The paper/CD problem has been alluded to a few times.

A small section from Wikipedia under "Compact disc bronzing".

CD bronzing seems to occur mostly with audio CDs manufactured by Philips and Dupont Optical (PDO) at its plant in Blackburn, Lancashire, UK, between the years 1988 and 1993. Most, but not all, of these discs have "Made in U.K. by PDO" etched into them. Discs manufactured by PDO in other countries do not seem to be affected. A similar, if considerably less widespread problem occurred with discs manufactured by Optical Media Storage (Opti.Me.S) in Italy.

PDO acknowledged that the problem was due to a manufacturing error on its part, but it gave different explanations for the problem. The most widely acknowledged explanation is that the lacquer used to coat the discs was not resistant to the sulfur content of the paper in the booklets, which led to the corrosion of the aluminium layer of the disc, even though PDO later said it was because "a silver coating had been used on its discs instead of the standard gold." Peter Copeland of the British Library Sound Archive confirmed that silver instead of aluminium in the reflective layer of the CD would react with sulfur compounds in the sleeves, forming silver sulfate, which has a bronze colour. A combination of the two factors seems likely because, as Barbara Hirsch of the University of California points out, the oxidation could only have occurred if the protective lacquer did not seal the metal film and substrate well enough.

It is worth reading all of the page on their site.

Thanks for posting all this info.
There is a classical CD I've been eyeing on ebay for some months now but keep skipping it, may actually skip it now
since its a PDO that has actually bronzed and the seller may not know what they have.

Actually 2 copies, one in the USA and one in the UK, the UK seller has stated about how it looks fine and should play fine.
Probably will take the risk but not until the price drops more than it is now.

Hi there
To the gent, who mentioned I may have spindle rotation issues. Well I've played a few CDs as instructed and all are perfectly fine.
So it must be the CDV discs
Thanks Paul

Having a bit of a covid clearout, getting round to doing things I perhaps should have done years ago - amazed by some of the stuff I have held onto for years!

Among some magazines I have come across I am pretty sure one of them has a fairly detailed article about the PDO Blackburn UK pressing problems with CVD discs, going through them now & if I still have it I will put it up here if anyone is interested.

I think there was also mention in another article of a company working on a CD sized disc that would carry 60 minutes of video but it was early work & if I remember correctly they were a long way off getting it to the commercial market - perhaps work on what later ended up as the eventual DVD format.

Again if of interest to anyone here I can put it on when I find it.

Cheers

Found the magazine with the PDO CVD pressing problems article.

Quite interesting & I will get it on soon.

Cheers.

From a magazine dated November 1989 is an article on CVD & pressing problems.

Quite interesting & goes through how they solved the pressing problems - solved the problems though time tells a different story now.

It was under their TECHNOLOGY section & it is below.

DISC MAKER EXPLAINS PRESSING PROBLEMS.

Britain's only manufacturer of compact video discs - the video version of CDs - has broken eight years of silence to talk about the problems it has encountered in pressing discs at its factory at Backburn in Lancashire.

PdO, a company which was set up as a joint venture between Philips in the Netherlands and DuPont, the American chemicals giant, has improved the standards of production at the factory. At the same time, there have been changes in the technical standards for playing the discs, which are known in the trade as CDV discs.

Pressing faults are not a problem on audio CDs as they are with CDV discs. This is because the error-correction codes included in the digital sound signal effectively conceal them. There is no error correction for the video signals, which are analogue. So even the slightest defect shows up on the screen, usually as white or black "blips".

PdO decided to talk openly about its problems partly because of recent criticisms from David Fine, the president of the record company Polygram, a subsidiary of Philips. Fine blamed the failure of CDV discs in Europe on the poor quality of pressings. The industry announced CDV discs in 1987 but it did not launch them until a year of delays had passed.

Engineers at the PdO factory now believe that they have finally cracked the technical problems which left them unable to press enough acceptable CDV discs reliably. The main breakthrough was a change in the technical standards for playing CDV discs; this has made the discs easier to press.

Dave Wilson, the company's manager of marketing services, admits; "No one anticipated the level of control that would be needed. The problem was not the size of the disc; it was the need to put digital sound on the disc along with analogue video of PAL standard [the standard for European TV]."

The disc rotates at a speed which varies continually, in order to keep the relative speed of the read-out laser over the surface constant. Because the speed of rotation is always changing, the relationship between successive TV pictures recorded in the spiral of pits on the disc is not simple. If the laser beam in the player is not perfectly focused on one turn of the spiral, it will read different parts of several pictures at the same time.

To meet the new standard, the disc's speed is now varied in small steps, as many as 10 in each rotation. The result is that similar parts of successive pictures in adjacent turns of the spiral align neatly. If the laser's spot of light overlaps them, there is less risk of interference on the screen.

Joint research between PdO and Philips' Centeral Laboratories in Eindhoven showed how the shape of the pits critically affects the interference between the analogue video signal, which contains the picture information, and the digital sound signal. The signals have to be mixed together before recording and unscrambled on play-back; interference produces a fuzzy picture.

The shape of the pits depends on a string of variables; the intensity of the laser beam used to cut the pits in a layer of light-sensitive material on the glass master disc; the degree of focus of the beam; the chemical nature of the light-sensitive layer; and the chemical development of this layer.All these parameters, Blackburn found, were "organic" and varied unpredictably from day to day. "We would get good pressings one week, but then not the next," said Wilson.

The factory in Blackburn has now tightened control of all stages of the production process. Artists making recordings and other important visitors from record companies are no longer allowed to go inside the clean rooms where vital processes are carried out. They must look through glass windows instead.

Like all plants around the world that press CDV discs, Blackburn still faces one problem. Each master disc, which is made of glass, can produce only one electroplated-nickel stamper, which is used in the injection molds to press the finished duplicate discs. When the stamper fails, usually after four or five thousand pressings, another master disc must be made, This means that the discs cost much more than tapes.

Sorry folks but just noticed that I had not put on where the article was published.

It was in the 18th November 1989 issue of NEW SCIENTIST magazine.

It also has a bit titled NEW COMPACT DISC VIDEO WILL CRAM THE PITS which has details of a CD sized disc that NIMBUS were working on that would carry an hour of video, to that point they were up to discs that played for 30 minutes but they did state that it would "be years rather than months before consumers can buy players and discs".

So...I guess I should have been grateful for all the crappy US versions of things I had because I couldn’t get the cool UK ones. Mine still play!