Oddity Archive: Episode 234.5 - Laserdisc Laser Rot
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 มิ.ย. 2024
- A little mythbusting (and philosophizing)…OA style.
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The irony of a movie being unwatchable until Stayin' Alive comes up is not lost on me
"Green slime will ooze from the walls!?" "No wait they always do that."
The Hash Smoking Splasher
@@patrickmccutcheon8860 nice SpongeBob reference. 🙂
2:20 I have a CD copy from 1989 that was pressed by PDO titled "A Guy Called Gerald - Hot Lemonade". So far I do see a bit of bronze and CD players read it fine, but I have already made a lossless copy and uploaded it to the Internet Archive.
PDO literally replaced, for free, its bronzed CD discs with newly pressed clean copies if you wrote them an email or a letter requesting them. I had about a half dozen CDs that were PDO pressed and they sent newly lacquered replacements. A lot of these were on the Pearl vintage classical music CD label. It was a limited-time only deal, of course. I did this like, 20 years ago. They told you to destroy the bad copies, but I kept them in a separate box and I don't think the bronzing has worsened.
If you see green slime during "loving", then you might need to see a doctor.
Haha! 😆
much of the speckling and playback issues on early discovision discs are manufacturing non-clean-room issues, not the technical same issue as disc rot/laser rot from glue layer issues.
Speaking of errors. I bought the full US retail version of welcome back kotter the compete series on DVD. My disappointment was high as I discovered disc 3 of season 1 was the result of a bad master.
I paid 35 dollars for the whole thing that was new. I never had a bad disc that was a bad master disc in any DVD set I ever bought.
Since I bought it off eBay I didn't want to return it and was able to torrent the 6 episodes I was missing lol.
Reminds me that I got to start archiving some of my favorite movies and TV shows digitally on my computer
Normally, I get the "Green Slime Syndrome" when I say "I don't know"...for some reason.....
"I heard that!!!!"
@@djhrecordhound4391 Les Lye is one of my heroes!!!
@@astrosci8864 Les Lye was a broadcasting legend in Canada. Not sure if anyone has posted it on YT, but look up a 1960 album called "My Fellow Canadians" by Rich Little with Les Lye. Both worked in Ottawa radio, so it's mostly political figures from Parliament Hill, but they were quite accurate impressions.
@@djhrecordhound4391 I loved watching him on "Uncle Willy and Floyd" in Ottawa when I was a kid. One of the funniest Canadians ever (as well as Wayne and Shuster).....
The jammed opening of Saturday Night Fever was like a TH-cam Poop in real (analog) life! In fact that's probably where they got that gag from, but IDK the demographics of people who make those 🤷♀. Anyway, great episode as usual. I'm always up for any sort of home video history.
Timestamp: 21:44
The main cause of "laser rot" is oxidation of the aluminium reflective layer
because it was not adequately sealed during disc manufacture.
There was so much hype and hand-wringing about disc rot-one article described the wave of impending laser rot as a “tragedy” (people love to get gleeful about possible tragedies)-but years after laserdiscs were supposed to be unplayable, it hasn’t affected a single disc I own, as far as I can tell. (I don’t have any OG/Discovision-branded discs, though.)
Disc rot is obviously real, but the idea that most laserdiscs are on borrowed time doesn’t seem correct at all.
I got hit by one instance of it; an early copy of "Cat People."
I've got plenty of discs with far worse rot than these. Rot kind of made a comeback in the late 90s on Sony DADC-made discs, some say it was intentional by Sony to kill off the format and make people buy DVD. I bought Heavy Metal when it came out and it played fine at first, but a few years later the picture got noisy. It's odd that the digital tracks are even affected in some cases.
That Addams Family segment isn't rot, that usually happens if the disc is warped or the player's Tilt adjustment is off. The second machine obviously has the Tilt set better.
I've had more CD's with laser rot than laserdiscs. One of them, a copy of Dr. John's "Gris-Gris", had some bad "ju-ju".
I’ve got a few CD’s with playback problems, but there’s no visible rot, so I have no idea if it was bad manufacturing (and bad from Day 1) or rot. Alarmingly, all but one of my discs (that I can think of offhand) with playback problems are Mobile Fidelity discs.
@@OddityArchive Most CD problems are manufacturing flaws or bad storage and handling by the owners, not rot. I have literally tens of thousands of CDs, DVDs, and CDRs and DVDrs and none of them have gone bad. I store my collection in a cool, dry, dark area and access them lightly. The idea that there is massive rot among laser disc type formats is largely fear-mongering mythology.
The rot on your copy of Saturday Night Fever is legendary
The worst case of laser rot I came across was from a laserdisc copy of Say Anything. The disc was so rotted to the point where the digital audio got distorted within the 34 minute mark of each side.
First, I had no idea LaserDiscs were still produced that late into the 1990's and had THX. Second, why do I have the song: "It's fun to charter an accountant, and sail the wide accountancy" stuck in my head?
The last Laserdisc I bought was in January 2000, by that time they were really hard to find. A Week after that I bought a DVD Player.
They were actually manufactured until 2007, though all of those extremely late pressings are Japanese karaoke discs.
I just bought Star Trek Insurrection from 1999. The last Star Wars set was produced in 2000 in Japan for the Special Edition. Phantom Menace was released in 1999 the previous year.
I clicked as soon as I saw Addams family in the thumbnail 💀
On the “Woodstock” sample: Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young - “Wooden Ships” (also recorded by Jefferson Airplane).
Billy Barty never gets old.....
Damn, the glitch in the Saturday Night Fever disk is proper childhood nightmare material
Sucks that alot of disc based media are showing signs of rotting off... It's not just movies and music CDs anymore, sadly. Lots of Game discs now are rotting off... mostly nintendo gamecube and Sega Saturn titles. Though, from what i've seen these show signs of "pin holes" and not so much the discoloration.
I've had more issues with keeping my LD players working more than my discs having issues. I have seen some of those issues on some of my CDs though.
Ive had quite a few DVDs that become unplayable, even in multiple players. The green slime was deeply disturbing.
There's a good joke about green slime and a Ghostbusters Laserdisc in there somewhere that someone probably made already.
Cool let us know when you come up with it.
@@selectivision1425 I tried, but it came out a "You Can't Do This on Television" joke.
So PDO accidentally stumbled upon DivX technology about 10 years before Circuit City did?
(EDIT: That and/or Flexplay - the disposable discs from Ep 99)
More like Flexplay.
I never noticed these problems....my rotten discs just show a whole bunch of dots until its like snowing and the laser skips frames. The Audio just crackles with the dots.
21:04 It's gotta be either "Long Time Commin'" or "Wooden Ships" by CSN
I was thinking "Wooden Ships" myself.
@@JGibbons513 It's Definitely ''Wooden Ships'' .... Because the ''Long Time gone'' scene is when they started building the scene and everything around ,,, i saw that movie toooo Manyyy times !
Laser rot happens. I don't like LaserDiscs or CED's due to their size. If I come into contact with any of those, I flip out.
I swear, the color differences between the 2012 and 2022 transfers of the same "Annie Hall" clip. It's like the player went and re-graded the film.
Not going to lie, I really dig the glitched out DiscoVision bumper.
As you mentioned in your video, I have to wonder how much of the difference in your transfers is attributable to the different player? For what it’s worth, I’d always heard the damage happens soon and once it sets, that’s pretty much as bad as it gets. I have one really bad one and it’s never gotten worse. (It doesn’t seem like my other not as bad ones have either.)
We had Pioneer, Sony and Denon in(Which were Pioneer Decks in a different case) in the UK, most of them had PAL and NTSC Playback, some had a Hybrid Playback 3rd option that would allow NTSC Playback on PAL TVs)
God those 1978-1981 Discovision/Laserdiscs sound absolutely horrible. At least it’s not Cartrivision, the home video format that’s virtually impossible to preserve
I’ve got a Dallos VHD from Japan when I was first trying to preserve old media back in my teenage years. It’s still with me in my room and it doesn’t rot much.
@@SlapstickGenius23 VHD: it’s like CED except slightly less shitty and also it’s Japan only for some reason.
Yes, I definitely know the movie you said nerds would know. My dad also happens to have that one on LD.
theres quite a few ntsc/pal players. the dvl-909e dvl-919e cld-1450 are a few i can think of off the top of my head.
But available in (and designed for) North America?
It was 50/50 Benny Boy, but you can find information, pictures, and versions up on Laserdiscarchive, a United Kingdom based website.
The ones that Strictly demonstrated goes as follows: The DVL-909 and 919 models did get distribution in America (plus Europe and Asia). But otherwise, the CLD-1450 is the only one that didn’t get distributed here in the states, but only got distribute in England, and was the updated version of Japan’s CLD-100.
As on my best bet, Laserdiscs were easier to find in Europe and Asia than what we see here in the States.
@@eascec8374 I've had the American DVL-909 since it was new and it won't play PAL laserdiscs, though it will play PAL DVDs. I got a CLD-D925 to watch PAL discs, though it also plays NTSC and has an AC3 output which was only used on NTSC discs. Odd thing about PAL discs is that they can only have one audio track at a time, digital or analog, but not both like NTSC- AND some PAL players won't play analog audio on PAL discs though they will play NTSC analog audio, you get an onscreen message saying "Analogue disc- no sound" on startup with silent playback. I have the old UK Philips demo disc which is rotted pretty badly, and a 1982 PAL disc of Star Wars that won't play at all on either side. Rot seemed to have been a bigger problem over there.
It seems that it could be Pioneer’s problem or maybe it’s just a lack of advertising.
One of my favorite songs...very free..and easy
Brainstorm is a masterpiece
The whole idea of laser-rot scaring off potential collectors amuses me because other contemporary media like VHS tapes and especially CEDs were sometimes even more finicky and fragile than laserdiscs were. VHS tapes can get moldy, can develop "sticky shed" they get dirty and degrade over time, your VCR can just randomly decide to eat a tape, any number of things, and CEDs... Well, we all know how that went. Laserdiscs were actually comparatively reliable and less prone to degradation than their physical media contemporaries, assuming they were made right to begin with.
Thank you for a great in-depth video
I'd suspect the player rather than the discs (most probably aged capacitors).
This has nothing to do with laser rot, but my oldest VHS tape is a copy of "Play it Again, Sam". I've dated it to around 1979-80, and it's in linear stereo. It doesn't sound right if I play it in anything but my Sears VCR that's linear stereo. I also have a copy of "The Blues Brothers" from around 1982 that's linear. They sound awesome in my Sears player.
Nice. My VHS decks only do linear mono.
@@OddityArchive my Sears player has a big yellow sticker across the top proclaiming (for lack of a better word) that it has Dolby Linear Stereo. Picked it up in a thrift store for $10.
i’m trying to get ahold of some uncommon music laserdiscs so i can archive them. i definitely worry less about the releases from the 90s than the one tv special that was never officially released on any other format that came out on LD (or well, discovision) in 78. a little bit of rot is probably negligible, though. a few visual glitches almost add to the charm, and i’m sure the film of these things still exist somewhere, waiting to be reissued on newer media. hope they do, but until then, i continue on my labour of love.
I wonder if the Saturday Night Fever issue is a manufacturing defect? Though, that would beg the question how it ended up back in circulation (assuming it was returned) if that was the case. I've had a few DVDs (namely two) that would stop playing during the movie due to manufacturing defects, one we returned and got a replacement, the other was never returned and is still in my possession.
Defects were so common then that this would have been considered rather minor and whoever bought it likely just decided to live with it. With movies in CAV on multiple discs, exchanging them would result in another disc in the new set being bad so often discs from multiple sets were combined to form one playable copy. Most Discovision discs still play amazingly well today but there are some where the older top-loading players handle them better than the more modern ones.
I had laser rot on Discovision titles, back in the 90s. Like a five-sided CAV edition of Jaws. A couple sides were playable w/ speckles, the others, totally unwatchable. Also, never knew about the dead-side thing until long after I got rid of those discs.
It also gives off a smell along with the discoloration
Heya Ben, You were mentioned by a British Person By the Name of Adam Martyn. That was talking about the 1987 Max Headroom Incident
I did an interview on his podcast a year or two ago.
I've got what must be a few hundred individual discs, and I don't think I've ever noticed any problems with laser rot.
"Green slime" looks like a cat pissed all over it.
Why would I bother getting a multi-region Laserdisc player? I found an NTSC Panasonic Laserdisc Player at a local charity shop about a decade ago, and it's been working quite well. And this is from an Australian! 🌏
I had this ready to go last week, this episode prompted me to get it uploaded: th-cam.com/video/5Ufli5aaAP4/w-d-xo.html
Well I learn something new every day--thanx, fellow commenters!
I was gonna b*tch about never hearing "laser rot", but this comments section taught me a thing or three.
I'd love to see an update in 10 years to see how the discs are doing
I have maybe 20 Laserdiscs and have luckily never run into laser rot. **knock on wood**
The Crimson Permanent Assurance!
I got my 101 dalmatians lazerdisc brand-new factory sealed still last year and it's great
I tried restoring my MCA copy of Psycho, ruined the last disc/reel...
Disc rot is still an issue today, especially with early Blu-Ray releases from Lionsgate and Criterion Collection, the later was kind enough to send new discs.
Wooden Ships by Crosby Stills & Nash.
Woodstock is one of my favourites, with the original release having a better sound mix compared to the director’s cut that came later to DVD.
Compare Joe Cocker’s performance of With A Little Help From Amy Friends between the original and the director’s cut, especially the backing vocals to see what I mean.
actually the first movie that came out on laserdisc was jaws in 1978. i also do have a few discs that have laser rot and they are playable to the point of rot but what happens is the laser jumps back and tries again and again to play past that point but cant and its almost like a pause point. one of the discs is a cooking set from bout 1981 or so. another is one of the very rare car dealer ones i have that it will play till the rot and kinda skip or pause and try to advance. other rot is little specs on playback which is a shame. the dealer discs are oldsmobile and buick showroom floor discs from 1982/1983. even if one of them is rotted i wont let it go cause its something i have wanted for years and now own them at least 4 or 5 discs or so.
Its not just Laserdiscs that have this issues, as others said early CD's have the issue as well.
But more recently its game discs that have started to rot, mine haven't thankfully but there's been reports of Xbox discs, GameCube discs (And god knows how sensitive the GameCube is with damaged discs) and PS1 discs that have started to rot.
I'm just thankful for things like the Internet Archive that have full sets for those consoles meaning the discs are preserved for generations to come.
I've got a Pioneer Little River Band: Live Exposure 1982 release that has mild to moderate static (almost what it might look like if it was sleeting during the concert) and has light audio flutter. I'm not sure if it's laser rot or just a low quality master. I see little black flecks occasionally in a Discovision 1980 release of Olivia TV Special which originally aired in 1978, but sound is great.
Honestly, the only unwatchable discs I've gotten were cracked instead of rotten just from people being rough with them.
Addams Family looks like cross-talk. From what I understand it can be caused by a badly calibrated player or a warped disc. If the older player played other discs fine, it's likely that the disc has corrected itself over time with proper storage. Warping is why you shouldn't store discs at an angle or on top of each other (source: my CLD-D704 manual), which you mentioned.
Not sure why you haven't run into more of it. 2 of my 18 laserdiscs have that problem. One I just replaced with another copy, the other I'm looking for a replacement. Maybe I should just try fixing the one I have, but I don't want to risk ruining it.
My brother had that Touch of Love LD. I think it was around '81 or 82. The only rotted Ld I HAVE is an early 80s Disney copy.
I'd yelp too if Billy Barty showed up at my door.
They don't use glue on discs, they use lacquer for the surface.
Random question have Picked up the mego style action figures for young Frankenstein?
No one screamed yet stating its called DiscROT and not LaserROT ?!? I came here just to see that :)
Well, the average person that looks a video like this up isn’t gonna be generically saying “disc rot”. But, yeah, I’m sure I’ll incur the wrath of a few pedantics-happens all the time.
@@OddityArchive I remember it being called laser rot in the 80s, the name has stuck for a long time.
I have a slightly rotted laser disc but I cant find a player right now and a fine looking NTSC 8 inch LD. Luckily my PDO cd seems fine. For now.
I love the Laserdisc format that i still buy movies for and watch regularly i hate the name Disco Vision. Thank God Pioneer took over and changed to Laserdisc name.
Nice bid Ben also I want another emergency broadcast salute
I’ve said it before, it took six years to cobble together a Vol. 2 (2018), so that would put things on track for 2024.
Sorry I asked it was just I great video I love the eas and learning about it and you make your eas vids anything but boring
I'll make the egg salad sandwiches.
Bad laserdiscs are good for cutting records onto them.
heat will accelerate this and also is not good for or can damage even properly manufactured discs.
Looks like most of the Laserdisc manufacturers were lower-budgeted, discounted, dollar stored and bootlegged. (2:20, 5:44, 6:39, 7:39)
that anecdote at the beginning, it's such an internet thing to make a bad thing worse like that. sure, it's a problem and it affects everyone in different ways, but crying it out to be the END OF LASERDISC VIDEO like that is... no.
Have you done an episode on VHS tape mold?
Yes. th-cam.com/video/QoubnXGO4eY/w-d-xo.html
FWIW, on my Discovision titles, the frame number remains at 00000 throughout the Discovision opening logos.
Most of mine as well. That was by design at the time.
Later discs still have a section of black before the frame or time starts counting. I got a service remote just so I could play those sections. There's usually a few minutes of black at the end too beyond the "END" indicator. Some DiscoVision discs have color bars and weird stuff in that section.
I hope you put "A Touch of Love" on the archive...
One of the producers of First National Kidisc was also behind that one. They also did Party Games for Adults Only.
@RobCampo You'd be disappointed. It's mostly a fairly straightforward (and only very mildly erotic) how-to on massage.
OMG! Could this be happening to my 2002 DVD box set of the Back to the future movies? The first one won't play the movie but it does play the menu part. Bttf 2 does the same but it also says it's not of that region and it is. I've had that box set since 2002 when it was given to me on Christmas.
Hmm. I have that set. Maybe I should check it.
For what it's worth, I have yet to encounter any DVD rot.
This is the reason why when I borrow DVDs from the library or buy them used, I make digital copies so they don't crap out.
That release has well known issues. The latter two films have incorrect framing and heavy cropping! Time to upgrade!
People assume that all of the DiscoVision discs have laserot. My copy of Flash Gordon and CAV American Graffiti are fine. Just got a copy of 1984 Empire Strikes Back in yesterday from Japan, no OBI. Mild rot. The only one i have ever purchased that is multiple copies of rot and hard to find an pristine non rotten copy is ROTJ first issue Pan and Scan Japanese release. 5 out of 7 copies have some form of rot. Only 1 or 2 critical levels of rot. But it isn't a release i would recommend. The Evergreen and Special Collection, and 1995 CLV, and Definitive collection Japanese releases are all rot free.
I avoid those silver jacket Discovision titles like the plague. By far the worst one for me is Battlestar Galactica - almost unplayable at this point. When I checked my Blues Brothers copy semi recently it suffered the stuttering with the occasional light snow. I think it comes down to a matter of when on the Discovision titles and the odds are bleak.
@@Schush , well unless you need the CAV the same master was reused over and over for all of the CLV pan and scan copies of Battlestar. So getting a good one shouldn't be impossible. Laserdisc is much more robust than reported and the laser rot issue is overplayed. Its a problem sure, but i see DVDs from way less long ago having problems even playing and Laserdiscs from almost 40 years ago play like new. I mean until my laserdisc player dies, the fact there is no parts being made now and no repair shops is a problem.
Was laser rot ever a problem on DVDs? I don't think I ever had it on my DVDs and I know my CD games like playstation or PC games never had it.
Some dual-layer DVDs no longer play or freeze up in the middle. This was a HUGE problem with HD-DVDs also- I tried to collect every title on that format while it was being cleared out and ended up with more than 50 that freeze up or won't load at all, some of them were fine at first but developed rot later.
@@TheMediaHoarder Are you talking those two-sided DVDs? I have a few of the Warner Bros discs with the different aspect ratios on each side.
Haven't had a working DVD player for a while now
@@djhrecordhound4391 Each side of a DVD can have two layers- most movies over two hours use those. The first generation of players would freeze momentarily as the laser re-focused on the other layer, but it’s seamless on newer ones. These discs rot sometimes- there are a few discs with two layers on both sides, but there have been additional problems with those and they don’t seem to be made anymore which is a shame as they are cool when they work.
Yes i have unplayable sides on my Space Above and Beyond DVD set from FOX. It is out of print, I was pretty pissed i could only watch the episodes that played.
A tragic waste of early video media. Although, some films aren't worth saving. 😆
The Woodstock tune is th-cam.com/video/3Q3j-i7GLr0/w-d-xo.html
Punk of plastic? You talkin bout Yoko?
1:43 don’t you mean dual-sided?
DISC ROT **
Laser rot sucks.
3RD!
33 & A 3RD!!!!
2ND!!!
120TH!!!!
FIRST!!!
LAST!!!