Has CD Quality Control Slipped?

morris57 asks: "In the past few months, I have had at least 3 brand new compact disks or DVDs not work right out of the box. I don't mean that any sort of copy protection on the disk prevented me from using them; they were simply defective disks. I was able to exchange my DVD of 'The Matrix Reloaded' at Best Buy for a working copy, but some disks I got for Christmas I just recently opened and they are either unplayable or garbled. It is not a hardware issue, either. I've tested the disks in several types of players: new, old, component, computers, etc... It seems to me to make a very good case for downloadable media files, although I know these tracks are not available on iTunes or audible.com. So, I guess I'm wondering if the Slashdot community has noticed a decline in quality control of CDs/DVDs. What can be done (individually or communally) to not get burned by defective disks?" The solution for this particular type of problem boils down to simple consumerism. If you get a defective product, return it! If manufactures notice a high rate of return (and they should), they'll hopefully address the quality of what they ship. Has anyone else noticed an increase of non-working DVDs or CDs?

Comments

Re:Stating the Obvious

[GoRK]

I have never been to a store that would not exchange an opened copy of a CD or DVD for the exact same item if it was defective and included all the original materials.

Re:Falling life of CDRs

[Anonymous Coward]

Recordable media problems have been covered multiple times. Short summary is that the polymer protection layers are too thin, non-existant, unprotected aluminum burn media, aluminum / adhesive / chemical / bacterial / fungual / sharpie / light / reactions. Buy good CDRs and they will last long (archival type long). Use cheap shit for product delivery and disposable music mixes. Sony says their CDR lifespan is 70 years. Anything less than 10 in a preserved environment is unacceptable (but not really measureable). In short, there _should_ be no problems. There have been two slashdot references on this (although I cannot locate them). One dealt with adhesives / etc, the other dealt with the visual mapping of degradation. - Geccie

Cheaper CDs?

[jeffkjo1]

I feel like this has been occuring, but I don't know enough about the technical specs of how cd's are made to prove it.

However, in the past 6 months, I have purchased several CDs, and have had to reburn (checks disc box) 4 of them. I've also reburned several of my recent CD-R mix cd's. I don't know why, but after only a few weeks of use, these CD's have begun to skip. I have many CD's that are pushing 10 years old and are still going strong (which is amazing, considering some of them look like I scraped them across pavement.)

For some reason CD's I've purchased recently aren't holding up as well. If anything, I'm treating my CD's better than I used to, I just don't get it.

Are they making the actual data layers out of thinner/cheaper metals? Whats going on? I can't be the only person that's noticed this.

Re:It may be more than manufacturing flaws

[hankwang]

>This may be my imagination, but CDs that I bought in the early 90s felt a little heavier and appeared a little bit thicker than CDs that I buy now.

That's not imagination. I once attended a talk by someone from Philips Research. Accordig to the CD specs, the plastic layer on the playing side of the disc should be 1.0 mm thick with a tolerance of +/- 0.1 mm (I don't recall the exact numbers). According to him, after a few years, all CDs on the market had 0.905-mm-thick plastic layers because it was possible to manufacture them with much tighter tolerances and this way, the manufacturers save 10% on the raw material.

In the DVD specification, the tolerances are much tighter, which is necessary because the laser needs to be focused onto a much smaller spot than in a CD.