I think I'm really, really unlucky with HDDVDs.

I know my US Warner discs are half dead already but I had faith in Universal discs.

Enters... Game, The (1997) [61027914] sealed, opened, put in the player (Integra HDS-8.8) and hit "play". No problem until I reach ~14min where playback started to skip and freeze. Skipping to next chapter... another dead lock ~18min. Couldn't play it further.

Is heat and humidity -- I live in Singapore -- known to speed up HDDVDs death?

Julien

Heat and humidity is bad for all media, especially bounded discs like HD-DVD, DVD and Laserdisc.....
So it could be the problem

Hello Julien,

sorry to see more issues with your HDDVDs but if the heat/humidity was an issue would it not be showing up on your other similar formats?

Never got into the HDDVD format so know little about them but were the Warner & Universal discs made by the same manufacturer or is it some other issue with them?

Must be rather frustrating not knowing if your discs are little time bombs waiting to fail & hope you have no more.

Regards .

It looks like you could do with a rot report option for HDDVDs since all of them will probably need it.
From the horror reports so far it looks like this format will be the fastest to ever die and I do mean that literally.

My advice would be to offload what you have fast.
It's givng laser rot a bad name!

I have already had three Universal discs that would no longer load completely in my HD DVD player.

Three days ago I watched a copy of The Chronicles of Riddick and after 20 minutes or so the video had several glitches and would stop playing.
I had this issue before with Casino and another movie but in both cases the disc could still be read in my PC's HD DVD ROM drive. This one however couldn't.
There were several read errors when I checked its surface using Nero DiscSpeed last night.
I am quite certain that Japanese HD DVD discs will still work for years to come. My Japanese Warner disc of Space Cowboy still works perfectly. I checked it today.
It seems that as is the case with Laserdiscs Japanese manufactured discs are much less prone to rot.

I had one disc (eastern promises combo disc) that wouldn't even play, this was during hd dvd was still alove. Then I had the forbidden planet stop playing entirely but i bought this used after the format died(2009 ish) i have aboit 350 discs, I watched %90 of them but all before 2010. I haven't bought or watched any hd dvds last 5 years or so.

Now I bought most of my discs brand new during hd dvd days, those discs are fine. I keep them in temperature controlled room, almost always at 72F (summer and winter), all in their original cases and upright stocked. One of these days, i want to sit down and go through each to see how many bad ones I have. Now that my d-theater collection is complete, i will work on having a complete US set for hd dvds.

5 years is a long time for not checking HDDVD discs. That's probably well beyond their useable lifespan
Will you rebuy them again if you find rotters or dump the format?

I thought laserdiscs were bad for rot but honestly I'm not worried at all in comparison to the risk factor associated with HDDVDs which appear almost certain to die. Also most rotted laserdiscs still play.

If I only have a few rotters, I will rebuy them. If too many rotters, I will probably sit on what I have and add few cheap titles. I don't sell stuff if it's worth a few bucks, they will sit on my shelves, at the end no one knows they don't work:)

I have yet to run into my first rotter.
Tho, like substance, I do not watch my discs all the time.
Last HD-DVD I watched was The Big Lebowski about a month ago,
and it played perfectly fine.

so far, my only rotters are Warners... I play my HD-DVD's regularity, so far so good....

This makes me hesitant to add to my HD DVD collection. I find them cheap, but if they won't play I'd end up tossing them.

Buying HD-DVD's is a true crapshoot. I have 34 discs of which 3 do not play correctly or not at all. Putple Rain (Warner Bros.) freezes at about the 16 min. mark. 300 is a two sided disc (Warner again). The HD-DVD side will not play at all. The DVD side plays correctly. The third disc is Santana, Hymns for Peace. This one I cannot seem to find whether it is a Warner or Universal produced disc on the back of the disc storage box. Regardless, it does not play at all. This makes 3 out of 34 discs that are defective in some way. That calculates out to about 9% of my collection that are defective.

I am keeping the 3 defective discs to prevent me from buying them again on HD-DVD. I already had bought The Fifth Element (DVD) a second time not realizing that I already had one in my inventory. It was a $3.74 special so I am not out that much money.

Strangely enough The Pianist isn't working on my HD-EP35. It plays on my HD-XA1
It's a French release that was mint sealed before a few weeks. I watched the dvd instead. Gave up on it....
The rest of my hd-dvd collection play fine, even some "dreaded" warner releases.
got rid of the known Warner problemmakers some time ago. Threw them in the garbage since selling them would make them another collector's problem. I myself like working things.
There's not much point left in getting into hddvd since most titles are dead cheap these days in BR quality.
Stumbled upon the Ocean's Trilogy box on blu ray for 12 euro just yesterday. My hddvd version of that trilogy works fine on all my players.

It's fun to see the DD+ logo light on my receiver but that's about it.
I do like Training day on hddvd. It's spectacular sound and picture wise.

I'm about selling everything hd-dvd related. I have so many different formats and equipment around that it's getting a bit difficult to keep track of what I own and don't own
+ all the spare equipment is taking a lot of space

I know what you are talking about. I collect movies on DVD, BR, CED, HD-DVD, CDV and LD formats. I have to keep 3 spreadsheets current or know that I will repeat what happened with The Fifth Element. I have a spreadsheet for CED, 1 for LD and 1 for all movies. I record on the CED spreadsheet the movie's name, whether it is in stereo format, whether the movie is 2 or more discs and the rarity of the CED. The LD spreadsheet records the movie's name, whether it is on 2 or more LD's, condition of the LD (new or used), whether the LD has surround sound and whether the LD is widescreen. The last spreadsheet is the sum of the CED and LD spreadsheets and includes the CDV, DVD, BR and HD-DVD movies. It took a while to compile the 3 spreadsheets as I had to physically check each movie and record its attributes. Just think, I haven't inventoried my VHS tapes yet. I estimate that there are about 100 of them to do. A job to do this winter I guess. When I did check the movies, I found that I have 2001 and Dune in CED, LD and HD-DVD formats.

Spreadsheets are great; but, you cannot easily take them with you when shopping for a movie. My master movie spreadsheet is 16 pages long now.

Bit the bullet just yesterday

Sold my hd-dvd collection along with all the players.
I'm a happy collector since unplayable sooner or later isn't an issue anymore. All BR discs are good (for now)
I hated the fact that some discs took several attempts before playing-loading properly.
I just want to sit down and enjoy a movie without any issues while watching them.

That's one of the major benefits of laserdiscs. they always spin.

Can't blame you for getting rid of your stuff. But when the day comes that none of my disc work, I plan on keeping the player. The A1 I ended up with works pretty damn well as a regular DVD player. It may just be in my head, but it seems like the HD-DVD player does a better job playing regular dvd than my blu-ray player does.

I hear you,

The HD-A1 or XA1 are solid performers + they come dead cheap.
I loved the look of my HD-XA1. It was solid looking and the illumination when playing was superb.
Got rid of all players since hooking it up needs space in the setup.
Very pleased with my cheap Panasonic BR player that has the 4K upscaling... more like a marketing trick IMHO but when playing "mastered in 4K" discs it produces extraordinary colors.
Very pleased ( for now )
Let's hope UHD BR players get a release next year