Part of it is that people expected (and deserved, honestly) perfection by the late 90's. Many DADC rotters look darn good compared to early disks.

Just rewatched Bad Boys and Side 3 is worse than I remembered. The first half of the side was peppered with speckles but the second half was mostly spotless. Could have sworn it wasn't like that. Huh. Though sides 1 & 2 are still mild except the very beginning of 1.

Maybe I didn't have an eye for rot previously, as it was the first film I played when I got my new player about 2 months ago.

What a shame. I got a brand new sealed copy of Jumanji that's a rotter. Side 1 starts out pretty rough but cleans up after about 10 minutes. Then the start of side 2 is riddled with speckles and lines and the audio sounds distorted. The audio fixes itself after about a minute luckily, the speckles lessen again but they're still ever present throughout side 2. I'm rewatching my DADC pressed copy of MIB right now and there's a few speckles but they aren't noticeable at all in comparison.

My SONY DADC copy of Ham on Wry: The Porky Pig Laser Collection has laser rot entirely on side 1 but not on side 2.
Mint Marks:
LDVS-001202-A-A2
LDVS-001202-B-B2

Mint marks from a nearly rot free copy of The Fugitive:
LDVS-002019-A-A41
LDVS-002019-B-B6
LDVS-002020-A-A3

Mint marks from a mildly rotted (side 3 moderately rotted) Bad Boys:
LDVS-002760-A-A2
LDVS-002760-B-B28
LDVS-002761-A-A3

Mint marks of a fresh from the seal but moderately rotted Jumanji:
LDTX-002930-A-A9
LDTX-002930-B-B25

Mint marks of a nearly rot free Men in Black:
LDTA-00357-A-A53
LDTA-003537-B-B19
LDTA-003538-A-A53

Mint marks from a moderately rotted as expected Air Force One (through still fully watchable and no audio issues at least):

LDAC-003574-A-A15
LDAC-003574-B-B11
LDAC-003575-A-A14
BLANK SIDE LDDN-000001-Z-Z288

The blank side is actually the worst, it's strongly rotted.

Confederate is right. By any properly normalised measure, PDO is by far the worst plant for LDs.

They were also responsible for a high proportion of CDs with disc rot, but the bad proportion is much lower than it is for their LDs.

The main mechanism for the deterioration appears to have been that because the information is stored so close to the top (label) side of CDs, the metals often reacted with chemicals in the paper booklets inside the jewel case. Storing the disc "upside down" (i.e. with the label side hidden) in the jewel case solved the problem. I became aware of this in about 1994 and since then stored my PDO CDs that way round and there has been no further deterioration. I have direct comparisons of discs made just months apart in the same factory (for the same publisher too) that clearly show the effect of which way round they were stored. Every today if the cd is playable (many are) it's worth flipping it over in the case to prevent it getting worse. My other observation is that a media player will often rip a rotted cd just fine even if a cd player produces garbage.

This goes for 5-inch cd-videos too. Just yesterday, I played a 5-inch CD-V made by PDO (Was (Not Was): Anything Can Happen (1988) [080 454-2]) and it's perfect. The seller that I got it from had kept a layer of plastic between the disc and paper booklet, saving the disc.

This rot mechanism is completely different from LD rot, so it speaks rather badly for the factory that they suffered from both!

The other thing to note is that a few disc publishers did actually try to do the right thing and had a scheme to replace rotted cds for free where possible. I had maybe a 8-10 replaced and the scheme ran for maybe ten years. No longer, alas.

Eraser. Side 1 wasn't as bad as expected (speckles there but they aren't aggressive), but then side 2 takes a turn for the worst (snowy but still watchable):

LDVS-003048-A-A41
LDVS-003048-B-B32

The Super-Vips. Hardly a rotter.

LDVS-001715-A-A3
LDVS-001715-B-B2
LDVS-001716-A-A1
LDDN-000001-Z-Z163

That's because you are still in the low master serial numbers (1715~6).

It starts getting really bad from 2000~2500.

Julien

And DADC Japan too. I have several heard stories of people who said that DADC Austria and DADC Japan are much better than DADC USA.

Same with my copy of "Looney Tunes After Dark". Rot on Side 1 in terms of digital audio, small specks. Side 2 is fine up until Chapter 6 and 7 with garbled audio and small video artifacts.
Mint Marks:
LDVS-001203-A-A10
LDVS-001203-B-B6

Lament. One of my fave LDs has just started to display rot in the final 5 minutes.

Is this is an omen of LD's future? Will all our discs die in the next few years?

Roger Avery reckons the entire LD collection he purchased from the video store he worked at with Tarantino is virtually junk now.

https://videoarchivespodcast.com

I guess Avery lives in SoCal/Hollywood? Low humidity? I live in a low humidity area too.

and I dunno, I have tons of discs that AFAIK/As recently as I last viewed work perfectly. Avery reckons most of his are rotted.