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Your experiences with Laser Rot
https://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=164		 Page 1 of 9
Author:  jjhunsecker [ 18 Oct 2011, 19:12 ]
Post subject:  Your experiences with Laser Rot
Recently I discovered that one of my discs from the Star Wars Trilogy Definitive Collection had the early stages of laser rot, more than fifteen years after I purchased it. I can't tell you how disappointed I am! (I wouldn't care if the original Star Wars was on the new Blu-ray release! :x ) Years ago the LD I had of Crumb had heavy laser rot on side 2 of the disc. Now that I'm feeling a bit paranoid about my collection I think I'll spend the week checking out all of my remaining laserdiscs for the dreaded rot.

What have been your experience with disc rot?
Author:  elahrairrah [ 18 Oct 2011, 19:19 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
I've only got a handful of rotters and they're the usual suspects:

Beauty and the Beast: Work in Progress
Heavy Metal
Aliens: Special Edition

There is one that I should probably report that I got for my mother:

Swan Lake: Royal Ballet - PA-82-018

There are a few others, but can't recall them right now.
Author:  admin [ 18 Oct 2011, 19:34 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
Had horrible cases of SONY DADC USA pressings...

The Game, Lost Highway comes to mind. They were dead by rot within 2 years of purchase after they were released. Tried to negotiate a swap for the DVD with SONY. They would not even entertain the request "Sorry, the LD plant is shutdown, can't do anything about it".

But if you have read all my posts here, you already know I'm a pretty hardcore SONY-hater. No SONY products for me, ever again. Blacklisted for life.

Last time I tried to watch "The Game", it wouldn't even find the TOC and start playing. Got an error message. Lost Highway would at least give me a multicolored snow and audio clicks when digital soundtrack would lose signal.

I kept the covers but played a little bit of Frisbee and jumped on them till they broke. A LD is actually quite hard to break. Flexible (you can weirdly bend it) but not as easy to smash as a CD!

Julien
Author:  vinylcollector [ 18 Oct 2011, 20:12 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
Being I collect most in the scenery/documentary category, alot of them which were Japan only releases, I haven't probably encountered as much rot as some members have.

The Imax USA ones were a bit tricky for me to find a good copy, especially Antarctica.

The only Japan one I have I'm sure is light rot (and not just a bad master) is Landscapes: vol.1 APLJ-4001
Author:  jjhunsecker [ 18 Oct 2011, 20:23 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
admin wrote:
The Game, Lost Highway comes to mind. They were dead by rot within 2 years of purchase after they were released. Tried to negotiate a swap for the DVD with SONY. They would not even entertain the request "Sorry, the LD plant is shutdown, can't do anything about it".

That's terrible! A company should take responsibility for the reliability of their products. Obviously it was the manufacturing of the discs that was to blame, so the consumer is entitled to some compensation for his/her loss, since the product was expected to last longer than a mere two years. (What's the point of spending $35 to own a movie if one can only watch it within a two-year time frame? Shades of Divx! http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1999/06/20259) The least Sony could have offered was a refund of some sort, or at the very least a discount on the purchase of the DVD versions.
Author:  yazorin [ 19 Oct 2011, 00:23 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
damn here i was under the inpression that laserdiscs rotted after 2 years or never at all... hmm, maybe the ones mentioned the rot after more than 2 years are just fluks, hopefully...
Author:  laserdisc_fan [ 19 Oct 2011, 01:48 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
I've been collecting laserdiscs for about 6 years now and so far have no evidence to suggest that laserdiscs suddenly start to rot after being fine for many years.

Total number of rotted LDs I have would be about 5% of my entire collection.
Only a handful don't play at all though. The vast majority of rotted LDs are still fully watchable with just minor speckling.

For what its worth I was an early adopter of CDs and DVD technology and also had many problems with those formats as well.
Laserdiscs tend to get a bad rap when the other formats were probably just as bad (if not worse) in the early years.

I sent back over 150 CDs to Philips DuPont Optical (PDO) in the UK to get them repressed.
I also had problems with Warner Brother, EMI (UK) and Nimbus CDs.
The only company that refused to acknowledge their discs had a problem was EMI UK.

Nimbus eventually became Technicolor who produce DVDs and I had to send a dozen or so DVDs to them for replacement as well.
They were very helpful and even replaced old Nimbus CDs free of charge long after they were out of print from the original label.
Author:  Guest [ 19 Oct 2011, 05:03 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
I think I may have an LD or two with rot, but I'm not sure what to look for. I was watching Criterion Taxi Drive (CLV) the other day. The disc looks perfect. Side 1 is fine, a little noisy, but still fine. Then side two was noticeably more noisy. Large flat black spots were present almost constantly on the right side throughout the movie. I had a similar issue with the Cable Guy, which I assumed was rot since its on the list of the usual suspects. However in both cases the disc itself looks perfect. How does rot manifest itself?
Author:  vinylcollector [ 19 Oct 2011, 05:29 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
yazorin wrote:
damn here i was under the inpression that laserdiscs rotted after 2 years or never at all... hmm, maybe the ones mentioned the rot after more than 2 years are just fluks, hopefully...


From my collection, all those that I have with some rot were that way when I received them. So far there not getting any worse, and I haven't had any good ones start to rot.

One thing I read, was not to use anything on your discs that has ammonia in it. (like window cleaner etc) Not sure if that would contribute to rot or not, but something to watch for if your cleaning your discs with something that might have that in it.
Author:  jjhunsecker [ 19 Oct 2011, 06:36 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
jamisonia wrote:
I think I may have an LD or two with rot, but I'm not sure what to look for. I was watching Criterion Taxi Drive (CLV) the other day. The disc looks perfect. Side 1 is fine, a little noisy, but still fine. Then side two was noticeably more noisy. Large flat black spots were present almost constantly on the right side throughout the movie. I had a similar issue with the Cable Guy, which I assumed was rot since its on the list of the usual suspects. However in both cases the disc itself looks perfect. How does rot manifest itself?

Usually rot manifests itself as colored speckles that appear during playback. (See image I stole from Wikipedia.)
Image
Author:  mikeystoyz [ 19 Oct 2011, 06:41 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
My version of Copycat, laserrot hell. Stage 4 death rot. It is pretty amazing.
Author:  publius [ 19 Oct 2011, 16:28 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
Image
Image

From a copy of Compiler Music Clips in Trackdown, what I take to be rot which has progressed to the stage of black snivets. These are less noticeable against a dark or busy background, of course. Whether it is really rot or just some kind of pervasive pressing defect (from a worn-out master? seems unlikely), I have another copy which is clean.
Author:  limeibook86 [ 19 Oct 2011, 17:28 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
publius wrote:
From a copy of Compiler Music Clips in Trackdown, what I take to be rot which has progressed to the stage of black snivets. These are less noticeable against a dark or busy background, of course. Whether it is really rot or just some kind of pervasive pressing defect (from a worn-out master? seems unlikely), I have another copy which is clean.


Those little lines are laser rot? :eh: I always assumed it was just a glitch or some signal nose... makes me feel sad about my Star Wars CAV set as those dots come up now and then. Not too distracting, but still. :(
Author:  publius [ 19 Oct 2011, 17:39 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
limeibook86 wrote:
Those little lines are laser rot? :eh: I always assumed it was just a glitch or some signal nose... makes me feel sad about my Star Wars CAV set as those dots come up now and then. Not too distracting, but still. :(

Well, on this particular disc they are constant. If it's just occasional, it might just be a glitch, but when not a minute passes that you're not noticing it, I consider that serious.
Author:  yazorin [ 20 Oct 2011, 03:57 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
i just downloaded an anime off of anime classic review and i could tell they ripped it from a laserdisc because i saw rot at the begining lol
Author:  mikeystoyz [ 20 Oct 2011, 04:50 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
What I have problems with is stage one rot and crappy transfer. I usually consider it a crappy transfer if the beginning to the LD before the movie is fine and as soon as the movie starts it has issues. If it stays though the whole movie, crappy transfer. If it blinks back and forth, probably rot.
Author:  bullruckle [ 22 Oct 2011, 02:16 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
I've got a number of discs where the glue around the edge of the whole disc is sticky. Some just a little to touch. But with one or two the glue round the edge is kind of like a putty texture. As in you can stick your fingernail in a little and leave an impression. Crazy thing is, though some of these discs show some visible rot signs when watching, most of them play perfectly, the soft glue edges not seeming to affect playback at all.

Anyone else have discs like this? Whats the story? Does it happen when discs are left in really hot rooms or something?
Author:  jjhunsecker [ 22 Oct 2011, 02:26 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
bullruckle wrote:
I've got a number of discs where the glue around the edge of the whole disc is sticky. Some just a little to touch. But with one or two the glue round the edge is kind of like a putty texture. As in you can stick your fingernail in a little and leave an impression. Crazy thing is, though some of these discs show some visible rot signs when watching, most of them play perfectly, the soft glue edges not seeming to affect playback at all.

Anyone else have discs like this? Whats the story? Does it happen when discs are left in really hot rooms or something?

I had some discs that had that sticky, tacky feeling around the edges, too. I don't think that has anything to do with laser rot. When the discs were pressed together some of the glue got squeezed out and formed around the edges. The discs I had with the excessive glue still played fine, without any signs of rot.
Author:  admin [ 22 Oct 2011, 02:27 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
bullruckle wrote:
I've got a number of discs where the glue around the edge of the whole disc is sticky.


Have a number of these (some TOLW-xxxx in Japan, some US). So far I haven't been able to correlate laser rot with sticky edges.

It was just bad quality glue to me... Annoying but not threatening.

Julien
Author:  laserdisc_fan [ 22 Oct 2011, 02:51 ]
Post subject:  Re: Your experiences with Laser Rot
One of the most common music titles to suffer from excessive glue overspill on the edges was:
Duran Duran: Extraordinary World [TOLW-3164]

Very annoying as I really like this title. That is why I bought the US laserdisc edition to actually play as it doesn't suffer from this phenomenon!
It has not been re-issued on DVD yet but likely will given the recent Duran Duran re-issues campaign.
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