Have to ask my limit was usually 2 bought another Unknown Chaplin & other titles to make a rot free one. Gave up on Heavy Metal till i discovered a Japan import years later.

bought 2 copies of heavy metal, first one went through hell with the seller to get my money back, the second one i asked first and the seller assured me it was good, it has a few speckles im keeping an eye on but i think its good.

planning on getting willow soon, i hope i wont have to go through too many copies of that lol

lol why where 2 awesome movies like willow and heavy metal manufactured so bad?

I've had to buy maybe 10+ copies to get an absolutely perfect complete copy of certain titles.
It depends how fussy you are. Sometimes you hit it lucky quite soon but if you want a perfect cover and a perfect disc then the odds are against you.

Found out later that DADC which did Columbia's + some Warner had a could care less pressing plant.

I went through 5 copies of Eraser to find one perfect absolute rot free copy, think I am lucky though...

it took me 12 copies to get a rot free copy of Air Force One and even then I had to mix a CAV disc from one set and a CLV disc from another.
I also got a japanese copy and it was a far better copy. Richer blacks for a start.
Eraser I got first time and it never did and never has given me any problems. I guess I got lucky with that one. Same with Aliens.

Roger Shore

I'm at the point of avoiding known rotters... don't like 'm , don't need 'm
Let's hope not all titles are going to rot
I would not be to see this happen one day

Would be a shame to see 250USD rot away

I do remember my Bad boys copy that I purchased new back in the day showing "a striped pattern" on side 2
OOohh , there goes the player was my thinking
a few days (and players ) later I came to realize the hard fact....
the same thing happened with:

Copycat
Air Force One
Ace Ventura (come to think of it... maybe it's not that of a problem that resolution get's lost)
and a few meanwhile known others...

happy to find out my 5th element copy was a Pio pressing that day...

I never bothered to find a good copy of known rotters. I threw away mine and that was it for me. Out of sight, out of heart.

i think the most i did was 2.
had to get 2 copies of dirty mary crazy larry.
at the time it didn't really matter since that was the only way to get the film, NO dvd at the time.
if i have a cheap title that is rotted i'll just buy another one for 5 bucks, not really a problem.

but when you pay big bucks then it's a problem.

As a general rule 99% of box sets give no problems. (Different process used to press them). It was mainly Sony DAC and single titles that were were problem. . Thankfully laserrot shows up pretty quickly once the disc is pressed so any discs you buy today are 100% OK unless someone is trying to fob off a disc they know to be rotten.

The only discs I ever had problems with were

Air Force One
Matilda
Under Siege 2


All replaced very very quickly and out of a collection of over 2000 discs, all A1. I have discs going back 25 years and no problems.

Roger Shore

I probably went through a dozen copies of "Out to Sea", and an equal number of "Copycat", "Ace Ventura 2", "Under Siege 2" and the 3-disc version of "Hamlet". I went through probably a half dozen "Striptease" and "Johnny Mnemonic" and never found good copies.

Do you guys try to get you money back for titles with rot ? Myself never do on titles under 20$, if its over I always ask before I buy...

But if you buy I copy of eraser for 5$ you know whats coming to you =)

I Learned the hard way about buying used lasers from a video store when they still had them had no idea about DADC crap back then. Today no more stores left only online laserdisc purchases.

Up until recently I bought almost exclusively music on laserdisc. Whilst I did encounter some rotted titles the majority seemed very reliable.
Having switched to buying some movies on laserdisc, I am getting plagued with rot problems. If seems about 30% of everything you buy is rotted.

Definitely Sony DADC is the main culprit. Obviously there is no point complaining now but I am surprised serious collectors back in the day
when Sony was churning out this garbage didn't challenge them. I mean it went on for years and yet it seems collectors did absolutely nothing.

For what it is worth when I first starting buying DVDs I encountered similiar manufacturing problems but nipped it in the bud very quickly.
I got in contact via email with Nimbus (now Technicolor) who had a manufacturing plant in Wales and let them know what the issue was.
Initially they were a bit slow to respond but they soon got the message and every single early DVD they had produced I got replaced.
In fact they also replaced all my early faulty CDs as well as their own expense. You don't get things done unless you take action.

I did the same with PDO CDs which rotted and also some Warner Brothers CDs whose lacquer coating developed hairline cracks along the edges.

I think it was down to the fact that Sony plants didn't have very good clean procedures for pressings and usually when the problems were highlighted it was next to impossible to get repressings done. Thankfully the problems didn't plague box sets and as a rule today if I'm going to buy a laserdisc (always ebay), I ask the seller especially if it's a DAC disc, has it been checked. 99% of the time the seller is selling a clean copy but once in a while it's obvious someone is trying to fob off a rotten copy and usually their ratings by buyers is a good indicator.

Roger