errr... studysystem, and it is confusing to say the least;) as i understand: master degrees are university grades (correct me if im wrong) but in belgium, the conservation/restauration disciplin is linked with art academies... Now, half of our teachers call themselves prefessors, and they want to change the... err.... grades to bachelor/master, instead of candidate/meester. those terms come from the old european tradition of guilds, i guess the still feel a bit proud about these things. But they (our would be prefessers obviously want to have a higher esteem internationally. Bergian Engrish error 2: indeed, i meant medium of dvd instead of format (we Euros are soooo sloppy with english, we always think we have mastered it, but, well...

Storage Medium for the Really Long Haul?

[Esion Modnar]

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.

Re:Storage Medium for the Really Long Haul?

[Rxke]

Hope you love spy movies... The best system for longer-lived archivation (and excuse me my Engrish, i'm from Belgium...) is actually something we all know from those russian mumbling, raincoat-wearing types: MICROFILM! Yeah, iknow...sounds funny, but seriously: a lot of musea et;c. are switching back to this old and trusted archival system. It's tried and tested, the information density is not that bad (compared to parchment, anyway,) storage, copying and retrieval is kinda straightforward, and thus relatively cheap, in comparison to digital storage, where you have not only to update your disks, tapes, what have you, but also your computers, readers,... at a very high pace (say ten years) Microfilms are guaranteed reliable for over 100 years, and can be combined with ocr (if you want to swap computers every ten years (sigh) Ok, it's far from ideal, and admittedly super-bulky, compared with DVD's and the like, but for valuable data, convenience has to make way for reliability.

Re:Storage Medium for the Really Long Haul?

[RogueScientist]

You may wat to look at http://www.norsam.com/hdrosetta.htm and as I understand it IBM was developing a system for accessing digital information that accessed data stored on silicon wafers. Granted at high storage densities, you need a electron microscope to read it, but it would archive well past humn life times.

Re:Storage Medium for the Really Long Haul?

[drinkypoo]

Think high-density two-dimensional barcodes on microfilm.

Re:Storage Medium for the Really Long Haul?

[roybadami]

Is there anything in the works for use as a true archival media?

Paper :)

Seriously, though, long term archiving is a big problem. Most storage media haven't been around long enough to get reliable data on longevity. And even when they have, media forumaltions tend to change over time, so the data you have is of questionable use for evaluating the longevity of recordings made now.

Re:Storage Medium for the Really Long Haul?

[roybadami]

There was an article in Omni some years ago about 'deep time communication'

The big problem with deep time communication, though, is not so much media longevity, but communicating a message to people with whom you may not share any linguistic or cultural referent.

Re:Storage Medium for the Really Long Haul?

[silverhalide]

It's not bad for the long run, but there's a huge advantage to having data in the digital domain: replication. Once you have digital data, it's relatively trivial to move it to the latest and greatest format that will (supposedly) last a long time.

Re:Storage Medium for the Really Long Haul?

[zenyu]

The best system for longer-lived archivation (and excuse me my Engrish, i'm from Belgium...) is actually something we all know from those russian mumbling, raincoat-wearing types: MICROFILM

Microfilm has a long lifetime per cm^2 for film, but even compared to highly acidic newspaper paper it has a very short lifetime. The advantage of digital media is not that a copy will last very long on whatever media it is recorded on, but that you can make near-perfect copies of data that has decent error correction codes. Then you reconstitute the ECC, and you have a new copy that will last as long as the first copy. Microfilm has been very valueable though as a warning to us not to destroy the originals after we've copied it into another media. We'll probably never know as much about the early 21st century as we've learned about the 17-19th centuries because of all the newspapers we pulped. Now those pages we actually photographed are not only bad copies but are also getting fuzzier by the minute... (Read "Double Fold" by Nick Baker for more info, as someone who quit a law library in discust when I was asked to participate, I can tell you he understates the danger our so called libraries are to the future of civilization.)

This is another reminder of the great crime to history long copyrights and immoral copy-protection schemes are.

Re:Storage Medium for the Really Long Haul?

[jandrese]

The big downside with microfilm/microfiche: searching. It takes forever to find information stored on microfilm.

I was afraid of this.

[ComputarMastar]

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!

Re:I was afraid of this.

[Nom du Keyboard]

I completely agree with you, and would have started a separate thread if you hadn't already brought this up. I have had cases, some of them rentals, where I was bending the DVD to near breaking to get the d@mn thing out. Doesn't suprise me at all that there may be stress fractures letting in contaminates around the center hole. Who the heck designs these cases anyway -- the movie industry?

Re:I was afraid of this.

[drinkypoo]

Most DVD Keepcase spiders are either too tight, or too loose. A lord of the rings special multiple DVD set full of interviews and such has such tight spiders I was afraid I'd break a disk; Likewise for the tenchi muyo box OAV set. On the other hand some of my DVDs (like record of lodoss war) want to fall right out.

CDs seem to have pretty consistent control, most CD jewelcase spiders work fairly well. But most DVD spiders annoy the piss out of me.

recycling

[superspoon]

this brings a whole new meaning to the hardcore recycling story

hum.

[herrd0kt0r]

"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.

Don't forget to make your backup!

[pacc]

Otherwise you might not be able to view your film collection 30 years from now...

Noooo! Not Alien Legacy box set!

[zonix]

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.

z

Perhaps this happened to me.

[NotAnotherReboot]

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?

Let's hope AOL starts shipping DVD's instead of CD

[t0qer]

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.

High Technology

[TheRaven64]

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...

Delamination

[lgftsa]

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...

The list of DVD's rotting so far

[sawilson]

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

well, that's a relief

[pphrdza]

I thought it was just my MAC.
I just have to buy the DVD's again, not the player?

This story is a crock...wait for more info

[djupedal]

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.

Re:This story is a crock...wait for more info

[EvilTwinSkippy]

According to this article [www.cd-info.com]:

...The basic manufacturing process for DVD is similar to the current process for CD-ROM, with some exceptions. Two injection molders are required to make one DVD, which consists of two bonded 0.6 mm discs. The second additional manufacturing step is hot-melt glue bonding (single layer) or UV bonding (dual layer). For the dual layer design, a semi-reflective layer is also added to allow both information layers to be read from one side of the disc. DVD also uses a high resolution laser beam to write a glass master in addition to incorporation a new semi-reflective layer rather than the standard aluminum layer in CD-ROM.

This internal design provides DVD with the major advantage over CD. To improve the resolution and readability of two distinct layers, the minimum pit length of a single layer DVD is 0.4 micro meters, as compared to 0.83 micro meters for a CD. In addition, the DVD track pitch is reduced to 0.74 micro meters, less than half of CDs 1.6 micro meters. With the number of pits equating to capacity levels, DVDs reduced track pitch and pit size creates four times as many pits as CDs.

...[Boring bit about reading out to in instead of in to out]...

These numerous manufacturing and design differences lead to an expanded step for DVD production -- more extensive quality control. The DVD process requires optimum pit replication because smaller pits spaced closer together are more susceptible to jitter. In addition, the bonding of two discs requires no tilt in either, making the disc itself a more critical component to the production process

Re:This story is a crock...wait for more info

[djupedal]

UV bonding is not glue. DVD's are dual, thus no glue. Take a tour of an actual making and see for yourself. Thanks for the confiration of my claim :)

Re:This story is a crock...wait for more info

[Dimensio]

Somebody mod this down. DVD rot is a well-documented phenomenon. My copy of "The Devil's Advocate" has rotted (it's unplayable past the second layer, which irritates me to no end as it's one of the original pressings) and many early WB titles (this was one of them) are notorious for this.

You have a dirty lens....perhaps

[djupedal]

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.

Re:You have a dirty lens....perhaps

[stwrtpj]

You, like many others, have a dirty lens (laser).

You have a point, but at the same time, that's real evidence of deterioration in his microscopic examination of the disk.

I would, however, be interested to see if his discs had the same problem in other players. Recently my wife and I tried to watch a DVD fresh out of the shrink wrap. In our three-year-old Mitsubishi DVD player, the picture starting getting "motion artifacts" after playing for about fifteen minutes. If I stopped the disc and started it again via the scene selection menu, it would run okay for another fifteen and then the same problem. But when we threw the same disc into the Playstation 2, it played perfectly, and other, older discs appear to play fine in the Mitsubishi player. Go figure.

Re:You have a dirty lens....perhaps

[PingPongBoy]

My opinion - not a dirty lens because the problem occurs at one time only and is repeatable.

Re:You have a dirty lens....perhaps

[NotAnotherReboot]

I thought I made it clear that it wouldn't play in any player..all other DVDs work. I live in a smoke free environment without a lot of dust.

Re:You have a dirty lens....perhaps

[djupedal]

Yes, you made that clear and I appreciate what that means. I'm simply asking you to consider all possible fault scenarios before you pass judgement. If you don't want to service your player as suggested, you might want to test that disc, one last time, in a new player in a local store. Either way, I'd think you'd want to be fair to yourself in terms of fixing the problem.

Yet another reason for fair use laws!

[Mipmap]

http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdripping

Also reported elsewhere in Africa

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Thank God DVD Rot isn't based on overuse

[Flounder]

Or else my Fight Club SE would be dust by now.

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.

Re:Thank God DVD Rot isn't based on overuse

[NineNine]

No, Disney does it to jack up demand thus the price and sales of their movies. They've done it for many, many years with VHS tapes.

Re:Thank God DVD Rot isn't based on overuse

[jmauro]

You mean there is a reason why they always say this is the last time in xxx years or the last time ever that you'll be able to buy something. I always thought they were going to close shop and go out of business. It makes about as much sense.

Re:Thank God DVD Rot isn't based on overuse

[Datoyminaytah]

Plus, they add a few seconds of useless "never before seen" footage so you just HAVE to buy that "new improved version."

Re:Thank God DVD Rot isn't based on overuse

[NineNine]

Absolutely. There's even a chain of retail stores that does the same thing. They're called "Tuesday Morning" I think, or something like that. They're only open occasionally, so when they *are* open, sales per hour are through the roof. They spend much less on employees, and overhead for keeping a store open. It's an interesting way of artifically driving up demand if your product is unique enough. I just did it with my retail store (but to much less of a degree). I get the same amount of business in the long run, but my hours spent behind the cash register are spent much more productively, since I'm now open fewer open hours, and I have the same number of customers.

Life span of hard drives...

[NineNine]

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.

Re:Life span of hard drives...

[cdrudge]

Duh. The obvious solution to backing up your hard drive is to get a DVR-R drive and backup everything to a couple of DVDs. :)

Laserdisks and rot

[Registered Coward v2]

Laser disks experienced a similar problem - which generally showed up as snow on the video, or freezing at a particular frame.

Re:Laserdisks and rot

[GreenHell]

I remember seeing it before on a Laserdisc (I think it was on a copy of the theatrical release of Blade Runner, don't remember) and the first thing that crossed my mind was "I hope this doesn't happen to DVDs."

Looks like it does though. You'd think they'd have figured out the cause of that when they came out with the new format.

Heres an idea...

[barberio]

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.

Familiar. (But not in a consipiracy theory manner)

[GreenHell]

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.

Put down that pitchfork

[Sponge Bath]

As other posts have pointed out, media degrades. CDs suffer, DVDs suffer, the new HD-DVDs will eventually give out also. I'm sure in time the materials will improve, consumers will learn to properly handle and store media and the longevity will increase.

So let's end the Angry Mob Justice and give the MPAA and movie industry a big, warm, fuzzy bear hug!

Preview Comment Re:IANAC (I am not a chemist)

[EvilTwinSkippy]

The problem is not the plastic. The problem is the ultra-thin layer of metal that reflects the light back. It's only a few microns thick, so it really doesn't take much to punch a hole through it.

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.

That would be the first such DVD ever...

[Kjella]

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

NOT a conspiracy

[stwrtpj]

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!

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.

Degrading material, DMCA and copyright

[Kjella]

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

Re:Degrading material, DMCA and copyright

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Thank god for public libraries. No, wait, they are working on that one[zdnet].

I guess...

[286]

it's time to go back to vinyl...

Re:I guess...

[cenobita]

What the hell are you talking about? Vinyl records degrade a little bit everytime they're played!

All this fuss...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I have yet to pay more than $50 for a DVD. And I have a rule about not allowing the fuss over an inanimate object to exceed it's replacement value. I usually pay a lot less that $50 for a DVD, but I know if I said something realistic (say $30) trolls would accuse me of lowballing. (No I didn't buy all 3 LOTR disk sets. I bought the cheap one, and borrowed the others from doting relatives.)

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.

Re:All this fuss...

[Reziac]

So.. let's say you're a collector, not a "use once, throw away" consumer (in which case, why buy when you can rent?), and in the past couple years you've accumulated a nice DVD library. 300 DVDs (a typical number I've seen bandied about by collectors) even at $20 each is $6000 (plus around $500 in sales tax in most states; EU VAT may be much higher).

Are you saying it's okay for this $6000+tax to go down the drain every few years, due to disk rot? Is that now such a trivial sum that you can just throw it away??

BTW, why does your sig seem so appropriate? ;)

Re:All this fuss...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

People collect baseball cards too. Baseball cards are printed on acid paper, a lousy archival media. But the were not designed to be collectible. The first ones were designed to push bubble gum sales.

Once the store prints you a reciept of purchase, all "value" is in the eye of the beholder.

If someone was "collecting" movies, instead of simply gathering disks, one of the first prints of the film is preferred. If a digital format is desired, you would want an uncompressed feed that was used to make the DVD. With a respectable resolution those feeds could approach a terabyte in size.

Re:All this fuss...

[/dev/trash]

Shhhh, don't let those collectors find out that what they have is what everyone else has.

Re:All this fuss...

[SubtleNuance]

a nice DVD library

Is pretty silly. That is what your local Library is for. Or your Mom-Pop Video/DVD rental place. It never ends to amaze me why people are compeled to accumulate masses of Media into collections. They are (mostly) rarely used beyond a small percentage of the discs... is spending tens-of-thousands of $ really a good idea in order that you may have this "stuff" in your posession?

Ive stopped buying all media, magazines, books, CDs, VHS or DVDs (dont own a DVDplayer). I will not BUY a single item when the only thing preventing ALL the worlds media being available on the internet is MPAA/RIAA/Whatever greed.

Intellectual Property is not real, and as such, spending hard earned dollars to build a library of "Fools Gold" with no real value is... silly.

Re:All this fuss...

[Reziac]

I gather that you've never had a personal library of anything. It's a helluva lot handier than being at the mercy of your local library (40 mile r/t in my case).

region...

[bicho]

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?

the pattern is clear...

[happystink]

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.

Final proof...

[SuperKendall]

Is yet to be determined - expert are currently examining the Alien Legacy boxed set to see if only the first two DVD's survived.

Time to rip my DVD's

[javacowboy]

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...

CD quality too

[Reziac]

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.

Re:CD quality too

[fuzdout]

Hey SubtleNuance, chill out! Obviously you know *NOTHING* about birds! Starlings chase out and KILL other types of birds and eventually take over so the only type of bird you get AT ALL are Starlings.
By-by Robins.
By-by Finches
By-By chicketies ..Hello, gobs and gobs of Starlings..
which look basically like crows. If Reziac wants to look at crows all day he can go to the McDonalds in Los Angeles.

Re:CD quality too

[Reziac]

Experience a mass of starlings sometime, and you too will do your utmost to run them off. Hint: Starlings congregate in flocks of thousands.

1 - 10% faulty DVD's

[Jugalator]

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.

Each disc is verified?

[bagofbeans]

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.

This is their plan

[cptgrudge]

Here's the plan as I see it.

(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.

opinion

[djupedal]

...wait for the result of lens cleaning... Being repeatable only proves there is a problem, and speaks not to the actual issue.

far less? Are you sure?

[djupedal]

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...

Re:far less? Are you sure?

[bagofbeans]

Perhaps you didn't have the difficulty I had getting good copies of Mike Oldfield and Pink Floyd at that time... but if DVDs (and LPs) have a defect level of 1% of units shipped, that's appallingly bad quality control for an industry.

On Laserdisc, this is called Laser Rot.

[drinkypoo]

And why anyone is surprised that it happens to DVDs is beyond me. It happens to LaserDiscs because their sheer size makes them harder to manufacture than CDs, so manufacturers use processes they don't have to use with a CD. (The fact that LDs have analog video makes them dramatically touchier than a sheet with holes poked out of it.) DVD is digital but it's way complex, especially when you get into multi-layer DVDs like most of them seem to be these days. It's really easy to notice switching layers on my Apex 3201 because A> it does no buffering to speak of so it's a chunky operation similar to changing sides of a laserdisc though of course not THAT slow, LDs seek slowly and B> because the firmware for the 3201 prints PLAY on the screen whenever you change streams for any reason.

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.

Re:bit-rot is somewhat contained..

[CableModemSniper]

Duh. There is no such thing as bit-rot. The only thing that can rot is the physical medium. DivX compression isn't protecting the data magically, the data is fine because its not stored on a faulty medium (in this case certain DVD discs). It has nothing to do with whatever is on these faulty discs and everything to do with the discs themselves. Your theory, no offense, is completely wrong.

Kentucky Fried Movie

[Rocko Bonaparte]

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.

CD vs DVD longevity

[Vegan Pagan]

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?

Re:Your SI?

[pHDNgell]

I may be thinking a bit out of context, but what is your SI? ...and why does it suck?

Q about 'coffee stains'

[pod]

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?

Criterion

[Lemmy Caution]

I'm building a library of best/classic films from around the world, and so movies from the Criterion Collection are a big part of it (wish they could get Wim Wenders, Kieslowski, Ozu and Jodorowsky films, but that's another story.) I've been impressed with the quality of the pressing from Criterion, and that sort of thing is a big part of my "do I buy or do I rent" determination. Criterion consistently puts together incredibly good DVD's, with excellent video and sound, fascinating background material (the accompanying material for Rashomon was a joy) and high-quality materials.

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.

Re:Criterion

[wilkinsm]

I'm doing the same - Being only twenty-something, I've never seen or heard of most of the movies that Criterion releases. The background materials on the disks are better than taking an art appreciation class as well.

Whenever I watch them, I end up asking myself: "Why did hollywood stop making movies, and start making trash?"

Brings a whole new meaning to

[Zork the Almighty]

What about Mission : Impossible
"This message will self-destruct..."

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

It's time for EULAs to bite back

[Junior J. Junior III]

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.

Re:Your SI?

[Picass0]

01011001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101100 01100101 01100110 01110100 00100000 01101111 01100110 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01000111 00101110 00100000 01001101 01111001 00100000 01010011 01001001 01000111 00100000 01010011 01110101 01100011 01101011 01110011 00101110 00100000 01000001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01100100 01101111 01100101 01110011 00101110 00100000

Actually...[was Re:CD vs DVD longevity]

[cenobita]

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

I didn't say 1% was a good thing...

[djupedal]

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.

Re:bit-rot is somewhat contained..

[JW Troll]

do you know what sarcasm is? I'm really really curious.

Re:bit-rot is somewhat contained..

[CableModemSniper]

No.

This is NOT a DMCA issue

[ralphclark]

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.

Have something like this happening

[Junta]

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..

Starlings (Offtopic)

[Skjellifetti]

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.

Re:Starlings (Offtopic)

[Reziac]

I've seen flocks like that in the midwest -- except much larger!! They've sometimes brought down power and phone lines from the sheer mass of birds sitting on 'em. Here in the SoCal desert we don't get 'em in such hordes, but when a flock (here meaning a mere couple hundred starlings) does take up residence, it strips the already-limited food supply to the point that all the other birds leave or starve. Pigeons of any species only eat grain and seeds; starlings eat almost anything that doesn't eat them first (and remember they aren't native to North America).

As the starling population continues to grow, and the durability of CDROMs and DVDs continues to decline, I foresee a thriving market for AOL 3.0 CDs :)

(And you thought we were offtopic :)

Re:Your SI?

[jx100]

01101101011000010111100101100010011001010010000001 10100001100101001000000111011101100001011100110010 00000110000101110011011010110110100101101110011001 11001000000111011101101000011000010111010000100000 01111001011011110111010101110010001000000111010101 10111001101001011101000010000001110111011000010111 001100111111

Think before you speak.

[EnglishTim]

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.

source?

[reve]

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.

Re:source?

[Rxke]

No source (yet) this course we take is relatively new, and our 'docent' (=teacher) is relatively old. 74, if you can believe it! BUT he is NOT an idiot, admittedly he runs windows on a iMac, but, well... The problem with his courses are that he is convinced that we can study better when he dictates from his syllabus, and we write it down...instead of handing it out and... well you get the picture. At the end of the year we get the syllabus, but ive had a peek and it looks like he's gotten a lot of his info from the net and newsletters from around the world. it looked like unfinished, patched together... he also has extensive emailcorrespondence with a variety of conservators AND he has the memory of an elephant, so i'm afraid he had it from some obscure article, like JAIC or something.

Re:source?

[Rxke]

spoken to teacher: 5-10 year is HIS interpretation, just to be on the safe side; comment went sumtin like this: Not much research yet on DVD thoug the analogy to laserdisk, cd AND the complexity of the structure hints that the long-time duration wil not be btter than former formats...

some, maybe useful info on digital conservation topics:
-conservation of cd's (guidelines): ISO 16111
-Effect of marker pens on cd's: 'Leon Bavi Vilmont: Effect de marqueurs sur les CD-R, Etude CRCDG, Paris, 2002'
-CD classification: NF 242-011-2 (i guess sumthing to do with CRCDG, see further...)
says: only class 1 and 2 (i.e. Max block error rate lower than 50) can be considered for 'long term storage,' long term is more than 3 years.
site:
http://archivesdefrance.culture.gou v.fr/fr/texteno rme/dafperenisation.htm

its in french, but it links to other, international sites.

I'm afraid a lot of this might be already known to you, but, they call me ever-eager-to-serve..

Re:source?

[reve]

Beauty. Thanks!

During the war...

[spinlocked]

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...

Re:Your SI?

[pHDNgell]

Heh, OK, I'm an idiot. Thanks. :)

Re:Your SI?

[Picass0]

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