Let's talk about our favorite effect of a chemical reaction. Disc rot. I want to know what's your worst case of it. Here are mine ones.

The physical worst case of rot is my obscure Chinese film Opposite Light. This disc has so much disc rot the whole disc has almost turned brown. Are you surprised that this disc has been made by PDO UK? However despite this, since it is an analog disc the rot is only level 3. Though there is some background white noise at the beginning and end of each side. Any dark scene is a total rainbow fest. And the rot has made it impossible for the player to fast forward/rewind. I tried to fast forward once and it would rewind and then decide it wanted to fast forward. I probably should get this to an another format since I wouldn't be surprised if I was the only one in the world with this film.

However it is not the worst effect of disc rot I have. That would go to the first disc of my first copy of my Netherlands version Indiana Jones the Last Crusade. It is also surprise surprise made by PDO UK. It has not turned brown just darkened a bit. But since it has a digital soundtrack only. It makes this disc a level 4 rot disc. As such it is not even watchable unlike Opposite Light. Even though the rainbow storm isn't nearly as bad, you kind of need sound to watch a movie.

I posted pics of both discs. But unfortunately I couldn't get a non blurry shot of Opposite Light (I tried about 8 times). Since I couldn't turn on flash with my camera. But you can still see the disc rot effect.

I think the worst rot I've seen was Side B of Striking Distance (1993) [53686]

The worst visible defects (I do not use the term rot to avoid perpetuating misconceptions):

• I could see through Paul Simon: In Concert (1980) [PA-81-001] (Likely manufactured early 1981)
• I could also see through one of the DiscoVision Animal House releases
• Typical PDO bronzing on Martians Go Home (1990) [ID7613IV]

Pretty much all the PDO UK produced CD-Video discs have rotted in my collection.

The worst is this one....

Levert: Casanova (1987) [781 830-2]

It's extremely snowy and now has affected the digital audio tracks as well.

The absolute worst was the US release of Double Team.

Just curious, has anyone got a bunch of really bad Japanese rotters?
I see PDO mentioned a fair bit and some US pressings mentioned sometimes as being bad, but I'm interested in Japanese releases.

I have yet to see (by myself) a Kuraray pressing with rot.

Some early Pioneer Japan developed some rot, but nothing like a SONY DADC US.

LaserDisc Manufacturers. Best. Worst. First. Last.
The truth about laser rot
What do DiscoVision dead sides look like?

As of today:



Julien

I bought a Discovision copy of The Jerk from Amoeba SF in 2007. It had significant snow at that time but now it won’t even track properly.

My worst Japanese disc is the first version of Unico and the Isle of Magic which has snow but decent audio and no tracking issues.

I have owned ever maybe three rotters. I have hundreds of LDs over decades of buying. Most were purchased new or from collections, no swamp garage eBay trash. I haven’t found rot to be an issue honestly.

The worst rotter I've come across in person is actually a Japanese release, the 1984 release of Koyaanisqatsi. My second copy of it has some minor speckling but it could just be a scratched master since I haven't spotted anything major during the movie, just the opening and closing credits. My first copy however is pretty much completely unwatchable with huge quantities of noise in the video and audio, although still not as bad as some of those PDO discs I've seen where the audio is pretty much just straight up static.

The only 2 Japanese discs that have a bit of rot that I have is:

The making of Star Wars FY539-24MA
Tne Sure thing EHL-1076

A brand new, sealed copy of Jumanji (of course it being sealed doesn't prevent it from being pressed poorly). The beginning of side 2 being the worst, speckles everywhere and even having brief audio popping. It's the only case of medium rot I've encountered aside from of a few minutes of Bad Boys. At least Jumanji side 1 cleans up somewhat after about 10 minutes.

I've encountered a few Pioneer discs with cases of mild rot. Though I haven't seen any Kuraray discs with anything more than very few speckles. If it's faint enough to be considered possibly a scratched master, it's not worth reporting as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah sometimes it is just the tape or master that had dropouts so therefore all replicas will have it.

Here's the worst I've seen in my collection, I think this was from a Ford LD I had on the Thunderbird.

Was FLAC'ing a few CDs today... and this SONOPRESS CD from 2001 is now officially dead.



EAC spent 4 hours to rip 4 full tracks (out of 11).



Julien

Worst I've seen was on my Men In Black disc. The movie was completely fine until near the end on the last side and then it goes full rainbow speckle and is unwatchable. I have some others that are pretty bad as well including Metalstorm. I have some others that have rot but are watchable throughout such as Bad Boys and Starship Troopers. I haven't watched every disc in my collection yet so there are probably some lurking. I didn't bother putting Fifth Element in since I have the improved BD release (much better than the initial BD) but the guy I bought the lot it was in said it had rot.

Overall, I'm much more concerned about warp than rot.

But you can fix warp, can't you?

You can certainly mitigate it. Maybe I just haven't left the weight on the disc long enough.

I was getting ready to watch Coming to America (1988) [LV 32157] last night, but the disc was above my "acceptable warp" threshold. I put a CRT on top of it. It has been about 24 hours and it looks about 1/2 way back to normal. Will report back when I give it a watch.

I think what makes warp more sinister for me is I mainly buy huge lots of laserdiscs (hundreds at a time). If I find one warped, they all might be.

What happens visually with warped discs?

My DTS Gate to the Mind's Eye is warped - or at least, that's what people told me, based on the symptoms - but I just can't see it at all.

What it does in practice is that once it reaches a certain point - at least in my case, about 35000 frames in - it begins to skip backwards, playing about a second or so before skipping several seconds back.

I just placed the disc down on a clean counter and I still couldn't get any clear indication that it's warped.

The worst LD I ever bought was this one:
Public Image Ltd (PIL): Live In Tokyo (1983) [LD 022]

It was a very early PAL LD and it used a water based glue to stick both sides together.
The water in the glue corroded the aluminium and also weakened over time resulting in both sides falling apart!