Tired of trying WB rotten HDDVDs one after another, I tried a Universal one tonight.

Took no chance, opened a sealed one: Mummy, The (1999) [30031]

It started skipping and crashed after ~10min.

Turns out it's slightly delaminated on the sides and has a big discolored zone inside the disc, it's not a scratch.



I guess I'm just very unlucky.

Julien

Hey Julien you do seem to be unlucky.
I have seen this before on cds and dvds and never knew what it was.
I just packed my HD-DVDs away with some of my LDs. So i haven't watched any for a while.
I still keep my eye out to buy them and the players.

I've seen that on some of mine. I just had one the other day that had that, but much smaller. I tried ripping my copy of 300 but it get's about 7 mins and then quits, I haven't tried playing it yet. So far about 5 or 6 out of 40 that I've tried ripping that won't. I've got 2 copies of Deliverance that will not rip or play. My copy of Chronicles of Riddick won't rip but it will play.

The subsurface blemish, would this not be a disc replication error? I'm wondering if they missed a bunch of these and they got shipped out.

+1; "Slither" just locked up my player...

If Blu-Ray hadn't already won, the rot issue would've clinched it. *sigh*

I have a blu-ray disc that freezes about 15 minutes before the end of the movie....
Disc is clean, no scratches.... Problem is the same on 7 players from different makes...

For now I think it is just a bad luck disc.....

I'm very glad I didn't go anywhere near HD DVD and have only a small collection of Blu-ray discs currently.

Really everyone should be very wary of new technologies appearing on the market that have no proven reliability record.
They almost always have teething problems for the first few years until all the wrinkles are ironed out.
That was the case for CDs and DVDs. Sure LDs were still having rot issues even after 20 years of refining the manufacturing process!

Optial discs are not forever
The don't wear, but they can be defective for no special reason, even if the played well for 20 years or so....
Have seen it a lot....
CD, MD, LD, DVD, HDDVD, AND Bluray

What title is it?

From the time I picked up my first Blu-ray drive for my HTPC and a PS3 I have been looking for an excuse to dislike Blu-ray but I have not found one.
Unlike DVD I can't just pick any old thing and start complaining. Blu-ray has thus far been good to me and a good value for the money...

well, I have yet to play an LD that was bought back in 1989 new and played fine then to have issues now.
only ones that I have with issues are ones that had issues.
nothing new popping up, LD has never let me down, unlike DVD and instant watch has

________________________________
the rein-o official signature:

Battle of Los Angeles

If you can give me more info on the disc I will make a note of it; region code, origin etc...?

I have had a chance to view four more HD-DVDs without issue, unhappily only one of the four was a title I was intending to keep.
As of now I plan on selling the player and discs if I can recoup close to what I have invested.

I have not check all my disc, I watch a random disc every once in a while, have not seen any issues.

Same for me.

I hear of issues with all of these titles upon release. Some were fixed with player firmware, others required a trade in for newly made disc.

Bad news. My girlfriend was going to surprise me with a player and some movies, good thing I asked her to wait. Should I not get into collecting HD-DVDs, or is this an uncommon occurrence?

Yeah, there are bad HD-DVD's in them thar hills. I currently have 31 HD-DVD's in my collection. Of those, 3 either are unreadable or crash my player. They are: Santana, Hymns for Peace; Purple Rain and 300. Purple Rain freezes at ~16 min., 300 will play on the DVD side only and Santana will not play at all.

Let's see, 3 divided by 31 means that about 10% of my HD-DVD's are good for coaster use only. Not good. That means that when you buy a HD-DVD, you have a 1 in 10 chance that it will not play. It seems to be a crap shoot.

I honestly wouldn't recommend you getting into HD-DVD nowadays. Only reason would be if you want Carpenter's The Thing in best shape, but otherwise nearly everything is available on Blu-Ray.

Thanks for the advice. I still think it's an interesting format, but also sounds like an unneeded headache. I'd mostly wanted to see Blade Runner, I heard the HD-DVD transfer was good, but I can live with LD and dvds for now.

The Blu-Ray editions of Blade Runner are 100% identical. You can get the standalone, 5-disc or briefcase edition on both formats. Blade Runner is really awesome on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, so no need to get into HD-DVD for it.