Check your DVDs for disc rot — Warner Bros. says it’s replacing them

[Karlston]

Affected Warner Bros. Home Entertainment DVDs were made between 2006 and 2008, the company told JoBlo.

Photo: Wes Davis / The Verge

 

If you, like me, still have your DVD collection hanging around, now is a good time to dust off your DVD player and make sure they haven’t succumbed to disc rot. That’s because many of the discs produced by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (WBHE) between 2006 and 2008 are failing prematurely, the company acknowledged in a statement to JoBlo in an article update this week.

 

The company gave JoBlo this statement on the matter:

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is aware of potential issues affecting select DVD titles manufactured between 2006 – 2008, and the company has been actively working with consumers to replace defective discs.

Where possible, the defective discs have been replaced with the same title. However, as some of the affected titles are no longer in print or the rights have expired, consumers have been offered an exchange for a title of like-value.

Consumers with affected product can contact the customer support team at [email protected].

Disc rot is not a new phenomenon, but as ArsTechnica notes, properly-cared-for DVDs should be playable for up to 100 years, according to Sony. However, failing WBHE discs have stood out in particular amongst the physical media faithful, who have been posting about the problem for years in forums like DVD Talk and Home Theater Forum.

 

 

The above 2021 video from YouTuber Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader that Ars points to suggests disc rot is affecting a broader range of discs, from 2006 to 2009, than WB has acknowledged. As for figuring out which of your discs may have the issue, he says the most reliable way to look for playback problems — DVDs that won’t load at all, freeze while you’re watching the film, or have unplayable special features.

 

Crusader’s video description links to some Google Docs, one of which is a list he compiled showing what he believes are “known rotted DVD titles” he found reported online, as well as those from his own collection that seem to be affected. The list features discs for popular series like Batman: The Animated Series as well as movies, such as a Stanley Kubrick Director’s Series edition of 2001: A Space Odyssey and all of the Superman films up to Superman Returns.

 

Another of Crusader’s Google Docs largely pins the faulty DVDs made “roughly from 2006 through 2009” on a Cinram manufacturing plant in Olyphant, Pennsylvania. WB hasn’t substantiated the claim, as Ars notes. Crusader says you can identify discs produced there using codes printed on the inner ring of a disc’s underside.

 

There are plenty of us who have held onto our physical media as a bulwark against losing access to the films, TV shows, and games we love — something that can happen without notice as platforms are deprecated or distribution licenses dry up. But even maintaining a physical collection isn’t perfect if some manufacturing issue that occurred years earlier can break your discs.

 

It’s nice to know that even if I hadn’t backed up my DVDs to my home server in the last couple of years, Warner Bros. appears to be doing the right thing and I wouldn’t necessarily lose them. But there’s no guarantee that other companies will do that if their discs start failing in large numbers. It makes a great argument for taking up the digital packrat lifestyle 404 Media wrote about last month, and backing up your physical media early and often.

 

Source

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