Watched Beowulf (2007) (Uncut) [13232] recently.

Played without issue thankfully.

I did want start to test the rest of my collection.

Under Siege (1992) [81831] is dead

Caddyshack (1980) [80952] and Blazing Saddles (1974) [80925] started up and played for at least a half hour each. Hopefully they'll play all the way through.

Beowolf is Paramount => usually OK

Under Siege => Warner US, 95%+ death rate.

The other 2 are also Warner US, try skipping chapters after the ~1h10 mark when you need to trigger the layer change.

Julien

After attempting to watch the 2007 special edition of Full Metal Jacket with my brother-in-law who has never seen the film, it crapped out the 41:00 mark. So for the past four hours I've been testing the infamous Warner Bros '06-'08 DVDs from my collection for the first time and this is what I found. All bad discs were checked on two different PC DVD drives with DVD Shrink's analyzer. They were also checked on consumer DVD players. There were no variations between tests if they were defective. If it was F upped the first time, it was on all three or four tests. All discs are Dual Layer unless otherwise noted:

GOOD

1) The Wild Bunch (2 Disc Director's Cut) (2006)
2) Body Heat (Deluxe Edition) (2006)
3) Magic Johnson Always Showtime (2 double sided discs) (2006)
4) Stanley Kubrick A Life In Pictures (2007)
5) Caddyshack (2007)
6) Deliverance (Deluxe Edition) (2007)
7) Risky Business (2008)
8) Oakland/LA Raiders: 3 Greatest Games (3 discs) (2008)

DEFECTIVE

1) Detroit Pistons 1988-1989 NBA Champions Motor City Madness (2006)
a) Disc 1 & 3-10 are all defective
b) Disc 2 Full Game and Disc 11 Highlight Film (SL) work,

2) The Shining (2 disc Special Edition) (2007)
a) Disc 1 Film defective, Disc 2 Special Features (SL) GOOD

3) Full Metal Jacket (Special Edition) (2007)

4) 2001 A Space Odyssey (2 disc Special Edition) (2007)
a) Both DL discs are defective

5) Poltergeist (Digitally Restored and Remastered) (2007)

6) Blade Runner (4 Disc Collector's Edition) (2007)
a) Discs 1-3 defective
b) Disc 4 (DL) (Enhancement Archive) GOOD

7) LA Lakers 1984-1985 NBA Championship Return To Glory (2007)
a) Disc 1 (SL) only half of Game 1 on disc & Disc 7 (SL) highlight film GOOD
b) Game discs 2-6 Defective

All defective discs were dual layer and seemed to crash at the layer change if they played at all. Some couldn't be read, period. I was really pissed off about the Detroit Pistons box set because I paid $75 for that and it will probably never be available again. Same for the anamorphic version of Blade Runner International Cut (same as Criterion LaserDisc) on Disc 3 of the Blade Runner set.

The behavior of the defective (pressed) discs was very similar to Dual Layer DVD-r's I burned 15+ years ago. They worked fine at the time, but I tried several of these copies in the last year or so and they can't be read or freeze and/or stutter at the layer change.

I thought most of this was hype because I have watched some of these defective discs in the last few of years or so but sadly it's true.