- Some Warner Bros -DVDs don’t play because of material problems
- Affected disks were made between 2006 and 2008
- Warner Bros replaces disks but not all movies are still available
Of all the benefits of physical media – image and sound quality, extra features that impress visitors to your home with your excellent and eclectic taste – is one of the most important duration. Unlike movies on the best streaming services, movies suddenly don’t disappear from your shelves overnight due to licensing problems or cost -saving.
Unless … they rotten.
A new plague of the discrice has been discovered and it affects Warner Bros Home Entertainment films made between 2006 and 2008. The rotting makes disks unpackable, and while Warner Bros offers replacements, it can’t replace them all.
Why is Warner Bros not replacing every rotten disk?
The short answer is that it cannot. As the company explained in a statement, “where possible, the defective disks have been replaced with the same title. But since some of the titles concerned are no longer in print or the rights have expired, consumers have been offered an exchange for a title of similar value.”
Discrot is not new – the affected laser discs and CDs and all other shiny disk format since. But this particular outburst occurs very early on disc lifetime.
Discrot is oxidation and it is very unusual to have it to happen on disks that are still relatively young. Under ideal conditions and with careful storage and handling of a DVD, it could last as long as 100 years, and even the lowest life expectation is about 30 years.
But if the production is not perfect, the lifetime can be much shorter: for example, the phenomenon of disk bronzing, a form of discrice affecting compact disks in the early 1990s, became largely found on discs made at a particular British factory between 1988 and 1993.
There is no cure for discrice, so if you think you may have some of the titles affected, it is a good idea to check them now: Discrot is often visible on the disk itself, usually as a cloudy area, but it is most evident when you actually play the disk: Rot means it is not working properly.
As for prevention, except for careful handling and storage, there is not much you can do to prevent something that is mostly the result of production problems.
And it is all especially frustrating in this case where collectors of physical media may hold these disks because a particular movie – or feature or comment – is hard to find or not available now. It’s not a problem if Warner Bros can really replace the disk but when it can’t, we face the question of how can We ensure access to art for the future?
People who rip the disks to make a backup are also not necessarily immune: Reward blu rays and DVDs may have only one lifespan of five to 10 years. But it is more understandable than ever that people will have a backup of the things they want to retain the most – even the physical object is not certain against change.
