Shockingly good news from a media corp. Paramount would just steal your discs and tell you to pound sand
this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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As would Sony and Disney. It is surprising that WB is doing this.
I think this is because WB used cheaper manufacturing and now they're failing way before they should.
It doesn’t matter. If the CD/DVD works, copy it immediately. If not, so sorry.
or just pirate it whenever.
Buying music CD and either ripping to flac or pirating flac after it (physically) arrived to keep it sealed.
Right? Oh no, my disc rot, good thing I have 3 backups.
For those saying "just pirate it" some people like the option of physical media and have moral qualms about piracy. This is actually a good thing WB is doing. Just let people have their DVDs
If you own the physical DVD, fair use allows you to own a backup copy, so torrenting it in that case would not be unethical nor illegal.
You’re allowed to make your own backup, but I’m pretty sure downloading somebody else’s backup is still illegal? First time I’ve seen someone suggest otherwise, would love more details about the actual laws.
I'm not a law talking guy, but from my understanding of it, downloading isn't illegal. But if you're torrenting it, you're uploading bits of it to others while you're downloading. That would be distributing it to others, so that's copyright infringement.
So if you could find a way to download something without uploading anything, you'd be fine. Kinda like if someone uploads copyright infringing material to youtube. You're not going to get into hot water for watching that video, but the person who uploaded is.
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I mean maybe technically (I'm sure it varies depending on country). But I'm not aware of any cases where they've ever pursued anyone for that.
It's definitely a grey area in the US, I believe (again, no precedent set), and someone with a good lawyer could actually get a good ruling here, which would set the precedent. Which is probably why they never pursue it. I think that happened with VHS when people were taping shows in the 80s/90s (could be misremembering that).
The concept of "fair use" in general (not referring to specific interpretations of the term) definitely allows you to do this. At least how I interpret it. I am not a lawyer.
So if it were me, I'd only be concerned with the ethics, and I see nothing ethically wrong with it whatsoever. But that's just me.
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Welp, guess I'm digging out my complete SG1 collection tonight.
I have to watch them all, you say? No, honey, this is important work I'm doing here. 😎
It's an investment
I didn't know DVDs are supposed to last 100 years. That's definitely not the case with newer storage media, be it BluRay, hard disks or even worse SSDs.
Modern Blurays should actually last longer than DVDs. Bluray M-Discs supposedly even last 1000 years. 100 years for DVDs is pretty optimistic. 20-50 years is more realistic.
Apparently there's some huge drama in data hoarding communities about manufacturers switching between different recording technologies, and how everybody is worried that they aren't going to last for 5-10-100-1000 years.
I have 3 physical backups of all my stuff, one a rotating offsite backup. The backup media gets replaced over time.
I don’t expect media (especially backup media) to last more than 10 years. But it doesn’t matter, as my NVMe backup solution of today looks nothing like my spinning rust backup solution of 20 years ago, despite holding all of that data.
I’ve always been curious about this stuff and I know I need to make some effort soon, ever since we moved our home recordings from VHS to DVD some 15-20 years ago.
My understanding is that SSDs are also likely to lose data when unpowered for a long time, which is why they haven’t been recommended to me for external backup drives.
“Spinning rust” is much cheaper than I thought, even if I have to pay 200$ in shipping to get a bunch of massive used server drives here. And it seems to not have that problem, with the downside of either needing to be completely powered off or wasting a bit of power when it’s not active. I’m still not sure where the HDD parking technology is at.
Of course ripping all the physical media would also be nice. A lot of the original discs I have (most of my discs are straight shitty copies with one file, yay third world) have things like special features and multiple audio tracks, things like that. I wonder how those should be organized.
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Over the Top (dvd in photo) is an excellent movie.
many of the discs produced by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (WBHE) between 2006 and 2008 are failing prematurely
he (Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader) says the most reliable way to look for playback problems — DVDs that won’t load at all, freeze while you’re watching the film, or have unplayable special features.
Crusader’s video description links to some Google Docs, one of which is a list he compiled showing what he believes are “known rotted DVD titles” he found reported online
I skimmed over the article to see if whether or not if they're just gonna send you another DVD or if they're gonna do it through other means. I couldn't find anything.
I skimmed over the article to see if whether or not if they’re just gonna send you another DVD or if they’re gonna do it through other means. I couldn’t find anything.
???
It's right in the quote in the article:
Where possible, the defective discs have been replaced with the same title. However, as some of the affected titles are no longer in print or the rights have expired, consumers have been offered an exchange for a title of like-value.
Consumers with affected product can contact the customer support team at [email protected].
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I just checked one of my dvd shelf and two WB movies that should be in excellent condition were little bit sticky from both sides. This feels like a flashback to when Arturia’s hardware keys and knobs started to ”melt” after few years. Companies use cheapest plastics possible.
Thanks for the reminder that I own DVDs
I forgot all about them in storage
How does one find the manufacturing date of the discs?
Cut it open and count the rings
If you turn the disc over, you can actually count the rings without needing to cut into it! This lets you skip having to glue the disc back together after checking the age.
If you have the dvd case, it's in the back of it, at the bottom somewhere
No, it is not. I just scrutinized half a dozen DVD cases with a magnifying glass. They had copyright dates, but no disc manufacturing dates.
I wonder if the numeric codes printed around the hubs of the discs can be decoded into manufacturing dates.
Huh, if that doesn't work there are a few websites that will show you info about when the dvd was released
Unfortunately, that doesn't help, since most DVDs in the world were not manufactured in the first production run.
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I knew WB's HD-DVDs (remember those?) were a timebomb. I didn't realize regular DVDs were, too.
All optical media is.
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