Re: [NEWS] Some Warner Bros DVD releases suffering from 'laser rot'

On 2025-03-24 07:25:11 +0000, Pluted Pup said:

On Sun, 23 Mar 2025 23:46:51 -0700, Your Name wrote:
 

On 2025-03-24 06:35:50 +0000, Pluted Pup said:
<snip>

Wiseguy comments about dvd collectors not (re)watching
their own stuff and so not realizing the damage
is welcome.

 Unfortunately there simply isn't enough time in the day to keep
re-watching a large collection of just to see if the discs are going
bad. That list you posted alone would take months, if not years, to
watch it all, and then (like painting teh Golden Gate bridge) you'd
have to start over again in case the discs began going bad after you
watched it last time.
 No doubt there will soon be law suits springing up as Americans pick up
their usual "sue 'em all" attitude and take Warner Bros. to court.

 I have many on that list, much of what I haven't watched
yet. I'm going to use this list as a guide, so I'm
going to go on a heavy Warners diet for a while.
 Consumer advocacy is weak, and it only seems like anyone can
be sued for anything; if there's a lawsuit, the wrong people
will sue the wrong people. But the blame is ultimately on Warners,
particularly because Warner Home Video has not been upfront
on any of this. Warners Home Video is the one who should be
providing the lists, and not having us to rely on hearsay.
 Later, Warners Home Video has been doing *bad* work on Blu-ray,
usually using half-bit rate discs and keeping a corporate
policy of never using more than 30 gigs on a 50 gig double
layer blu-ray, as well as using "noise reduction" to reduce
the amount of data to compress, furthering the muffling of the
picture. It's treatment of it's cartoons on Blu-ray like
The Flintstones (11 bps out of 40), Scooby-Do (11 bps out of 40
on 4 half-bitrate discs), Bugs Bunny 80th (12-19 bps), Rick
And Morty (9-11 bps) etc.,show cheating the customer to be a
a practice of Warners new management. The facts are that
mass duplication of Blu-Rays and DVDs is the cheapest part of
a video release, and there is no excuse forbit-starving.
They are wasting engineering costs on compression, and the heavy
processing of the video and audio that that entails in trying
to hide the effects of the low bit-rate.

I was under the impression we were only talking about movies from WB that were pressed and released from 2006-2008 *for the first time*, not movies with the same titles that were manufactured before or after those years which apparently are OK. I distinctly remember buying "Eyes Wide Shut - Stanley Kubrick Directors Series" through the old Columbia House DVD Club when I first began getting into DVDs back in 2003 so it couldn't have been made in 2006-2008.
After quick scan of the list the only one I can attest to having a problem with is "Dog Day Afternoon - Special Edition." My copy of it has a double-sided version of the movie instead of "Disc 1" of the 2-disc set. I apparently had a problem with the original Disc 1 and replaced it with an older, double-sided (widescreen/standard) version I already had at the time.
There are no movies I own that I won't eventually rewatch because I keep up with it all on a database and am always watching the movie I haven't seen in the longest time (that is unless I hate it and throw it in the "reject pile"). If a disc becomes "rotted" I'll eventually know about it. I see no reason to devote space to a movie collection unless you plan on rewatching them at some point -- and of course with each rewatch your initial monetary investment gets more value.