A thread over at the AVS Forums has highlighted a potential problem with the coating of
Blu-ray discs, described by many as "disc rot" due to the mould-like spots that have made several owner's Blu-ray discs unplayable. The five page thread has reports from dozens of forum members, many of them discovering spots which can't be rubbed off on Blu-ray versions of "The Prestige." It's impossible to judge how widespread the problem is from a single forum thread, although it's not unheard of to see a product
recall after a problem is discovered by users on a forum. It's also worth noting that for every user that has reported the spots, there's one or more people with discs that have no problem. If you've encountered the same issue, your best policy is to try and get a refund / replacement disc from the place where you originally bought it from. If enough people are reporting a problem, then retailers will be a much stronger voice than a bunch of consumers sounding off in the echo chamber that is "the internet."
posted Jun 16th 2007 6:11PM
Oddly enough, this has happened to my BF2142 DVD. I figured I had somehow messed it up, but considering it won't come off with any amount of washing, it's not scratches, and it doesn't interfere with playback, I'm not sure what the problem is.
It's not an echo chamber. It's a series of tubes.
Could this be a decisive moment in the format war?
Depends on if this is a real problem or a very isolated occurance. If they have to start recalling BR-DVD disks, pulling them from shelves and offering refunds, then BR is in trouble.
Perception often trumps reality and a evening news report about defective BR disk recalls would to a lot of damage.
The real kicker would be if it affects PS3 BR disks as well. Sony can't really afford to have people add another reason to pass on the PS3.
If this turns into a big thing, goodbye PS3. We barely knew ye.
It'd be funny if this was the death of blu ray.
I favour HD-DVD for the sole reason that I think Blu-Ray sounds silly.
Bluray: "I thought you said no chemical warfare!"
HD: Mwhahahhahaha
Have blu-ray discs been sabotaged by the enemy? Is 'format war' a reality?
wow.. what better way to choose what you want as the next gen HD optical media standard than by its name.
Perhaps HD-DVD will make its prevail at this time.
From the photos, it looks to me like a delamination problem, likely caused by a simple manufacturing problem like too much humidity during the coating process. If this is true, or something similar, then it would likely only affect a few batches of discs.
bluray is practically on the home straight to beating HD-DVD, then it goes and does this......fan-bloody-tastic
Wow this is huge! I always remembered BD's had to be manufactured differently than DVD/HD DVD because of how sensitive they are in comparison. They were originally supposed to be distributed in cartridges but this strange anti-scratch coating was implemented just before its debut. Seems like it was rushed to market with little to no real world testing besides its ability to deter scratches. I would seriously avoid Blu-ray until this is sorted out...Sony once again at its finest.
the anti-scratch coating wasn't created by Sony it was created by Verbatim. Sony was ready to do the cartridge thing, until Verbatim contacted them saying that they had a solution. Sony not wanting to to delay the release of Blu-Ray in the US anymore probably didn't do its own test on the surface coating created by Verbatim. If there is a fault with the coating then how about we recognize who is truly at fault for that.. either the manufacturers for not following proper instructions if its an improper implementation of the coating.. or Verbatim if it is a problem with the coating itself.
yeah i agree with evo on this. it look like just a manufacturing error. the fact that it was mainly on a bunch of blurays of 'the prestige' supports that even more
This always happened to me with CDs...I never figured out why, maybe leaving them in the car
lol @ hd dvd fanboys. Zomg! l00k at teh d0tz!!11
Funny, I could say the same about you being a fanboy, because no one is in here bashing blu-ray (not really, atleast) nor is anyone really holding HD-DVD in high regards either. So I would say the only REAL fanboy here is you, seeing as how you brought the entire subject of fanboys (when there are none) up.
Heh. I call it the Blu-Death. :)
Maybe the awesomeness of the Prestige is leaking out of the Blu-Ray and into the air causing some sort of LED-esque high?
this has nothing to do with blu-ray in specific ... its all about humidity .. ive seen this happen to DVDs, CDs as well. good alarmist headline though .. whats the matter slow news day?
Seems a bit premature and a tad reactionary to me...
...to infer that this is some sort of diaster for Blu-Ray.
For those that remember, CDs had the same scare and I had a few CDs from the 80's that looked like they had "rot". I also remember, from the early days of CDs, that folks said that useful life would be 15-20 years. But now in 2007, zero of my CDs (more than 3800) have a failure to play.
Let's give Blu-Ray some time to settle in. The 15 or so discs that I have play perfectly. Only one was not compatible with my PS3. With the one that would not play was instantly exchanged by the manufacturer (it was "Chronos" and the producer was fantastic).
In a word, chill.
I was an early poster in that AVS thread. The problem isn't the coating.... it's oxydation between the two (dual) layers of the BD50 disc. I haven't seen a single BD25 with this problem (yet).
Ha, and I favor Blu-ray because I think it sounds cooler.
This happens to my HD-DVDs to. It only happened to two of them, both were ones I took to the beachhouse.
Wow,so many Blu-Ray production experts.
Maybe Tesla's cloning machine was used to create these Prestige discs...
This seems quite limited to a batch pressed in a certain time period. Not surprising to see defects early on in newer technologies (DVDs and Laserdiscs also had problems as well, and LDs also had oxidation issues too) It's just a kink that hopefully has ironed itself out where ever they were pressed at. I'm sure the few people with the problematic discs can get them replaced for free.
Let me build off your laserdisc-rot comment, also commonly called 'Bit-Rot' or 'LaserRot'.
A Laserdisc (LD) was essentially a double-sided optical disc with a layer of metal in-between that had the data. Sony had very lax quality-assurance back then, mainly because sales of LD were so low that they wanted to get as much money as they could from what sales did happen. (sound familiar?)
Where LD was different was there was no encoding on the disc's. They were straight analog--nothing digital about them. later, they would add digital sound but the video would always remain analog.
Analog has this really awesome ability to resist a lot of interference. Whereas a single bit can throw off an entire section of a digital video, a relatively large area of an analog recording can be 'corrupted' and not really lose that much quality.
Now inter BitRot. Since each disk was double-sided, they had to be made one at a time and glued together. Since QA was so lax, they used a bad/cheap glue in-between the layers, which eventually caused the metal to oxidize. Rust, is the common form of Iron Oxide, but the truth is that most metals including aluminum will oxidize in the presence of an oxidizer.
This oxide was the 'BitRot' and was the cause of many-a headache for the LD owner.
Fast forward 20 years, and we are having similar problems from the same company? I say, less of a coincidence and more of a trend to me.
Prestige indeed.
Bless you, early DRM adopters.
if you read the last page in the thread, somebody summed up everyone who posted with a problem and which movies were effected. Seems like 4 different movies have heard complaints, with prestige being the #1.
I wouldent call that a single run production error. Perhaps the discs were just printing on infiror media? I know that when I burned 200 movies to Riteck DVDs, they all suddenly stopped working or skipped 2 years later. Terrible discs. I switched to tayio yuden and 3+ years later, not a single problem on thousands of discs.
So perhaps these movies just used cheap material bd-roms? Then again, sony did have a problem with laserdisc rot, so it wouldent be a surprise if this were true
You're a pedantic fool. Don't believe me? http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pedantic. It's the second definition.
Pedantic. Fool.
Haha I replied to the wrong person. I meant chris...Damn my plan is foiled.
For the record, there's no hyphen in HD DVD. And Blu-ray has a lower-case "r" for ray. These are the standards set forth by both formats. Don't believe me? Go to http://thelookandsoundofperfect.com/ and then click Frequently Asked Questions. It's the 2nd question.
HD DVD. Blu-ray.
Any bad news for either camp is unwelcome when trying to determine a market leader. No matter which way your fan blows.
Quite literally.
I wonder if this has to do with Best Buy giving away PS3's with the purchase of a 1090p Sony TV starting Sunday
There's 1090p HDTVs now?
Only if you buy a Sony(R) PS3 (R)TM and Sony(R) Bravia (R)TM 1090p capable(R) LCD HDTV. Then they give you 10 pixels extra.
actually overtheair 1080i is actually 1088i because the codec used requires a certain multiple of lines. All dtv decoders are programmed to throw out the extra eight lines before display.
nothing to do with this article, just a fun fact for the day. :P
Well, it's ten sharper, isn't it? It's not 1080. You see, most blokes, you know, will be watching at 1080. You're on 1080 here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on 1080 on your TV. Where can you go from there? Where?
Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Put it up to 1090.
To all early adopters,
Oops, that wasn't supposed to happen, anyways.
To all early adopters,
Tanks for being such good guinea pigs and investing lots of money into this stuff. it makes it so much easier on me when I actually buy it myself in a couple years and get the winning format and a fraction of the price tat you paid without any weird crap like this happening.
Peshue... your comment was better when we only saw the first sentence. Now you just come off like a dick.
.
In the mean time you are stuck with standard def content and those with the hardware are enjoying HD. What? You think the manufacturer wouldn't replace these disks outright?
Oh man, I have the prestige! I so hope this doesn't happen to me; I checked and nothing yet. All I can see that this be a blessing in disguise is for them to to swap anyone who might have this problem that shows no scratches or anything like that to costumers. Kinda like the Wii straps, no one really got mad at them completely (I think) but just request that it be replaced as soon as possible. Just hope sony or the manufacturer of those discs replace them.
So many Sony fanboys. WTF is wrong with people?
Oh crap. I just got a nice 71" Samsung 1080p set and now you're telling me that Sony just came out with a 1090p? How much better is the 1090p than 1080p? I can't afford to keep buying big screen TVs every time something better comes out! This will be the last time.
If its only being reported on The Prestige, then I agree with some of the other posters, its a manufacturing problem at that plant.
Engadget, your grammar is teh suck--Why?!! You're a professional blog, doesn't anybody proofread the articles?!
Professional... blog?
Sounds like an oxymoron to me.
Yeah, seems like a problem with the humidity--I've had this happen with other discs--the laminate on the top of the disc (the reflective stuff that lets the laser bounce back) becomes unstuck from the surface in small parts and creates bubbles which render the disc unusable. That's why it's always worse to have a laminate scratch than an actual scratch on the covering.
To everybody who has a rotten dvd, hddvd, bluray, etc... Did you buy them from Ebay? After all, maybe cheap clones are already out for the new HD format????
The unsettling thing is that this is being discovered within months (weeks?) of disc acquisition. Is it a phenomenon which can develop more slowly? Would that result in an exponentially worsening situation as time progresses? I have some real concern here, as I have personally invested no small amount of change in Blu-ray (primarily in the form of an expensive player which ostensibly plays games as well).
On the flipside, every HD-DVD is dual layer and I can't say I've read about disc rot for that format. And it's been out much longer.
This is not a Blu-ray specific problem or related to the coating on Blu-ray discs. According to this article on wikipedia, this is a long documented issue that has been happening since the 1980's with compact discs. This article also explains that this has been a serious problem with laserdiscs and has appeared on HD-DVD discs as well. See the article for specifics... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_rot
"this is a long documented issue that has been happening since the 1980's with compact discs."
And for CDs and DVDs, these issues have LONG ago been solved. They are simple manufacturing process problems that happened in limited numbers early on. Much as people would like to believe, CD and DVD "disc rot" did occur, but was never a widespread problem.
who cares. Optical media(dvd, cd, hddvd bddvd) is going to be replace by flash storage or harddrive ones movies with high quality audio video and less DRM appears. Also fast transfer of these movie will be the death of optical media.
Yeah. Meanwhile, in the ensuing five years or so, while HDTV remains the hottest new thing to buy for Xmas, something has to come along and fill that big quality HD blank. Such contenders are the focus of this topic.
Maybe this is Sony's latest attempt at DRM: make the discs unplayable.
i live in ny all my bd roms are in the open even with my ac setting the room temp. to 68 i have no mold spots. people with wet hands and dirty hands are probably messing the discs up. no probs. here at all.
Cds and Dvds of all kinds will mold when exposed to a certain degree of humidity.
Looks like someone beat me to it.
Blu-bonic plague?
Blu-ray discs are made from ground-up babies. Those dots are their souls attempting to escape.
"...from the place where you originally bought it from."
This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.
meh my cds have same thing pretty much and it is humidity im sure because fine before i moved and here temps are different and whatnot.
Sony haters in their full glory. What a retarded forum thread made it to engadget...
Don't really see any Sony haters. Well, except for the one or two posts about the PS3.
Lets remember a few years back. During the DVD and DIVX "war, this came up very big on the dvd side. Divx people loved it, saying that they did not have to deal with these problems since their discs wouldnt work anyway. But DVD had major problems. Then the production company fixed the coating and only a select few discs had this problem later on. I know Gone with the Wind first run was one that was effected. But to see Rot after only a few months is very scary for the BD side. But none of the companies involved are going to jump ship bevause of it. They have invested too much time and money promoting it. It costs millions to set up a production of BD discs, where as it costs less than 1 million for the same companies to convert to HD DVD. So if they have made the change, they are not going back. In the end, it will not matter. Remember the "huge war" between DVD-R and DVD+R. Man at the beginning it sounded a lot like this. Then every version of player and burner became dual format. The same will happen here. It is not a niche market like DVD Audio and SACD were. But with Rot this early, people should be worried that a lot more discs could show this over time.
blu-ray and HD-DVD sucxx0rs, its all about HVD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc
1) Nobody cares
2) Quit whoring another site.
do i smell an HD-DVD press release...
yeah that looks like mould....
word to the wise: move out of your parent's damp basements.
CD, DVD, HD DVD, and BD all have the potential to rot, and there is wide documentation for each format. And yet somehow this spells the doom of BD. Right. Rot also doomed DVD too apparently.
No problems at all over here. Been watching and collecting since the first BR player came out.
I am not sure what kind of war this is going to be, maybe it's already happening in this blog. But seeing a better technology losing its ground to the mass is somewhat perplexing.
people, optical disc rot is nothing new, it's a problem on ALL OPTICAL DISCS (yes that includes LDs. CDs, DVDs, and even HD DVDs)
link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_rot
there are also reports of HD DVD rot earlier this year, why is this even front-page worthy? Because it's cool to hate Sony?
give me a break.
This is just anecdotal crap. I have all the BDs mentioned, bought them all on day 1 and none are rotting. People somehow cease to remember that DVDs, Laserdiscs and CDs all rot eventually.
I've got 30 BDs including Stranger Than Fiction and The Prestige, and they're all just fine.
To your Blu-ray/Sony bashers (straight from another Engadget story)...
"In a huge blow to Toshiba, Universal, and the rest of the HD DVD devotees, rental giant Blockbuster has decided to stock only Blu-ray discs in the vast majority of its nationwide locations, although HD DVD titles will continue to be offered online and in the 250 (out of 1,450) stores that have been testing both formats since last year. Blockbuster VP Matthew Smith revealed to the AP that the decision to go with Blu-ray -- which will reportedly be announced tomorrow -- stemmed from an overwhelming customer preference for those titles in the test markets, accounting for over 70% of all HD discs rented. Interestingly enough, it seems that content -- and not price -- was the deciding factor for consumers, with Blu-ray-only hits such as the Spiderman and Pirates of the Caribbean films apparently outmatching equivalent HD DVD exclusives. While it's still a little too soon to declare Blu-ray the outright winner, this Blockbuster decision only contributes to the momentum that Sony's darling has had of late -- momentum that at this point, might be too difficult for the other guys to counter."
Maybe the high % of Blockbuster Blur-ray rentals are all because these poor folks can't play their own rotten discs?
Ah, thanks for the clarification, Matt. You have figured it out!
(I am guessing that you have a great sense of humor. Let me know if I am mistaken, and I can send you some "come back to reality" pills.)
;-)
Alexander: I don't know if you realize it, but LDs were by Pioneer, not Sony.
Information pulled from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laserdisc#LaserRot
"Ironically, the LaserDisc movie that has the most reported laser rot is the film Eraser (1996), as noted by the contributors of LaserDisc Database. The discs for this title were replicated by Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation, USA, in Terre Haute, Indiana."
My god people. Its funny how the media and internet blow minuscule and inconsequential stories way out of proportion.
AVS Forum is a good resource but for every person there that actually knows something about AV equipment there are 100 people who are clueless. AVS members have a tendency to blame manufacturers for problems that are the result of their own mishandling of equipment. A few people blame TV manufacturers for 5 sets failing in their house due to power surges. If you have 5 TVs die on you within 1 month then there is something wrong with your house not the manufacturer. I also wonder if the disc rot can also be caused by cleaning agents. Placing discs on top of tables and surfaces that have been cleaned by harsh chemicals. The residue left over can be absorbed by the disc causing it to delaminate.
Discs come with a case for a reason but so many people leave them on top of stereos or on dashboards and then wonder why they don't play. I've never had a disc rot on me and I still have a few CDs from the early 90's that work perfectly. All of my BD discs are fine and I appreciate the coating because when my wife takes a disc out of the player when she decides on watching something and just slides it across the coffee table it doesn't end up with scratches on it. She ruined a couple games that way.
A very good argument for being able to backup your media that you purchase I would say. Lets face it over the years more and more optical media is being found to degrade. It ain't all about piracy (backing up purched media).
Now if only hollywood says "Sorry you have to buy it again" then we would really have a good case to get the DMCA altered to allow backups.
Wow, you think this is the end of Blu-ray because supposedly "The Prestige" is having issues with a few of its copies? Idiots. If that were the case then wouldn't the Xbox 360 already have been finished due to its numerous freezing issues? We're talking about a $30.00 movie here. The format war is already over. Blu-ray is the winner. It's all about the movie sales and Blu-ray is winning 3 to 1. I know Blockbuster isn't the hottest rental spot, but if one company is already choosing it's HD format due to current sales, then I would see many other companies doing the same pretty soon here. Plus Blu-ray has Disney. Game Over.
Can any one say fan boy??? Hey fool if you have not seen chk numbers hd dvd players are selling more and bd is more for renting. Due to the release of sub 350 hd dvd players bd sale have dropped fast. I am no fan boy for either for I prefer streaming hd so hdpvr and downloads look better at this point more future proof. So that being sony ball swinger,it is way to early to call a winner. Oh did you not see sony had a 1.9 billion loss due to issues with their certain BD player not selling. Job cuts abound and poor dude even lost his job due to the BD trojan horse not doing quite as planned and you know it. Stock holders are even losing faith and need pep talks if youve seen the press releases here on good ol engadget so please b4 you go screaming "WE WIN WE WIN" do some fact check instead of biased fanboyism fanboy......
I'm on 1280x1024, and I don't plan on switching anytime soon. As for the player, I will use software. And, coincidentally, I will probably not be using proprietary software.
First of all: The problem with the described BD´s can also happens with HD-DVD and DVD. But maybe a little bit more by the production of BD´s because oft the specification of the Blueray format !!
So far i have an overview over the postings here, it looks like a process problem with the bonding layer ( lacquer ) which holds the two bonded half disc of the optical media together. The problems with the described BD´s are looking for my that there is air ( Bubble, Bonding Gap ) inside this layer, which makes that the metall-layer will make an reaction with air and this makes that the media is after a certain time no longer readable, because the metall-layer is not any longer reflecting the laser ...
This kind of process is similar used by the production for DVD, HD-DVD and BD-R´ but with special thickness and tolerances for each format.This specification window is aspecially by BD very small defined.
But also possible is, that there is something wrong with the hardcoated side ( also with lacquer!!) which protects the surfaces of the optical media for scratches and so one...Maybe a inclusion inside of the lacquer (condamination) or also an reaction with the material of the optical media !!
This kind of surface protection is also used sometimes, also for the other optical medias like CD, DVD, HD-DVD ...
Normaly the optical media is at the end of the production checked by a quality inspection system for optical defects, and the bad discs are seperated. But so far its clear that all optical media have small optical defect but as long the size of the defects is not going over a special definded size and amount the media is still readable. (The player can remove the reading problem by using software error correction.)
So far i have an overview, there are following lines for BD-ROM production installed and running.
30 Lines for BD Single and Dual Layer by SonyDADC( for Playstation and Sony movies ). Own design.
10 Line from Oerlikon for BD-ROM and BD-R/RE which are installed at the big movie studios worldwide.
8 Lines from Singuls Technologies which are also installed at the big movie studios worldwide.
2 Lines from Singulus Technologies were comeing back from the movie studios for some reasons, which are not described, all the other 8 Lines ( most of them installed more then 2 Years) are not accepted by the companies and therefore also not payed for some not described reasons...but maybe also running for production ...
For more information about the HD-DVD and BD-R process, i have found some interessting links, aspecially from Singulus, because thats the bigest producer of replication-lines for optical medias.
Please search for following key-words:
mtc06_training_day1_hotz.pdf
medialine_0505.pdf
SeeYa
DieWahrheit