Re: DVD Rot


"Edward Cowling London UK" <edward@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:tDo+bfDLcnbIFw2N@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

No it's not a myth and if you search on google you'll find quite a few
people are very worried about it.

One of the discs in my Season 3 of Buffy set has gone yellow and refuses
ti play the last two episodes on the disc.

We were all told these sets that cost about £60/70 quid would last
forever and yet in under 10 years they are breaking down and becoming
useless.

I've VHS tapes that are 20+ years old and play perfectly, so was it
really a great leap forward in technology or a huge con trick ?

I'm certainly not going to rush out a buy any more DVD box sets.

--
Edward Cowling "Must Go - The Gimp Just Escaped !!"


You're essentially correct.

I think you've alluded to some of the main problems later on in
this this thread.

The fact that for a CD/DVD to work correctly the reflective coating has
to remain totally refective and stay attached to the plastic.

Having to coat the plastic with an additional reflective coat is simply
giving a hostage to fortune.

As is having a File Allocation Table table or eqivalent right at the very
start of the track. A disaster waiting to happen. If the FAT is lost the
disc is lost

With a tape you can cut it in half - stick the two halves each in a new shell
as I've done more than once, and still play both halves with about 20 seconds
total loss. As there's no FAT at all. Whats on the tape is what you get.

Same with proprietory software which may have been used to burn muli session
CD's or DVD's. And problems reading discs in various machines.
Same as began to happen with floppies in new and older
machines where the drive heads were at various stages of wear .

This is something which never happens IME with VHS or audio tape. If
a tape plays in one it will play in them all. If there's any noise evident
then a quick five minutes with the Q tips and isopropyl alcohol to
clean the heads, is all that's needed. And so much easier with modern
machines - just undo four screws and flip off the lid.

I take as I find. A succession of bad experiences with data CD's in
the early days - all single session writes no labels and correctly stored
- and all coasters within 3 months - none of which problems seemed to feature
in the press convinced me to stay well clear. Later the bull*** industry got
into full gear - try different makes with different machines - different coloured
backing etc etc. Try storing them in the dark at low temperature. It then turned
out that if you bought around 20 diferent makes of player and ran 5 different
recovery programs on each of them you might eventually be able to recover
most of the stuff on the caosters.

As with laptops - which totally override all the sound advice about posture
and avoiding subsequent backache from er' around 15 years ago - and plasma
tellies which surprise, suprise can't actually fill- in detail on a 36"
screen which wasn't there to start with, IMO its just a way to flog stuff
which takes up far less retail space to an undiscriminating and poorly informed
market.


michael adams




in the absence of any










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