Blu-ray Discs Rotting??

I had something of the sort happen to my US copies of American Psycho and Basic Instinct, both Lionsgate releases. I saw many spots on the discs and they did not play at all. I just shredded them for disposal.

I have the superior Australian version of American Psycho and was never really happy with the quality of Basic Instinct, so an exchange wasn't worth the hassle.

That sux, sorry to hear that...I'll try my sealed copy of Speed tomorrow on my fat ps3 and slim ps3 to check if it's ok.

American Psycho is one of my oldest blu-rays.
Got it with the PS3 when they had the 5 free discs thing going on.

I'll have to take a look at it.

EDIT: Just popped it in. Still works perfectly. It's the Lionsgate disc.

my American Psycho stop working about 6 months ago. No scratches on the disc one day my ps3 was not able to read it...

And the studios wonder at the consumer's desire to backup their titles on other media.

How many titles would they sell if they included the caveat: "may not play after 2 years"?

For what it's worth, this morning I tried my copies of Speed and The Prestige that were both bought on the day of release, and they played and looked perfectly fine.

How are your discs stored and the temperature(static or varying) of the room/location in which they are stored?

yikes

I don't think Blu-rays are even suspectible to "rot" in the same way as all layers are internal, there is no external joining of separate plates as in DVD (and most of the "rot"-afflicted titles, to the best of my knowledge, went a step beyond that and were DVD-18s with two dual-layered DVD plates joined as a flipper disc). If any BDs were to experience the same form of "rot," I'd expect it to be Universal's BD/DVD combos.

There was a problematic batch of The Prestige (and also apparently the original release of Stranger Than Fiction) where a contaminant was found in the material used for the clear-coat protective layer. This manifested as a series of discolored spots on the bottom of the disc, and resulted in the disc not being readable. This information comes via paidgeek, a Sony employee who apparently tracked down this particular issue. Assuming this is all true, that would just fall into "bad batch" territory, and not be indicative of an inherent flaw in the Blu-ray disc manufacturing process.

For the past year or so, I have seen isolated posts on various forums discussing Blu-ray discs that at one time worked, but now no longer do. The overwhelming majority of them have been early Lionsgate releases (American Psycho, Basic Instinct, and Lord of War spring to mind). I don't mean to jump to conclusions as certainly nothing is verified and other possibilities exist, but the simplest explanation here is just that early batches of Lionsgate discs also had a manufacturing error of some kind, although it would seem to be a different one as errors are occurring over a more drawn-out timescale. I feel if it was a general Blu-ray manufacturing problem, it would occur not just over a wider range of discs, but in larger numbers of discs as well. But I suppose time will tell.

I'm at a tech conference at the moment, but when I return home I will try to find and test my various early Lionsgate BD releases. I purchased mine in late 2007 so they may not be from the earliest manufacturing batches, but I'll still see what I can find out from them.

I fully acknowledged the fact that they don't work anymore. My point with the rest of the context I provided was that we shouldn't just "call it whatever we want." Making assumptions, especially worse-case ones, doesn't get us any closer to a real explanation, and just fuels paranoia which can lead to dramatics.

Actual rot? Hard to believe... sure the area isn't damp (mold?)?

I had a bad copy of The Prestige. Whatever the problem was the disc looked similar to disc rot that I've seen with several DVDs I've owned that went bad over a period of years; the disc should look spotted, if it's the same problem. You can call the support number on The Prestige disc and Disney will exchange the defective disc for a new copy, just like they did for POTC for free. In fact, Disney will exchange any bad dvd or BD, for about the cost of shipping, I believe. If it's a defective product, exchange is free, and unlike Paramount, Disney is professional about it - they provide a return shipping label and RMA number to insure the disc doesn't get lost.

I've got what is likely a copy of Speed from its first batch, as I received it early for review. The disc looks OK, but I'll check it tonight to verify whether or not it still works.

My Speed blu-ray that I bought three years ago and finally opened today played perfectly on my slim PS3.

I've read a more specific definition than that, possibly in DVD Demystified, referring to rot as oxidation of the recorded membrane due to breakdown or inconsistent application of the bonding agents (not verbatim). So, the breakdown of the membrane due to air getting in has always been my understanding of rot - not that the definition couldn't have been broadened since then. Seems like rot, the traditional definition of it anyway, was supposed to be a more serious problem with CDs than DVD due to improvements in replication and/or the sealant/glues. As I understand it, BD has supposedly improved on it even further.

I forgot to check Speed last night btw. Maybe I can remember today.

I know this doesn't help but I find it interesting that you added that. My Apollo 13 went bad too.

I didn't know about Devil's Advocate having a problem. I sold my original unaltered dvd, just a few months ago. The disc looked flawless, but I didn't actually check to make sure it played properly. The buyer didn't complain so I guess it did, considering the price I got for it, that, or he hasn't watched it yet.

I remember there were a lot of problems with early dvds of Contact going bad. There was also a bad batch of Desperado Superbit, but it wasn't rot. I exchanged my copy twice and gave up; I decided to just keep it and use the disc to judge dvd player error correction. A few players could handle it, but most would freeze up.

I checked my copies of Speed, Lord of War, and Stranger than Fiction; all should be first run; all looked and played fine.

I'm glad I found this thread. The Prestige I have has spots on the disc. I looked at it under a microscope and the spots are between the layers. Disc played fine when I first got it about 2 years ago. Then went to play it the other day and it will not play in 3 different bluray players. I contacted Disney at BVHEBluray.com and they are to be sending me a replacement disc.

I have the Prestige but none of the others IIRC. I'll check it out later.

To add to this thread, my PS3 stopped playing a good 30% of my blurays. Generally they were the older ones. So I went on a witch hunt to find a bluray player that would play all my blurays. Tried a pioneer elite, a samsung, an lg and a panasonic.

I finally ended up with the samsung but sometimes even it has issues. Now, I haven't figured out a 100% fix, but I noticed that my blurays like to be warmer. I know this sounds funny but... for example, if I put Get Smart in my samsung it will play but without any menu's. The popup menus just don't show. I then put it in my PS3 and it spinned for a while and never loaded. I then put it back in my samsung and it worked, menu's and all. The only difference I noticed was the PS3 spinning caused the disc to heat up alot! Now, if a bluray disk isn't working I take it outside and let it get some sun, or i stick it under my shirt and let it warm up (don't laugh! lol).

By warming the disc up it now works (sometimes i still have a couple scenes during the movie that skip, but at least the movie loads). The worst offender was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. That would never ever load until I put it under my shirt or took it outside.

Not saying this is a fix for all, but it might be worth trying. I keep my house at 72 F so I don't think thats too cold...

^30%? That's a heck of a lot of discs to go bad, no? Even if you only had 10 discs, 3 going bad out of 10 is pretty bad QC.

I've never had a BD or DVD go bad/stop working *knocks on wood*. I mean I've had DVDs with scratches that got pb glitches/skips but never one that just didn't work outright, for no obvious reason.

It sounds more like the drive in his PS3 was dying.

I've got nearly 700 BDs and have bought and sold several hundred more. If I was having even 1% of those kind of problems I'd stop wasting so much money on the format immediately. In addition to quality, reliability and longevity are the most crucial selling points for packaged media that currently distinguishes it from VOD and similar means of delivery.

Playing Heroes Season 4, disc 2 yesterday, I had the first real problem I've had in awhile. The disc froze and resumed about 15 seconds later in the middle of the 4th episode on the disc, when playing it on a Panasonic BD35 (firmware hasn't been updated in awhile, so there may already be a fix available). The disc was spotless, but I cleaned it anyway and it still lost 15 seconds of the 4th episode on the disc, each time I tried it. I then checked it using my 1st gen 60GB PS3, and it played perfectly. Clearly it's not the disc, but unless it's something related to BD Live (the panasonic isn't connected, unlike the PS3) that's may be affecting the layer change transition or something , I don't know what it is.

I just passed off my two problematic discs as something that is essentially inevitable with a newer optical format. I've had a couple of very early DVDs and CDs suffer a similar fate, but had no issue with more mature pressings. Assuming the world doesn't end in 2012, we will see how the later BDs fare in this regard.