8mm Forum: Blu Ray Disc Rot

This is topic Blu Ray Disc Rot in forum General Yak at 8mm Forum.

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Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on February 09, 2018, 11:03 AM:

Well I had hoped that Blu Ray discs would be immune from the disc rot experienced on many DVD's, as Blu ray discs are supposedly more resistant to damage. Unfortunately this is not the case. In the past month I have experienced two totally non playable blu ray's;

Cleopatra 50th Anniversary Edition, 20th Century Fox
- both discs non playable 2 years after purchase.

Patterns - The Film Detective, non playable 9 months after purchase.

I would like to know just how frequent this disc rot problem is, after all it is hard to believe that its just one or two discs failing here and there. More likely that a whole batch of discs are failing due to manufacturing defects. But of course the stores will not accept returns months or years after purchase, and the manufacturers will not replace them.

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on February 09, 2018, 11:23 AM:

I wonder if this is anything like the "DIVX fiasco of the past. Any of you folks remember that?

The DIVX (when they were competing with DVD) turned out to have only a certain number of viewings and then, they wouldn't play anymore.

Though they never stated publically, i wouldn't be surpised if Universal did this with some of they're releases on DVD, as i has two of the deluxe DVD versions of Alfred Hitchcock films (Vertigo/Rear Window) that had absolutely no wear to the surface of the disc at all and yet, both mysteriously stopped being able to play back! [Frown]

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on February 09, 2018, 11:37 AM:

That's the thing Osi, they suddenly stop playing, with no visible defects on the disc. It would be literally criminal if manufacturers are somehow incorporating a limitation on playtimes into the discs.

Posted by Graham Ritchie (Member # 559) on February 09, 2018, 11:42 AM:

So far Paul I have had no problems with any blu-ray discs and only had one DVD and that was "A Night To Remember" that failed and that was a import from the US years ago.

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on February 09, 2018, 11:53 AM:

The version of Cleopatra that I have is the beautiful collectors edition with the digibook. This version is hard to find now, and even if you can it costs about $50.00. So last night I went to Best Buy and got the regular blu ray version for $6.99 and have replaced these into the digibook.
The movie itself is truly spectacular. Cleopatra's entrance into Rome is just awesome, and the projected picture quality is truly stunning. That said, I am not a fan of these 4 hour epic's. Give me a good 90 minute film noir any day.
Graham, I also had A Night To Remember DVD fail on me. It was the Criterion edition, and I have now replaced it with Blu Ray version.

Posted by Rob Young. (Member # 131) on February 10, 2018, 02:44 PM:

Hi Paul, let's try and get to the bottom of this as I've only ever had a handful of DVDs fail in the last 20 years, and all with explainable reasons.

As this is quite worrying, do you mind me asking which player you are using?

Osi,

"Though they never stated publically, i wouldn't be surpised if Universal did this with some of they're releases on DVD, as i has two of the deluxe DVD versions of Alfred Hitchcock films (Vertigo/Rear Window) that had absolutely no wear to the surface of the disc at all and yet, both mysteriously stopped being able to play back!"

Not a chance that limited playback was implimented deliberately on a sell through DVD.

Although firmware in early DVD players could cause tantrums with some later DVD discs and vive versa, causing playback issues.

Osi, did you play the same discs on same or different machines?

That's why the ability to firmware upgrade Blu-ray players is so useful in this day and age.

Also, Paul, as I'm sure you know, Disc - Rot is a term originally developed to explain the decomposition of the adhesive layer on analogue Laser Disc system and render some unreadable, so I think we need to explore this further before jumping to the conclusion of disc degradation?

Although the term was subsequently applied applied to physical failure of CD, DVD, etc. Disc - Rot is usually visible upon the media playback areas.

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on February 10, 2018, 04:05 PM:

Hi Rob,
The blu ray player is a Panasonic DMP-BD60 purchased in 2009. I am going to take the defective discs over to my Grandson and see if they play on his just purchased Sony blu ray player.

Posted by Rob Young. (Member # 131) on February 10, 2018, 04:26 PM:

Paul, good idea to test the disc on a new player.

As your machine is 2009 it could be either a v1.1 or v2.0 profile Blu-ray machine.

All v2.0 Blu-ray machines can use Ethernet or Wi-Fi to upgrade their internal firmware.

All v1.1 machines require a physical upgrade by downloading the newest firmware from the manufacturer's website and loading it into the player's disc draw as a physical image disc.

If the disc plays on your Grandson's machine, all may not be lost.

Do you know if your machine has had a recent firmware upgrade?

I have a fantastic 2009 Pioneer machine that is v1.1 but still plays everything back beautifully, barring one or two discs that present a software conflict.

http://av.jpn.support.panasonic.com/support/global/cs/bd/download/bd60/bd60_euro.html

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on February 10, 2018, 04:49 PM:

Thanks for that link Rob. Right now I view firmware updating as a last resort - I am sure a lot could go wrong and I might end up with a totally non-working player. But if these discs play perfectly on my grandsons player, I will give it a go.

Posted by David Hardy (Member # 4628) on February 10, 2018, 05:58 PM:

If its any compensation I too had this problem with some new Blu-Ray discs that simply refused to play. Even though they had played previously.

All my Philips player needed was a software upgrade to the latest version I downloaded from the internet and transferred onto a USB stick then into my player.

Problem solved !

I hope this is all you need to do as well.

Even though its still a mystery to me why they played before then would not. My player came up with an " Unknown Disc " message. All is fine now though and I can now watch SKYFALL and my Complete "BOND 50" box set and even the good old SOUND OF MUSIC again. [Wink]

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on February 10, 2018, 11:33 PM:

Thank you David, that is very encouraging news. [Smile]

Posted by Rob Young. (Member # 131) on February 11, 2018, 03:15 AM:

Paul, if you go to the Panasonic web site and make a CD carrying the upgrade, it is very unlikely for things to go wrong.

Back in the day, HD DVD players were notorious for "bricking" when performing firmware upgrades, but I think this is very unlikely with your machine.

Updating the firmware is fairly standard practice these days, so all should be well.

I see there is a firmware upgrade as late as 2015 for your Panasonic, so definitely worth doing, even if just to assure correct playback of new discs.

It can be a lengthy process, up to 20 minutes using a disc as the upgrade source, with the machine switching on and off several times, but nothing to worry about.

Version 2.0 machines that have wifi enabled just look for any current upgrades and inform you when one is available, taking minutes to upgrade, although as Blu-ray has become more standardised, fewer upgrades are now required.

If you have never upgraded the firmware from new, I won't hesitate to do it now.

[ February 11, 2018, 07:45 AM: Message edited by: Rob Young. ]

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on February 11, 2018, 11:23 AM:

Thank you so much for your help and advice Rob. Your reassurance has encouraged me to attempt a firmware upgrade by downloading the file to my PC and then copying to a CD. The instructions say to decompress the file - will two left clicks on the mouse do that?
This blu ray player was quite expensive back in 2009, around $300.00 as I recall. It is a really nice unit, quite large by today's standards, but I like it that way, with build quality much better than the little boxes with flimsy trays of today's blu ray players. It looks good in my A/V rack.

Posted by Rob Young. (Member # 131) on February 11, 2018, 12:17 PM:

Paul, bit busy tonight, but first thing tomorrow morning I'll run myself through the download new firmware for your player and be in a better position to advise.

As long as your PC can burn CDs you should be ok.

I've upgraded my 2009 Pioneer numerous times over the years.

I'm also running a Panasonic BMP-BDT460 for the last couple of years on my JVC DILA projector, which cost about £180.00 and thus far has been totally reliable.

I rent Blu-ray discs which my £600.00 Pioneer jitters with, purely because of marks or finger prints on the disc, but this Panasonic has proved totally flawless even with noticeably marked discs.

The Pioneer is marvelous with brand new discs, although I have found a couple of discs ("Jaws 2", for example...who'd have thought...) that will not play correctly on it, but will on the Panasonic.

I'm also running a £60.00 Panasonic Blu-ray player on my TV just out of interest and thus far it is OK.

Posted by Stuart Reid (Member # 1460) on February 11, 2018, 01:06 PM:

Paul, the lasers in modern CD/DVD/BD players are absolutely crap and are known to fail quite rapidly, this can cause some odd behaviour, such as suddenly failing to play certain titles. Eventually the machine stops playing all titles. Sometimes this will only affect the blue laser for BD, sometimes the red laser for CD/DVD and sometimes both. This happened to me with a 3 year old Pioneer BDP-450 which was very annoying as it is one of the only machines that will also play SACD and DVD-A discs, of which I have a few.

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on February 11, 2018, 01:24 PM:

Dont half make super 8/16mm easy all this.
So far we have not experienced any problems playing any DVDs or Blu Rays but it is early days. [Wink]

Posted by Rob Young. (Member # 131) on February 12, 2018, 06:38 AM:

Paul, I followed the instructions and was able to make a CD of the upgrade.

My only thought is to Google the Panasonic site where you are to ensure you get the US upgrade, not the Europe one just in case.

PS. Tom, I thought the Elmo GS1200 v3 had a firmware upgrade available...could be wrong. [Wink]

lol!

Stuart, try Richer Sounds for their 5 year warranty which only costs about £15.00

My friend had his 4 year 11 month old player replaced with a brand new one when it failed!

Posted by Stuart Reid (Member # 1460) on February 12, 2018, 12:59 PM:

Good old Richer Sounds! Yes I'll give them a go. I'm after the Sony X800 4k universal disc player

Posted by David Ollerearnshaw (Member # 3296) on February 12, 2018, 03:57 PM:

Don't we have a 'six' year rule in the UK? If you can prove a defect that affects a lot of machines the manufactures can still be responsible for repair.

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on February 13, 2018, 09:30 AM:

Well I was able to download the firmware update file and copy it to a CD, but the player would not perform the update, posting the message "unsupport". Not sure where to go from here, since I know the firmware has not been updated since 2010, and that was using a CD supplied by Panasonic, and the latest update is 2015, so the player should not reject it.

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on February 13, 2018, 11:58 AM:

Rob ...

Yes, I have tried to play the above mentioned discs on various DVD players, my more modern bluray players, (I'm on number two already, as I have used them for playing my DVD's as well as limited collection of blurays), AS WELL AS even attempting to playback on my various PC's over the years, ranging from windows XP to my more modern Windows 8 (Haven't upgraded to Windows 10) ...

I should also be mentioned that at least, in my case, it only appears to have happened with Universal DVD's and not any other company. I mean, I have bargain bin dollar DVD's that still play after all these years, (cheap cartoon collections from walmart) nd yet, these official Univeral DVD's are the only ones that I have ran across that have this problem ...

but i must confess that, in a matter of speakibng, this whole post is rather moot on my part, as i have beautiful bluray copies of both films now. Come to think of it, I really don't know why i still have these silly DVD's lying around.

OSI, the packrat? [Smile]

Posted by Rob Young. (Member # 131) on February 13, 2018, 03:03 PM:

Paul, strange it doesn't work as it should be quite straight forward.

I know you will have, but assuming you tried this;

http://av.jpn.support.panasonic.com/support/global/cs/bd/downloa d/bd10/ftp_v2/BD_Firmware_Update_Procedure.pdf

Only other thing I can think is that, as I mentioned, it is region specific, so try going for the update via this;

http://av.jpn.support.panasonic.com/support/global/cs/bd/download/bd60/index.html

Did you have any success with playback on your Grandson's machine?

It does seem as though your machine is saying no upgrade is necessary with the UN SUPPORT message.

Odd. Still, no harm done, although of course that doesn't help with your playback issues.

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 892) on February 13, 2018, 04:53 PM:

Paul, did you have a chance to try these discs in other players? First thing that came to my mind was also your player's laser deteriorating.

Posted by David Hardy (Member # 4628) on February 14, 2018, 05:24 AM:

Paul does your player not have a USB input on it ?
This is the way I uploaded my latest software upgrade to my player.

I downloaded the file from the web onto a file on my computer.
Then transferred it onto a USB stick.

Posted by Rob Young. (Member # 131) on February 20, 2018, 04:15 PM:

Hi Paul, I'm assuming that given your disappointment with the firmware upgrade that you're going to leave this alone for now, which is fair enough, but it would be still be nice to eliminate disc failure.

Did you try the culprit discs on your Grandson's player at all?

Still don't understand the firmware upgrade failure, but I'm still looking into it for you!

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on February 22, 2018, 07:42 PM:

Well the good news is that the discs are all fine, they played perfectly on my Grandsons's Sony blu ray player, which was purchased a couple of month's ago.
So either my Panasonic player needs a firmware update, or it is in some kind of failure mode. DVD'S still play fine, but some of my blu rays will not play at all, or lock up. I suspect a failure in the player since these blu rays played fine a few months ago. I have not been able to upgrade the firmware. So I guess it's time for a new blu ray player.

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 892) on February 22, 2018, 09:39 PM:

Blu Rays are quite a bit different in manufacture than DVDs, but thought I should note that we just had our DVD of "Finding Nemo" fail in multiple players. Looks brand new to the eye. And the Disney DVD Replacement Program was shut down a couple of years ago.

So I hope Blu Rays never get like this.

Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on February 23, 2018, 03:24 AM:

Strangely just On Her Majesty's Secret Service from the Bond Blu-ray set refused to play in my older player attached to my DLP projector. It was OK on a cheaper, newer model in my dining room.

Posted by Phil Murat (Member # 5148) on February 23, 2018, 05:42 AM:

Hello,

Just for my information, for those who are experiencing misfunctionning for Blu-Ray playing in first generation "Blu-Rays" players :

- Did you attempt to upgrade Firmware players ? (This is a bit "tricky", but sometime , very helpfull)

- If you transfer concerned "Blu-Ray" on a Hard Drive, created File does it launch properly ?

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on February 24, 2018, 12:44 PM:

Well the plot thickens!
I have now successfully downloaded the latest Panasonic firmware into the player, but these particular BR discs still will not playback, and are not recognized by the player, even though they play fine on my Grandson's new Sony BR player.
So we know the discs are fine, and they played fine before on my own player. So this whole thing is a real puzzle.
I suspect a new BD player will solve the problem, but I hate to throw out this nice Panasonic unit.

Posted by Graham Sinden (Member # 431) on February 24, 2018, 12:56 PM:

Paul,
Maybe there is nothing wrong with the firmware. Maybe its just the laser has lost some of its power and cant read certain discs anymore. I had a similar problem on a DVD recorder where the laser couldn't always read discs or record them without errors. In the end I had to dump the recorder as I couldn't find a replacement laser easily.

Graham S

Posted by Mark Todd (Member # 96) on February 24, 2018, 04:40 PM:

I used to have playback issues but moved over to sony players.

Seemed to be a good jump in picture quality as well.

Vastly improved the VP experiance.

I also like the synch adjust they have.

Best Mark.

Posted by Rob Young. (Member # 131) on February 25, 2018, 01:36 PM:

Paul, how did you eventually update the firmware?

This isn't a great situation for you, but at least it isn't disc rot.

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on February 26, 2018, 02:57 PM:

Hi Rob,
Downloading to a CD did not work, for whatever reason. So I gritted my teeth and plugged my computer LAN cable into the Panasonic BD player, and pressed 'firmware upgrade' on the menu. Lo and behold the latest firmware was installed perfectly. I thought for sure that I had the problem solved, but it made no difference at all. For whatever reason, these 3 discs will not play at all, even though they are fine on my grandson's Sony player.

Posted by Rob Young. (Member # 131) on February 27, 2018, 09:32 AM:

Well, not the best outcome Paul, but at least on the positive side the discs are OK.

Over the last few years I've being renting Blu-rays each week as there are few new movies I'd want to own. It's like having your own cinema in that you see a new movie each week or so and if it's poor, no problem, the rental is quite cheap...and if it's great, you've seen it on the big screen in a cinema environment.

Problem was, a lot of the rental discs just stuttered or failed on my older Pioneer (it's so far still perfect with any new disc) due to any even slight blemish on the disc, despite cleaning.

I bought a the new Panasonic specifically to run the rentals and thus far (two years or so in) it has been totally flawless.

Pioneer was about £600.00 back in the day and the Panasonic was under £200.00

The rare odd issue with new discs on the Pioneer (that Jaws 2 disc for example) was definitely software / hardware related as it loaded fine but jus won't access the menu...perfect on the Panny.

Looks like we may need to keep saving to replace our Blu-ray players every few years... [Frown]

Not film projectors are they... [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on February 27, 2018, 10:59 AM:

I think the Blu Ray function of the player may be failing. Last night I showed the Blu Ray of Rear Window and it hung up about half way through. Maybe, as Adrian suggested, the blue laser is losing power. So I am pretty well resigned to having to purchase a new player. Another throw-away item that cannot be repaired economically! [Frown]

Which is exactly why our film projectors will keep chugging along for decades - most of the time they are easily fixed and are very durable in comparison with digital video equipment.

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