Imagine that: you spend a quiet Saturday night at home, and instead of infinitely searching around a broken algorithm for something you need to see on one of the 12 streaming services, you just head to your shelves to select DVD, Blu-ray or 4K Ultra HD. Maybe it's a movie you've just bought in the last few weeks, or maybe it's a disk that has been in your collection for many years. In any case, collect the snacks together, turn off the lights, put the disc in your player and start watching. You have a ball, amazed at how clear the picture is and how stable the sound is, and you are so engaged in the film that is almost shock when, 45 minutes or so in the film, the disk begins to skip. Try it all - pause and restart, stop and restart, loose a little, quickly forward, throw the disc and wipe with a cloth, and so on, but nothing works. The film night is officially destroyed.

No matter how disturbing as this, it is even more disturbing that not only this scenario can be a common occurrence (it happened to me just weeks ago), but that it is not really a solid explanation. There are physical media has rightly boasted for several years How Superior Alternative for Streaming MediaIf for no better reason, it is one of the last remaining bastions of legitimate property of art; where services and digital purchases can be followedAnd there are) have been subject to change or removal without warning, possession disk means that your movies or TV shows will always be available whenever you want. However, physical media have their disadvantages, and while the biggest problems are storage and price, the problem of defective disks is perhaps the most disturbing, simply because there is no only reason for what can be easily avoided.

People want control and security in life, and as such, a name for this problem is created: rot of the disc. It is a condition that is real enough to have its own page on Wikipedia, which describes the question of how "a tendency for CD, DVD or other optical discs to become unreadable due to chemical deterioration". Crushing online searches dozens of photos of disks suffering from this condition, with various visible defects obvious. Recently, Joblo's editor-in-chief, Chris Bumbray, said many of his old DVDs-A-released by Warner Bros. Homemade party in the middle of the 00s showed signs of disc rotThe problem that the company itself has essentially recognized has merit. Although this seems to be a widespread and verified issue, there is still a bigger problem non -violent: namely, that rot of the disc is a bug among physical media enthusiasts for a long time, and is not an explanation for all we need for brazen production and reproductions that still wake up to this day.

According to the work of Joblo and several others, Warner Bros., Home Entertainment, said a statement saying the company "is aware of potential problems affecting the selected DVD titles, produced between 2006 and 2008," and that they "actively work with consumers to replace them. As I said, this seems to confirm that these disks are really tormented by disk rot, only that term is nowhere to be found in the statement. Of course, this may simply be the case of a corporate language that covers all the basics, but I believe it is talking about a greater issue that there are many different optical disk defects that neither the consumer nor the manufacturer can measure at the moment. In other words, while rot of the disc can and happens, this is not the only reason why your disks can experience playback problems.

Because of this uncertainty, the issue of disc rot has increased in growth from rare but possible to a substantially scattered lamb in the enthusiasts of physical media. It has become something used as misdiagnosis for a variety of problems, the way they can say that they simply have a bad cold rather than knowing about whether they have the flu, or Kovid-19, or something else. While the end result is basically the same, the reaction of the manual wave does not cure the disease.

People really cannot be accused of using a disk rot as a generic term for the wrong disk, however, because the causes of a defective disk are seemingly fully arbitrary. In my personal experience, I have collected physical media with optical disk for about 25 years, I have been leading numerous examples of disks that look like they do not play properly by playing well, and the opposite problem, where the clean drive has numerous playback problems. Sometimes it is a more problem with the player than a disk problem, which can be difficult to change. There are many fans of physical media that will cite bad packaging, because another possible source of defective products, where everything from the disks that are lost and fever around in a box during delivery to disks, arranged to one another, to discs, embedded in a narrow design of cardboard sleeve, accusing problems. WBHE's statement implies that the production defect may be the main cause of this deterioration, they are now experiencing specific releases. This makes holding the collection further frustrating: Even if you are the most conscientious collector, you are not safe from the problems you do not know the real reason and you cannot fix it.

None of this would be as frustrating as it was if there was an easy, fast, impermeable way to determine whether the disc in your property is wrong or not. The problem is, there is only one way to be absolutely sure of this, and it is actually to see any disc material. Of course, it is a time obligation that no one wants to register, nor should it be done. Even the way you shorten to make this - login to the disk, seeing whether it is loading, briefly choosing the film and every feature of the bonus and skipping through all the different chapters - time consuming, and yet finally unconvincing. Yes, most broken discs reveal their real colors without too much noise, but some work perfectly well, until you are an hour and 20 minutes in a three -hour film and then a bust.

Again, this can be mitigated if you can simply flip the discs and give them a quick look, but this is another unconvincing method of checking discs. Only the most extreme cases of disk rot presented the way those photos on the Internet demonstrate, with clearly reinforced and corroded material. In most cases, your discs will look good on the naked eye, but only show problems if they are put under a very bright and direct light source. In other cases, you may see some tricky scratches, discolorations or other defects, and yet the disk can still play through perfectly. In other cases, the disk cannot read one of your players, but it works well on another (and that assumes you are rich enough to own more disk players).

Despite the availability of things like special towels, cleaning sets and other such accessories, there is simply no guaranteed way for consumers to repair a defective disc. Sometimes the quick deletion will solve the problem, other times will not work the amount of cleaning. In some cases, there may be a coding problem that is even beyond the customer's control, such as a problem I had with the recent boutique edition, which will not load the PS5 player on a disk (when contacted for support, the manufacturer has denied their responsibility, citing their policy that they can only work. In all cases, the only thing that is close to a guaranteed solution for a defective disk is to restore your copy and exchange it for a new one - assuming, of course, you don't talk about a movie that is sold as a strictly limited edition, something that becomes more common as physical media Market stages only for collectors.

The union of the problem with disk rot and other production defects is that there is no real guilt for industry for industry. First and foremost, it is unclear how many optical disk production plants are left in the world, given that demand for the physical media that once commanded them has diminished from its most famous day thanks to the rise of streaming. Folks on messaging boards tend to list four main remaining objects as operating: Sony Dadc Austria, SonoPress Germany, Vantiva Mexico and Vantiva Poland. Another others with alleged insider knowledge claim that most boutique physical media companies (arrow video, shouting factory/scream, Criterionetc.) Use the Vantiva facility in Guadalajara exclusively, perhaps because Vantiva was a technician (Company for the hereditary film industry that is constantly dying, by the way). Whether today's discs are made on only one or one of the four buildings, it has become clear that quality control standards need to be raised.

There is not much hope that this will happen will happen; After all, if this widespread disk rot that affects the WBHE DVD includes discs made in the middle of the 00s, which was during the golden years of physical media, what kind of treatment can we expect during this age? Although there is not much we can do about what materials are used to make discs these days, we can certainly ask for smarter packaging, with greater care and attention to pay disks in new editions. Hopefully, this will reduce the examples of a new 4K UHD or Blu-ray that appears with scratches all over it as soon as you open the case, and other such easily avoid problems. Physical media fans have unfortunately become notorious about loud and loudly dealing with many aspects of new editions recently (you should see the sections of comments about boxing and slippery, good Lord), so I hope they can put that energy to the area that really needs as much as possible.

Because, despite all the aforementioned problems, physical media remain an absolute best way to enjoy film and television. Not only in terms of image and sound, but also in terms of its wide range of diversity, with editions ranging from cinema dawn to date, from the clearest headlines to blockbuster hits. Most media are not just fun, but art, and if all art is political, then it is history. To know about history not only makes art better, but life as a whole.

Let's try and get rid of disk rot and all these other topics to help prevent humanity from rot.