Having VERY bad luck with Warner HD-DVDs! - Page 7

Nice find, Mark. I'll have to try that if I ever get an unplayable disc or one with cloudy spots. It's great to know that the spots are most likely cleanable surface blemishes rather than disc rot.

I have a large collection of HD-DVDs - and am running into problems with Warner titles. The problematic titles look fine - but tend to skip & lock up about half way through the movie - I'm guessing at or very close to the layer break (wouldn't that be the outer rim of the disc?). These are all sealed & unplayed titles I am speaking of. Has Warner shown any inclination to provide some support and assistance to their customers with these defective products?

I have left a message with the person at Warner located in Burbank, CA who has always been very helpful to me in the past. We'll see if I hear back and if any support is there.

Sorry Rich, I know you are a veteran of the HD war, but at this point you need to realize the studio's are doing everything in their power to make it seem as if HD DVD never existed. There is no chance they will do anything to replace your defective disks. Fortunately, I have all the hardware and software I need to back up my still functional HD DVD's to BD-R's, and no studio better give me any trouble about it either, since they deny the existence of these disks every chance they get.

Well, I am happy to report you are mistaken about whether Warner will support this customer. They are sending me a prepaid mailer so I can send them the defective HD-DVDs. They are replacing them with Blu-Ray versions. We'll see how it goes, but I have dealt with these folks before and they have always done what they committed to in the past.

Update: the envelope from Warner with the prepaid mailer arrived on Saturday.

I decided a few days ago to back up all of my HD DVD discs to a network drive. So far two out of eight have frozen during playback:

Forbidden Planet (WB)
The Italian Job (Paramount)

Given what I've seen in this thread I have a feeling that these won't be the only two.

Looked at the first 100 of my HD DVD's and, it is clear that the older the disc the more likely that it will either be unplayable or have bad sectors.

The "ROT" presents in 2 forms. Either areas of speckling on the disk, or as an amorphous areas of opacity on the disc.

Under the microscope these areas in the body of the disc itself and not on the surface.

The Jewel case adjacent to the reading side of the disc may be greasy and have multiple circular impressions around the outer perimeter of the disc, and resembles a smaller version of the disc itself!

Incidentally, almost all these discs are stamped Warner Bros., and range from 2001 through 2007, however, this i not surprising since WB is the largest manufacturer of discs.

I have also started to see degeneration on the older BRD's in the same form and fashion.

Stuart

Are any of these problems visible to the naked eye? Can you post any pics that show them?

I wonder also about your physical location (e.g. "Atlantic coast") and storage situation.

Some of us have no problems with our discs, and others of us have nothing BUT problems with the discs, with no rhyme/reason that I can determine.

I have 663 HD DVDs but never ran across a bad one. I keep them sealed in these bags.
http://www.bagsunlimited.com/p-3455-...-5-78-x-7.aspx

I can't begin to imagine why you or anyone would want to buy these things to store your discs!

But assuming the "reseal adhesive" works as well as say a ziplock bag, and they effectively keep air from getting in, your success would appear to bolster my own theory that failures are somehow due to atmospherics i.e. salt water locations (or Three Mile Island).

See post #174

Stuart

175 you mean. I missed it somehow.

Hard to tell anything from that tiny pic. Look like fingerprints really. But I have nothing (at all) even remotely comparable to that in my 200 disc collection.

My Batman Begins and 300 are toast. BB freezes about half way through the movie. 300 loads,...timer starts but the movie never starts. The menu pulls up though. Never even got to watch them.

edit: Add Goodfellas to my list of coasters.

My wife and I are Harry Potter fans - books and movies.
Since we were picking up the final Harry Potter movie installment on blu-ray this week, we decided to watch them all before watching the last one. The 1st 5 films we have are on HD-DVD - and they all played fine (although "Order of the Phoenix" seemed to lock up once, but when I backed it up and played through the spot again - it played fine - and I tested it multiple times to make sure it really was ok - maybe a dust speck or something). Excellent PQ and AQ (Dolby TrueHD) on these.

You said you had a large collection and were sending some to Warner for BD replacement--can you tell us at least what % you found to be bad?

I would say at this point, it is something less than 10% - and that is specifically for Warner titles. HD-DVD titles from other studios have been trouble free for me for the most part (I cannot recall a single title that failed so far). I also have not seen any indication that HD-DVD combo titles are more problematic than single sided HD-DVDs. We are talking about brand new, just taken out of the shrink wrap titles here - nothing purchased used/opened.

So far, I've had 2 titles refuse to even load up at all ("Lethal Weapon 1" & "Phantom of the Opera"). But the problems most often occur about half-way through the movie, where some serious macro-blocking can occur, followed by the video locking up completely while the timer continues running. I am assuming it is a layer break issue or the disc failing towards the outer rim (I believe the data is recorded and read from the inner hub to the outside, like CDs, DVDs & BDs). I'm also assuming Warner contracted with a manufacturer that was putting out defective products.

We watched our "Full Metal Jacket" HD-DVD most recently (the reissue). It played perfectly. I confess we still have a fair number of HD-DVDs that have never been opened, due to being titles we've seen before in standard definition. Needless to say, I am focusing our HD-DVD viewing on our remaining unopened Warner titles . . . .

I hope this info is somewhat helpful to others.

Rich, try resetting your player by pressing Display-7-0-1-Display on your remote and then rebooting. It works for In the Valley of Elah that was freezing halfway through, as well as for Willy Wonka that wouldn't load.

Also wanted to point out that the LG BH200 is less finicky than the Toshiba players, so if you have one, then try your WB titles on that. The few titles that wouldn't load or play on my XA2 (before the reset was applied), did play fine on the BH200. Hope this helps.

There's also the trick of applying the polish that Mark Booth described in post #180.

I think that's right (reads inner-to-outer). As the laser gets farther-out toward the edge, if there are issues with disc alignment (in manufacturing, that is) they're going to be there from Day 1, and not fail over time. But a player could be "less good" at reading over time I suppose. Another possibility is that the outer edge is somehow "pulling apart" or at least is becoming contaminated. But I'm skeptical about this.


Yours may be, my experience is the opposite. I played brand-new 300 on my brand-new BH200 and it skipped-and-froze about 1/2 hour in. Tried a bunch of times to get it to play (it would not) and I finally switched to my Tosh XA2 and it played 300 perfectly through that stretch.

I do wonder how many of you who are having problems with your collections have also used your players a lot. I don't think either of my BH200 or my XA2 have more than 50-100 hours on them, if even that.

I made that assumption because both of my BH200 players behaved the same way with the few titles that I was having problems with (they worked). In any case I think my suggestion is worth trying in case one has such a player kicking around or finds one fairly cheap, as it seems obvious that all players are not alike.

Hmm, that's not possible. The first HD-DVD discs were shipped in 2006. But I get your point.

The engineer in me can't rest until I find a cause or rationale for this, that some have lotsa problems, and others have none.

Double click on the small version and you will see an enlarged view.

And BTW, you are correct this type of 'Rot' does indeed look like fingerprints, but under the microscope they are inside the disc and most definitely NOT on the surface, and under higher magnification appear to comprise of minute particles.

I initially thought that the deterioration was because of the salt air (I live on the beach), however, a good portion of the HD DVD's I have bought recently have the same problem. I think you have been lucky so far.

Stuart

Just finished watching Cream at Royal Albert Hall on my XA2. Played all the way through without any problems.

Ha, ha! Yeah I still have almost 200 laserdiscs I've never watched (and at this point never will). My wife knows I"m crazy.


I have that one and will have to give it a try.

@Stuart maybe a lot of my discs are bad and I don't know it. I've played maybe 10% of my 200+ collection with no problems, and another handful (as I've related here in this thread) looking for problems and found none. Dunno except I don't believe "luck" has anything to do with this.

I think the more accurate statement is that you have been unlucky. Somehow I don't think this thread accurately reflects the proportion of active HD DVD owners having problems (and I know quite a few). I have a large collection like Junglalien and I've only run across two titles (both Warner) that gave me problems, and only on the XA2, and both of which went away after applying the reset.

Called WB today and they are going to replace my 3 defective HD DVD's with the BD versions.

Ouch. I still have my "Cream at Royal Albert Hall" HD-DVD sitting on the shelf in its shrink wrap. It was the very last HD-DVD title I purchased. Guess I'll have to open that puppy up soon!

Update: - I was thoroughly enjoying the Cream HD-DVD this evening until track 11 around the 56 minute mark when the typical Warner video blocking and freezing began. Grrrrrrrr! - - I take it this is another crap Cinram manufactured product? If I skip that track the rest of the concert seems to play ok. Another cinram layer break manufacturing flaw?

I had to do some surfing on Display-7-0-1-Display to confirm you were talking about the Toshiba XA2. Presumably this works with all Toshibas?

It occurs to me that my XA2 is not at latest firmware 4.0--in fact IIRC I might even be at 2.7 or 2.8 (not even 3.0). Anyway I do wonder if you are onto something with "players getting firmware updates but need to be reset", or maybe one particular fw rev works better than others, I dunno.

Perhaps it would be useful if problem reports here were accompanied by player make/model and firmware revision.

Most of my bad disk discoveries have been on my XBOX 360 HD DVD drive that is connected to my desktop PC. That is where I am working at converting all that still work to BD-R for safety.