Disc-rot. -It happens but it's not as common as its made out to be. In my collection it's only occured in 2 out of 500+ discs.
apparently xbox 360 discs were particularly susceptible.
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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A couple years ago I made a big project to rip all my DVDs.
Out of several hundred movies only 6 were unplayable. There didn't seem to be a pattern to it either; age of the disc, wear or handling, big budget then current release or old movie slapped onto a disc in one of those cheap cardboard sleeves.
Out of my collection of TV shows on DVD, easily a quarter of the discs failed, and if one disc in a season of a show didn't work most of them probably wouldn't. Many had visible blotch marks in them. I figure they probably used a cheaper manufacturing process for TV shows where they were selling 3 to 6 discs rather than one, maybe two discs with a single movie on it.
and that's why I left all my 360 games on top of the TV all these years. we rotate them out as coasters just to make sure they're still getting used.
One of my first jobs in IT I worked in a local newspaper - I thought I wanted to be a journalist turns out it's boring. Anyway we had all the old archived papers on a dvd and someone used it as a coaster and erased about 10 years worth of files. Naturally there were zero backups, so that data was just gone. Fantastic.
Fortunately the local library has backups but they're on microfiche, so not particularly convenient. I think Google might have scanned them now though so they're probably archived again.
Google made thier cached pages inaccessible though, better to check the way back machine.
I'm old enough to remember people lying that compact discs were practically indestructible.
I think the early rounds of those trying to get people to switch to the format were motivated by the fact that tapes were easily recordable by everyone.
Prime motivation was getting the clients to buy their whole collection a second time.
I have Audio-CDs from the 80s that are still playing 40 years later. And I have CDs with deep scratches that also play without problems.
And I have PDO pressings of Faith No More albums that are almost 40 years old and have just started to rot. Common occurrence with PDO pressings apparently; one manufacturing error is all it takes.
Disk rot usually happens when air gets in contact with the reflective coating and oxidises it. With CD's, it's actually the top side you need to be worried about, as it's right there under a thin lacquer coating. Any ding to that can expose the layer or just literally chip off a chunk of data.
At least on DVD's it's sandwiched inside the disk, so usually the only reason is a manufacturing error, and not really something the user can cause.
I think the early rounds of those trying to get people to switch to the format were motivated by the fact that tapes were easily recordable by everyone.
Tapes tear and require mechanical parts. But it wouldn't happen were there not commercial interest.
Tapes are overall simply worse. The fact that the more you use them lends to them becoming worse quality overtime is a big reason they suck.
you could run while listening to tapes - CDs kind of but not really
The CD wasn't really suited to be played Mobile (though I did have a portable CD player). It should rather be compared to vinyl in that regard.
I think tapes are great because no portable audio player ever came close to the Walkman regarding its cultural impact. The fact that anyone could record tapes opened up a lot of creative options.
For properly mastered music to be enjoyed at home on a potentially expensive setup, the CD was very close to perfect.
If we are talking portables, then just get a simple mp3 player and rip the CDs.
There was a time before mp3 - pepperidge farm remembers! But yeah, now? I still have a cowon mp3 player that I just can't find myself to throw in the trash...
Except cds had better audio quality, you could shuffle or skip, they didn't where out or get "eaten" by the player, there was no rewinding or having to flip the tapes over, you could install cd changers in your car so you wouldnt have to swap discs around, and there was still no preventing you from recording a cd onto a cassette if you wanted. My old boombox could bootleg that shit easy as could be.
No one in or out of the industry wanted to keep cassettes. By comparison, they were trash.
We-ell, the position being saved was a nice feature. And I know all that.
Plastic shopping bag: lasts 1000 years stuck in a bush outside a Tesco without breaking down
Carefully engineered storage medium stored in ambient temperature indoors in a case:
Plastic shopping bag: lasts 1000 years stuck in a bush outside a Tesco without breaking down
I know you didn't mean it, but actually they break down into smaller and smaller fragments very easily because of temperatures changing, so not visible after a few winters. Maybe except areas which don't freeze, like those plastic floating islands in the Pacific.
CRUMBLING
Yo ho, to the seas we go!!
This happened to about five of my 360 games. I was so disappointed when I set it up after YEARS and went to play old favorites and the discs were rotted..
Damn, I still have a collection of old 360 titles. I’m scared to open their cases.
Same.
This is one of my motivations for dumping my games and modding my consoles. Pull out Wii sports and it doesn't work? No problems I'll run it off usb.
There are so many high quality rips out there. Bothering to rip these yourself makes not much sense, unless its very obscure stuff.
It's the letter of the law: media shifting is legal in some places where downloading a copy from an unofficial site is not. Also, there are people out there who would not have the first idea where to look for an existing rip.
I don't know the situation in all of the countries, but the ones I know that allow you to make a copy of what you purchased also require that in making a copy you are not allowed to break any DRM. I don't think there are many media being sold that do not include some kind of DRM these days.
Edit: agree that people may not know how to pirate stuff but ripping something in decent enough quality also requires quite specialist knowledge.
And a mix of available copies/qualities are better.
...unless its very obscure stuff.
That's primarily why you'd be ripping stuff. There is so much stuff only available on VHS and DVD.
Most rips tend to apply some compression. Ripping them yourself will generally give you a better result unless you also intend to compress them.
obscure stuff.
Obi-Wan meme: That’s why I’m here
What about Linux? I'm a recent conver that was used to makemkv
I'm a fan of ARM. https://github.com/automatic-ripping-machine/automatic-ripping-machine
I run it in a podman container, passing my BluRay drive though. It rips automatically, and attempts to even lookup the metadata for the disk to file it properly. It's not perfect, but it does work quite well. The only issue I have with it is it does a poor job on TV shows, but I've found nothing better, so it is good enough for me.
Makemkv supports linux, works great on linux to. https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=224
I love me some MakeMKV and Linux…..sucks it’s in Russia. Oh well, thanks Mike!
Handbrake works.
I thought I needed makemkv to put it in handbrake. Have I been doing it wrong?
Handbrake can handle DVDs directly; you'll need Make MKV for Blu-Rays.
I gave up encoding with handbrake. It looks much worse after the fact 99% of the time, no matter which settings I use.
I’m not sure what you were trying, but this works for me:
Never use hardware encoding. That is intended for real time transcoding. There are not many settings that work since it is just sending the file to the video card and letting it do its thing.
Slower is better. If you set the software encoder to very slow it will produce an output that is very high quality per megabyte. I generally don’t care if it takes twice as long to encode it as to watch it. I queue it up and let it run over night.
Choose the right codec. I like 10 bit HEVC, because I know it will work on the clients I play it from. When you rip a DVD using MakeMKV, the video will be MPEG-2, it was designed in the 1990’s and converting the file to a modern codec will save a lot of space. I don’t reencode 4K UHD rips much since I don’t want to mess with losing the hdr or other color features that I like in watching those files.
Audio tracks: I will rip out audio for languages I don’t speak, or desctiptive audio track, but go out of my way to label things like director commentaries. I don’t reencode the audio tracks at all, you won’t save much disk space by messing with them compared to the video tracks.
Be sure to use constant quality mode too. Set the RF to around 16-18 for SD video when using x264 or x265. The lower you set it, the higher the quality is.
Back them up while you can.
"Optical Media Bad"
Beer good!
Need to buy that 5th copy of the same media.
WB is replacing them
There are other alternatives to recover the lost media.
But people should take note for anything that was not popular... Prolly should back that Linux iso up and start torrenting it