Having VERY bad luck with Warner HD-DVDs! - Page 14

You guys getting replacements, are they sending you new HD-DVDs, or blu rays. God I hope its not DVDs.

Blu rays; my post above, is in response to a post, since DELETED where someone pointed out you don't have to send in the HD DVD, or DVD...but ANY commercially recorded DVD (Disc ONLY); so you can pick any 25 you want, with FREE shipping; worked out to $5.27 each...

http://www.dvd2blu.com/

Thanks, but the ones that are mint and defective. What are they being replaced with?

any Blu ray from that list...

Hold on a second , youre telling me that I'll be sending them a MINT - LOOKING defective Polar Express, and they arent replacing it with another POLAR EXPRESS !?

don't see it offered under this program; but, if you call them...

Larrimore, are you saying that Warner is going to replace all 15 of your discs? For free?

They said they would only replace 5 of mine and no more. Hmmmm.

sadly I have to add FORBIDDEN PLANET from the nice special edition box - ARGH.

I've gone through about 20 Universal combo discs and the only failure has been SLITHER.

On monday I'm going to call the Warner number listed earlier in the thread and see if i have any luck.

Slither, something you (still) couldn't get on Blu if you (domestically at least) wanted.

yeah, so far it's the one that i need to replace that is not cheaply replaceable. i don't assume warner will replace these. I also realized i haven't checked my Blade Runner set, i think i need to prepare to get bummed out

just checked all my Warner HD-DVD's . First 3 were rotted (superman , Batman begins , V for vendetta ) and gave up after that. Way to go Cinram .

Surprisingly, SLITHER backed up on the second try. None of the Warner failed discs worked on a second try, though.

So, after more than 40 Universal disc checks, no failures from them. Seems isolated to Warner discs for me. I checked my Universal combo discs first.

One thing I"ve noticed are significantly larger average file sizes on Universal discs. A lot of those older Warner HD-DVDs seem awfully small for an HD transfer..

A kind woman at Warner agreed to take my defective discs for blu ray replacement. Initially 5 titles, but I learned last night I have 6

I have tested these on the up5000, a Toshiba A20 and XA2

Blood Diamond - wont load ( i actually have 3 copies , two are no good)
Space Cowboys - Cannot play disc like 15 minutes through
Superman the Movie Pixellation / freezing 1 hr in
Willy Wonka - wont load
Polar express - significant pixellation throughout ( several chapters in middle are "missing" wont play)
Batman Begins - wont load.

That's actually a pretty good record. I have quite a few Warners, and almost all of them at least give occasional problems playing through the layer change. Forbidden Planet and HP: Order of the Phoenix are totally unplayable I know, and several others rarely work. I Am Legend, Blade Runner (Final Cut AND Workprint), 300, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ocean's 13, We Are Marshall, Batman Begins... all require multiple loads or a timely fast-forward past the layer change in order to play.

Fortunately I was able to backup most of them successfully before they failed.

One non-Warner disc (Mission Impossible I: from Paramount) also has layer change issues.

Yeah, honestly I expected more failures. And out of almost 100 non-Warner HD-DVD's now backed up, I've only had one failure (Clerks 2).

I was going to try and contact Warners, but out of my failed discs I was able to find great deals on the ones I cared about keeping (Clockwork Orange, Oceans trilogy, Forbidden Planet, Robin Hood) so i went ahead and bought those blu-rays and figured if I can get Warner Bros to replace my Perfect Storm and Blood Diamond I'll take that as a bonus.

I have about 30 Universal discs still to check, but ran short of hard drive space. When i add some more next week, I'll hopefully complete my HD-DVD backups.

I have yet to find a copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire that doesn't error. Are others having this problem?

Lucky me...Batman Begins, Blade Runner, 300, and I Am Legend...all still load and work perfectly.

I have been following this thread.. should I be worried about my disc or is this just happening to a limited number of disc's
Were the owners of the disc's that have gone bad stored in a temperature controlled setting, or did they suffer wide/sudden temperature changes?
(Yes mine might of gone through a temperature changes when my air conditioner went out last year but it was a slow warming then cooling change when repaired..)

:David

I do not believe storage conditions has much to do with what is going on with a fair number of Warner HD-DVDs. It appears to be a manufacturing issue with a particular provider Warner used (cinram, according to what I have read in a couple of places). I had a number of titles that were bad - many of them brand new and all stored in a normal household environment with no radical extremes of temperature, moisture, etc.

Yes me too. Brand spanking new. I was really bummed about "Casa Blanca".

Did they ever use any other provider? I ask because I have not had the problems with the discs others have noted here. All still work perfectly.

Yes, I expect so, as I have a number of Warner titles that work just fine that were problematic for other folks. I simply made a point of playing/checking all Warner titles first and then contacted them.

Does anyone else feel like ALL of these discs will eventually fail?


Back when these problems started showing up, I went through and watched many of my discs. I had 1 bad disc (Goodfellas). I recently decided to play some of the titles that checked out OK and played through one year ago and some of those that were fine now either don't load or error out at some point.


I purchased over 100 titles from Warner and Warner affiliates and I am VERY pissed that over a grand spent on these titles is looking to be trash. Has anyone thought about looking into class action for something like this? We have all paid X dollars for a product that is not supposed to go bad. Warner should replace ALL of their defective discs. As it seems that they're all just going bad, they should take back the 100+ titles I've purchased and replace THEM ALL. I feel pretty confident that they're all going to fail sooner or later.


I know you guys are checking them and finding good copies, but how long for those? Like said, I did the very same thing, checked my discs and those that worked fine recently have gone bad. There doesn't appear to be any set time period for signs of failure to show up.
Edited by Brian81 - 4/20/13 at 6:59pm

I just open my sealed Matrix trilogy boxset and got a shock.

The discs show very visible rotting areas and for each disc, its only on one side, the other side still plays. Problem is the non-playing side is the movie!

Is there any chance I can get Warner to replace it? Any non-US customers have successfully gotten theirs replaced?

I don't have time to go through all 60+ Warner disc's in my collection.
Are there any discs that do not show the "ROT"/bad pressing effects?
Should I just worry about the box sets, if they are only going to exchange 5 discs (In hopes that box sets are counted as one!)

And is it mainly the Warner disc's or should I also be looking at other releasing companies disc's

While many of my disc's were purchased at discount.. is could be as little as $600.00 worth of product to as much as (if using list pricing) over $2200.00+.

I read where there was listed the product return address for Warner. Does anybody had the ground mail address for this exchange department? (My wife works for an attorney so maybe something on his letterhead about product defects could get more than 5 exchanged?)

Maybe somebody could set up a poll of troublesome disc's?

:David

If you go back thru the early posts in this thread you will find some "typically bad" titles. Though none of mine have exhibited this problem so you might be OK too.

You can play HD DVDs on a mac mini? What software do you need? My HTPC died and a mac mini would be perfect but I didn't think you could play HD DVDs with them.

I have just been fast forwarding through the entire movie, looking for spots where it freezes and goes into displaying the error. If that happens, then try chapter skipping to around that spot on the disc, and try playing through it. If I don't get any errors fast forwarding, I try watching the movie through. There's no way I'm going to put the time into watching the movie/disc unless I have a little bit of faith I'll be able to watch the movie through to the end.

So far I haven't complained to Warner Home Video. Most of the titles so far have been ones I've been suckered into rebuying for special editions (like steelbooks/digibooks or condensed packaging for box sets). Exchanging for BD copies wouldn't matter to me as I've already repurchased them on that format. The rest, I'm either recycling at Best Buy for 'Upgrade and Save' or adding to a pile for a future complaint to Warner. Most of these titles are now only $5 budget fare on Blu-ray at this point... I sure as hell am not going to do a DVD2BLU for these, as I'd be paying the cost of buying them at retail stores anyways.

No problems yet for anything other than Cinram discs. Thankfully. Although I haven't tested them recently, I at least hope that all won't go bad as I'd like to have functional copies of Blade Runner and Bonnie and Clyde at the VERY least.
Edited by Brian81 - Yesterday at 7:07 am