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Having VERY bad luck with Warner HD-DVDs!

post #1 of 420
5/4/11 at 3:44am
Thread Starter 

I've been collecting HD-DVDs ever since they were being sold at fire-sale prices (I collect failed formats in general, having every CED videodisc title put out, lots of 8-tracks and some D-VHS movies too) and now have almost every title put out in the US (all bought still sealed and properly handled). I haven't had a lot of time to watch them, but after trying to watch all the Harry Potter movies in order it seems like Warner had a serious problem manufacturing these.

Long story short, one copy of the first movie was defective, freezing up in the middle (I replaced it with a good one), and went through THREE copies of the 2nd one- I have four different players which I tried these on to verify that the problem was with the disc- again, the discs were bought brand-new and were clean with no scratches. Being a bit concerned that such a large number of discs would do that, I started randomly pulling other dual-layer HD-DVDs manufactured by Warner and chapter-skipping all the way through them- so far I've found FOUR other defective discs (Superman, Training Day, The Fugitive and Swordfish.) I'm going to have to check at least 5 discs every day now until I've checked them all, while I still have a chance of finding replacement copies. (I've heard Warner has been replacing defective HD-DVDs with Blu-Rays so I'm going to try and get that out of them, but still want functioning HD-DVD copies as I'm an obsessive collector.) I'd be REALLY mad if I'd paid full price for these and just now got around to watching them!

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post #2 of 420
5/4/11 at 5:29am
Quote:
Originally Posted by 8traxrule View Post

I started randomly pulling other dual-layer HD-DVDs manufactured by Warner and chapter-skipping all the way through them- so far I've found FOUR other defective discs

I dunno that "chapter-skipping" is gonna find all (or even many) defects??

The only way to check them reliably is to either watch from start-to-finish or (better) use an HD-DVD drive in your computer and attempt to Read them or rip them to hard disk. This will reveal any bad sectors.
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post #3 of 420
5/4/11 at 2:14pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:


I dunno that "chapter-skipping" is gonna find all (or even many) defects??

Maybe, but it's found several so far! Some of these are discs that otherwise wouldn't have been played for the first time maybe decades later. I've 'scanned' regular DVDs in my computer before that appeared fine but had problems on the regular player.

Just played "The Fugitive" from the beginning while doing other stuff, and it still froze. Running the others right now.
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post #4 of 420
5/4/11 at 4:07pm
I've never chapter skipped through a title but this defect rate you're finding is crazy. Are you sure it's not the drive you are playing the discs on? I have many Warner discs and have never had any problems with any of them. I've only had problems with Universal discs and those were due to residue on the discs.
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post #5 of 420
5/4/11 at 6:15pm
Thread Starter 
Most of these I've tried on THREE different players and they all choked at the same place, so I don't think all 3 drives are faulty. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it myself, but this is just nuts. Checked a few more today and all were OK except "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory", which wouldn't load at all. Player tried for about a minute then displayed onscreen "Disc is not DVD format". My friend has a defective copy of "The Cowboys" that does the same thing (my copy of that is fine.)

I've contacted Warner, hopefully someone will get back to me. I don't know if they just want to forget HD-DVD even existed at this point, but maybe someone there might check them out and see that they're bad if I send them in.
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post #6 of 420
5/4/11 at 8:15pm
I own quite a few Warner HD DVDs, The Aviator, The Departed, March of the Penquins,300, Training Day,Bonnie and Clyde, Planet Earth to name just a few. I've never had trouble playing any of them on my Samsung combo player, A2 or A3. Even "I Am Legend" a combo disc that gave some people problems played flawlessly.
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post #7 of 420
5/4/11 at 9:16pm
I have had the same experience as you.
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post #8 of 420
5/5/11 at 12:13pm
8traxrule and grossi: Can you explain exactly how you go about getting these errors? Do you change chapters rapidly, do you advance a chapter and wait for the picture to be displayed, and then advance to the next chapter? Do these occur while playing through the movie from start to finish? How do I replicate this error? When did you buy these discs, who did you buy them from, under which conditions have they been stored? What firmware are you using?
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post #9 of 420
5/5/11 at 12:53pm
I had trouble with The Matrix just as the OP stated, but on a different player it worked fine.
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post #10 of 420
5/5/11 at 3:37pm
I'm new to this forum, live here in Austria, and I am a movie collector since 30 years.
I own about 120 HD-DVD's, and although it is very sad, it is kind of funny, that I encountered the same problem with my discs a few days ago, and I am "investigating" that case since one week now
I also confirm. that (until now) I have only trouble with WARNER discs. I own 3 TOSHIBA players (2 XE1 - it's the EU Version of the big one, and one E1) I also have also a buddy, who checks the discs on his machine.
At the moment from 35 tested Discs 10 (!) are faulty.
Following discs:

"Blade Runner" FC from the US 5 Disc Set stops after layer change
"Getaway" same
"Last Samurai" same
"Superman Returns" same
"Wild Bunch" US same
"Letters From Iwo Jima" same
"Unforgiven" same
"Blood Diamond" cannot be read by E1, with XE1 it goes to "00.00" and stays there
"Viva Las Vegas" freezes after one minute

All these discs look perfectly clean, with the exception of

"Charlie And The Chocolate Factory",

which looks brownish and works only on the XE1

That's really a pity - and I have to say, that I'm kind of fed up.
The discs were stored under best conditions and mostly still sealed.

Until NOW no problem with PARAMOUNT and UNIVERSAL...

Let's hope, that BD's do not show the same problem after a while!

All the best!
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post #11 of 420
5/6/11 at 4:00am
Quote:
Originally Posted by alterfilmnarr View Post

I'm new to this forum, live here in Austria, and I am a movie collector since 30 years.
I own about 120 HD-DVD's, and although it is very sad, it is kind of funny, that I encountered the same problem with my discs a few days ago, and I am "investigating" that case since one week now
I also confirm. that (until now) I have only trouble with WARNER discs. I own 3 TOSHIBA players (2 XE1 - it's the EU Version of the big one, and one E1) I also have also a buddy, who checks the discs on his machine.
At the moment from 35 tested Discs 10 (!) are faulty.
Following discs:

"Blade Runner" FC from the US 5 Disc Set stops after layer change
"Getaway" same
"Last Samurai" same
"Superman Returns" same
"Wild Bunch" US same
"Letters From Iwo Jima" same
"Unforgiven" same
"Blood Diamond" cannot be read by E1, with XE1 it goes to "00.00" and stays there
"Viva Las Vegas" freezes after one minute

All these discs look perfectly clean, with the exception of

"Charlie And The Chocolate Factory",

which looks brownish and works only on the XE1

That's really a pity - and I have to say, that I'm kind of fed up.
The discs were stored under best conditions and mostly still sealed.

Until NOW no problem with PARAMOUNT and UNIVERSAL...

Let's hope, that BD's do not show the same problem after a while!

All the best!

I checked my Warner HDDVDs and I've found a few defective discs.

Last Samurai - stops after layer change but my X360 HD Drive played It without layer changing problems.However I have it on Blu-ray so I hope I'm in safe.

Blood Diamond - cannot read my X360 Drive anymore,my GGCH20L played it but after a few seconds the movie freezed.It's totally defective...

I have a really bad feeling about this...
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post #12 of 420
5/6/11 at 5:22am
Me too...
In the best case it's only the the pressing plant of WARNER (bad enough!), and we have only to rebuy their titles.
In the worst case it was the technology per se, an it's a matter of time for the rest of our discs.

And than we will see, what the BD future shows us.

I'm really tired always to rebuy old titles...
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post #13 of 420
5/6/11 at 7:03am
Quote:
Originally Posted by argento77 View Post

I have a really bad feeling about this...

Quote:
Originally Posted by alterfilmnarr View Post

In the best case it's only the the pressing plant of WARNER (bad enough!), and we have only to rebuy their titles.
In the worst case it was the technology per se, an it's a matter of time for the rest of our discs.

I don't think so. This scenario has played out several times before, where AV media started to go bad inexplicably. First, there was LaserRot, then CD rot, then DVD rot, and each case proved to be (relatively) isolated. To be clear, I am not questioning the bad luck of those who have experienced this, but it has never shown to be inherent to any format. If it were, then consumers who's entire collections are going bad overnight would be coming out of the woodwork. In this case, it is more likely that certain batches were bad, or the manufacturing at specific plants was sub-par (as was the case with LaserDisc). As for CD rot, it was almost entirely attributed to bone-headed storage by J6P who should not be allowed to handle AV media (but, as has been said, many of the defective HD DVDs were stored under pristine conditions by those who know what they are doing).

Personally, I have watched all of the Harry Potter films on HD DVD (years 1-5) within the last month (all played flawlessly), as well as Batman Begins (all of which were purchased on original release). Inherent to the format? Very doubtful. Poor storage? Nope (not by those here, anyway). Probably simply a manufacturing defect specific to certain batches/manufacturing plants.

Incidentally, my players are a Toshiba A1 and an Onkyo HD-805 (XA2).
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post #14 of 420
5/6/11 at 7:35am
Hopefully You are right...
I also tried 2 "Batman Begins" and (together with my buddy) 2 Sets "Harry Potter" - 1-4 only, and they were OK.
Can be, that the problem arises in two years, can be, that THIS titles last forever.
When I remember well, "Getaway", "Unforgiven", "Superman Returns", Letters From Iwo Jima", "Blood Diamond", "Wild Bunch" entered the market pretty during the same time. So it could be a manufacturing problem at that moment.
On the other hand, these are titles, which are also the oldest ones.

But yes, let's hope, that this is an isolated problem. 10 Discs will kill nobody of us "hardcore collectors", but let's see if UNIVERSAL and PARAMOUNT have also problems. I will check that, and keep You informed...

By the way: sorry for my bad English!
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post #15 of 420
5/6/11 at 6:25pm
alterfilmnarr / argento - You both experience these errors/freezes during play, correct?

The OP (8traxrule) - Same? You have mentioned chapter skipping to bring out the errors.


To possibly judge age of the discs, if I recall, Warner originally packaged their discs with cases that had the rounded spine and had tabs on the bottoms so the cases could stand up. My early discs are like this, and I think most of them came with an advertisement slip for titles to come out in 2006 (like Shawshank and The Matrix). I don't remember the name of the case...something with an "S", perhaps Seastone. Then they moved to the Elite cases, which had silver painted HD DVD on top for most of the time, and at the end no paint but the logo molded into the case (all of my 2008 releases came like this).

Perhaps post matrix numbers. Perhaps there is a pattern.
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post #16 of 420
5/7/11 at 2:24am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian81 View Post

alterfilmnarr / argento - You both experience these errors/freezes during play, correct?

The OP (8traxrule) - Same? You have mentioned chapter skipping to bring out the errors.

To possibly judge age of the discs, if I recall, Warner originally packaged their discs with cases that had the rounded spine and had tabs on the bottoms so the cases could stand up. My early discs are like this, and I think most of them came with an advertisement slip for titles to come out in 2006 (like Shawshank and The Matrix). I don't remember the name of the case...something with an "S", perhaps Seastone. Then they moved to the Elite cases, which had silver painted HD DVD on top for most of the time, and at the end no paint but the logo molded into the case (all of my 2008 releases came like this).

Perhaps post matrix numbers. Perhaps there is a pattern.

Yeah, I saw these errors during play.But my X360 Drive cannot played Blood Diamond anymore.I bought this movie from UK in Amaray case so I think It was'nt the source of my problem.The surface of disc looked healthy so I don't understand what's happening because I've played It for a few times without freezing problems before.

Maybe this is the new age of laser rotting...but I hope It's not.
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post #17 of 420
5/7/11 at 4:12am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian81 View Post

alterfilmnarr / argento - You both experience these errors/freezes during play, correct?

The OP (8traxrule) - Same? You have mentioned chapter skipping to bring out the errors.


To possibly judge age of the discs, if I recall, Warner originally packaged their discs with cases that had the rounded spine and had tabs on the bottoms so the cases could stand up. My early discs are like this, and I think most of them came with an advertisement slip for titles to come out in 2006 (like Shawshank and The Matrix). I don't remember the name of the case...something with an "S", perhaps Seastone. Then they moved to the Elite cases, which had silver painted HD DVD on top for most of the time, and at the end no paint but the logo molded into the case (all of my 2008 releases came like this).

Perhaps post matrix numbers. Perhaps there is a pattern.

In my case: I have Discs from US as well from Germany and problems with both of them. I opened a thread in a German forum 3 days ago, and also there it seems, that a lot of users are finding their discs unplayable! I'm an HT dealer for myself and asked also another dealer here in Vienna, who knows also about the problem.

I think, WARNER has a real problem!

In the meantime I have 3 discs of some titles here, where one breaks in the middle, and the other two still work. But this can be a matter of a few more months...
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post #18 of 420
5/7/11 at 8:31am
Quote:
Originally Posted by alterfilmnarr View Post

In my case: I have Discs from US as well from Germany and problems with both of them. I opened a thread in a German forum 3 days ago, and also there it seems, that a lot of users are finding their discs unplayable! I'm an HT dealer for myself and asked also another dealer here in Vienna, who knows also about the problem.

I think, WARNER has a real problem!

In the meantime I have 3 discs of some titles here, where one breaks in the middle, and the other two still work. But this can be a matter of a few more months...

What about Blurays from Warner (they supported and made both format almost 2 years) ? Or this is an HD DVD making/factoring issue ?

I bought these discs a few years ago and they went unreadable...It's "funny" because I have more than 700 DVD-s and every discs working like a charm.
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post #19 of 420
5/7/11 at 9:23am
What firmware are you guys using? Have you tried updating or rolling back?
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post #20 of 420
5/7/11 at 11:05am
XE-1 No1: 4.0
XE-1 No2: 2.7
E-1: 4.0

These are the most "troublefree" SW's here in Europe for these models...
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post #21 of 420
5/7/11 at 6:13pm
Thread Starter 
The Harry Potter movies came out just a few months before Warner dropped HD-DVD, so it's not good that they were having problems that late in the game. I've checked a number of discs including Unforgiven, Last Samurai and The Getaway and those seem fine. I've been chapter-skipping, letting it play a few seconds of the next chapter then skipping to the next one, and the bad ones have always froze at some point trying to get to the next chapter. I then let those play from the beginning and it still froze up around the same point. There may be minor defects on others that won't freeze up the player by chapter skipping, but at least this way I can catch the really bad ones now rather than later.

ALL my discs were bought brand-new and sealed, and I couldn't see anything wrong with the playing surface of the discs either. Oddly I did get one of the "Sopranos" discs looking a bit funny, but I watched that all the way through right away and had no problems with it.
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post #22 of 420
5/7/11 at 10:01pm
Thread Starter 
Just found five more bad ones- Viva Las Vegas won't load at all, had TWO copies of Blood Diamond which pixellate during the opening of the movie, Robin Hood, The Wild Bunch, and Purple Rain- all those go bad 40-50 minutes into the movie.
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post #23 of 420
5/8/11 at 2:43am
Thread Starter 
And the hits just keep on coming! First non-Warner AND combo title, The Good Shepherd- HD side won't load at all. Back on the Warner side, BOTH discs of Alexander Revisited glitch and freeze about 25 minutes into each one (the movie is split on 2 discs) and disc 1 of the Blade Runner set. Fortunately Amazon still has these rather cheap- will watch them as soon as they get here and hopefully be able to exchange them if there's any further problems. (They showed a record of my having ordered a couple of these previously, but says I'm outside the return window.)

Checked all my single-disc single-sided Warner discs now, just have a few multi-disc and combos to check. Will also be checking all the dual-layer Universal HD combos. (Most of the early combo discs were single-layer on the HD side.)
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post #24 of 420
5/8/11 at 6:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vader424242 View Post

Probably simply a manufacturing defect specific to certain batches/manufacturing plants.

That's been my theory too. I ran into three defective Mutiny On The Bountys and the 4th plays without a problem.

Wow, I'm surprised and sorry to hear about the number of disc errors some of you are reporting. My experience to date has shown limited failures as I reported on another thread here recently. I bought a large lot of discs recently that I'm slowly going through but so far so good. (fingers crossed!)
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post #25 of 420
5/8/11 at 11:30am
[quote=DocCasualty;20407988]That's been my theory too. I ran into three defective Mutiny On The Bountys and the 4th plays without a problem.

But who can promise us, that this Disc works still 3 months from now? If the discs are detoriating, the point of unplayability will not be reached exactly at the same moment...
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post #26 of 420
5/8/11 at 11:42am
Quote:
Originally Posted by alterfilmnarr View Post

If the discs are deteriorating...

I would say that's a big IF with the information at hand. My experience is that those that produce playing errors do so out of the gate. I've had discs that I have played many times over the last 3 or 4 years now without a hitch. The MOTB that plays without error I bought used.
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post #27 of 420
5/8/11 at 2:28pm
I for myself watched "Blood Diamond" two years ago - today it's unplayable...

There are also claims from users in German forums, with same experiences.

To be honest: I hoped for myself, that what You suggest is the case, but now I get insecure.
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post #28 of 420
5/8/11 at 5:42pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by alterfilmnarr View Post

I for myself watched "Blood Diamond" two years ago - today it's unplayable...

There are also claims from users in German forums, with same experiences.

To be honest: I hoped for myself, that what You suggest is the case, but now I get insecure.

I can see what you mean. This is the first I'm hearing that discs that did play previously now do not, something I've never experienced either. Interesting.
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post #29 of 420
5/8/11 at 8:47pm
I noticed that one person posted their players that they're having problems on, and they were all 1st generation players. I'm wondering if people running into these problems have multiple generations of players and still have the problems. I have an A2, A35, BH200 and a computer drive hooked up, and I've noticed that if I've had playback problems on one player, it would work in a different generation model.

For instance, I couldn't get a couple discs of Battlestar Galactica to load on the A35, but they played fine on the BH200. On the other hand, American Gangsters wouldn't play on the BH200, but would on the A35. I wonder if the lasers used in each generation have different sensitivities...

I won't say this is the problem, just pointing out something that I have noticed. I did have a disc that I purchased from the Warner blow-outs years ago have a "layer" peeling off of one edge, about 1/2" into the center of the disc, and it wouldn't play all the way through, but that's been my only bad one. Luckily it was a combo, so I was at least able to watch the last 20 minutes in DVD format...
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post #30 of 420
5/8/11 at 9:30pm
XE1s were XA2s
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