Because of the means WB manufactured their DVDs, just about all discs pressed between 2006-8 are unplayable now.
I’m an enormous fan of outdated films. Now, after I say outdated I don’t imply films from ten, twenty, and even thirty or forty years in the past. I really like films from the Golden Age of Hollywood, particularly the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. I’ve all the time cherished this era, and given how exhausting it’s to search out many of those films on streaming, I’ve made an effort to purchase as many of those films on bodily media as potential. As such, I’ve hundreds of outdated films on DVD, and amongst my most treasured titles are a couple of dozen DVD field units Warner Bros put out within the mid-2000s, as they management the very best library of traditional movie.
A number of months in the past, I dug into an outdated Humphrey Bogart field set to look at a favourite of mine, Passage to Marseille. After about an hour, the disc merely stopped working. The identical factor occurred with one other film from the set, Throughout the Pacific. I really thought my outdated Blu-ray participant was guilty, and on condition that I used to be in want of an improve anyway, I purchased a brand new UHD participant and simply forgot about it.
Flash ahead to a few week in the past, after I determined to throw on an outdated Errol Flynn film referred to as Determined Journey. The identical factor occurred. This was extra regarding to me, as, not like the opposite films I discussed, this has by no means gotten an HD launch and was unavailable digitally. I did some research on-line, and to my horror, I landed on this video:
As you possibly can see, it seems that just about each Warner Bros DVD disc manufactured between 2006 and 2008 has succumbed to the dreaded laser rot, the place discs merely cease working attributable to a rotting of the layers. As soon as it occurs, it might’t be undone. This was a frequent downside with laserdiscs again within the 80s and 90s, nevertheless it wasn’t an enormous downside with DVDs. The problem comes right down to the way in which the discs have been authored. Lots of the titles affected, which vary from classics like The Wild Bunch and The Shawshank Redemption to TV collections like The Dukes of Hazzard, have been reissued on Blu-ray or digital HD. A number of the titles, similar to most of the titles within the Looney Tunes Collections and most of the Golden Age of Hollywood films, haven’t, making them, in lots of circumstances, misplaced media.
So, what could be carried out about this? Nothing. As said within the RetroBlasting video, we had ticking time bombs on our arms, and the one means round the issue was to tear our faves to one thing like PLEX, nevertheless it’s too late for almost all of discs. Warner Bros, in fact, has but to touch upon this, so individuals like me have hundreds of nugatory discs cluttering our cabinets. Right here’s essentially the most complete checklist of titles accessible.
Up to now, Blu-ray Discs aren’t affected, though all HD-DVD discs put out by WB on this interval are mainly costly coasters.
Whereas it will be nice of WB was to attempt to make good to shoppers by no less than providing us substitute MOD discs from the Warner Archive, I’m not holding my breath. Provided that the discs solely went dangerous after fifteen years or so, I’m positive they really feel like we received our cash’s price – which we actually didn’t for my part. Particular shout out to Rattling Idiot Idealistic Crusader, an outstanding House Theater YouTube Channel that was means forward of this story.
What do you consider this downside? Tell us within the feedback!
