- Some Warner Bros DVDs will not play due to material problems
- They were made affected between 2006 and 2008
- Warner Bros is replacing the discs, but not all movies are still available
Of all the advantages of physical media: the quality of the image and sound, the additional characteristics, impress visitors to their home with their excellent and eclectic taste, one of the most important is permanence. Unlike films in the best transmission services, movies will not suddenly disappear from their shelves during the night due to license problems or cost reduction.
Unless … they rot.
A new disc pudition plague has been discovered, and is affecting Warner Bros Home Entertainment Movies manufactured between 2006 and 2008. Power makes the discs not unpleasant, and while Warner Bros offers replacements, he cannot replace them all.
Why does Warner Bros not replace every rotten album?
The short answer is that it can’t. As the firm explained in a statement, “when possible, defective discs have been replaced by the same title. However, since some of the affected titles are no longer printed or the rights have expired, consumers have been offered an exchange for a similar value title.”
The rot of the album is not new: it affected laser and CD discs, and any other brilliant disc format since then. But this particular outbreak is happening very early in the useful life of the discs.
The rot of the disk is oxidation, and it is very unusual for that to happen on albums that are still relatively young. In ideal conditions and with careful storage and management of a DVD it could last up to 100 years, and even the lowest life expectancy is around 30 years.
However, if manufacturing is not perfect, then the useful life can be much shorter: for example, the phenomenon of the disco tan, a form of rot of the album that affects the compact discs in the early 1990s, was largely found in the albums made in a specific factory of the United Kingdom between 1988 and 1993.
There is no cure for the rot of the disk, so if you think it is possible that you have some of the affected titles, it is a good idea to verify them now: the rotation of the album is often visible on the disc itself, usually as a cloudy area, but it is more evident when you really reproduce the disc: the rotation means that it does not work correctly.
As for prevention, apart from careful management and storage, there is not much that can be done to avoid something that is mainly the result of manufacturing problems.
And everything is especially frustrating in this case, where physical media collectors can maintain these discs because a particular film, or feature or comments, is difficult to find or not available now. That is not a problem if Warner Bros can really replace the album, but when he cannot face the question of how can Do we ensure access to art for the future?
People who destroy the discs to make a backup are not necessarily immune either: Blu-rays regritable and DVD discs can only have a useful life of five to 10 years. But it is more understandable than ever that people want a support of the things they want to maintain the most; Even the physical object is not safe from change.
