Posting this under The Entertainment Board rather than Back to the Inkwell or The Warner Bros. Club because it does also apply to Live Action DVDs, even if I suspect our members are most likely to be affected via titles that could fall under those umbrellas.
In short a situation has been discovered in recent years that a number of DVD discs that were manufactured for Warner Bros at a particular manufacturing plant between from around 2005 to 2010 (arguably the format's golden age!) have a manufacturing fault that has caused them to stop working, in whole or in part, in recent years.
This YouTube video by Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader (good channel to follow if you are into Golden Age Films and Home Video History BTW) breaks down the situation.
He has also created a Google Docs master list of titles known to be affected.
These seem to have been mostly "catalogue titles", DVD releases of the studio's vast library of inhouse or acquired Golden Age films, but also some (then) contemporary TV shows like Entourage and Veronica Mars. The studio's (then) new film releases from that era seem to have been largely unaffected. Sadly for many of us here a lot of Animation releases were affected, including DCAU discs, Animaniacs, several of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection volumes and other vintage cartoon sets.
Please note if you have a copy of one of the items on this list, it does not necessarily mean that your copy has been affected, just that it could be. In some cases, there were later pressings of these discs when the plant was no longer being used, and they will be safe. But even if your copy was manufactured in that era it is (or at least seems to be) a case by case basis.
For me it's lucky I live in the UK, as most of my collection are Region 2 releases that I believe were manufactured elsewhere and thus do not fall into this danger zone. However I did import a few titles that were never released in the UK. So far I have checked (either by playing through in the background recently or performing a quick check):
- Popeye Volume 1: 1933-1938 Last few cartoons on the fourth/last disc seem not to work, nor some of the special features. Sadly John K's abysmal commentaries seem to be unaffected (no hindsight needed to evaluate those either)
- Tex Avery's Droopy 2 Disc Set Extras on the second disc seem not to work, but all cartoons are fine, can live with this as I believe they were pretty much puff pieces
- Tom & Jerry Spotlight Collection Volume 2 Seems to run perfectly fine. I bought these sets in around 2011 and I believe they were later pressings after it was discovered some censored shorts had been included by mistake, so may have been out of the danger zone
I've currently got Volume 2 and 3 of Popeye winging their way to me, so it wasn't the best time for me to really discover this! Hopefully they were manufactured a bit later or otherwise unaffected.
In short a situation has been discovered in recent years that a number of DVD discs that were manufactured for Warner Bros at a particular manufacturing plant between from around 2005 to 2010 (arguably the format's golden age!) have a manufacturing fault that has caused them to stop working, in whole or in part, in recent years.
This YouTube video by Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader (good channel to follow if you are into Golden Age Films and Home Video History BTW) breaks down the situation.
He has also created a Google Docs master list of titles known to be affected.
These seem to have been mostly "catalogue titles", DVD releases of the studio's vast library of inhouse or acquired Golden Age films, but also some (then) contemporary TV shows like Entourage and Veronica Mars. The studio's (then) new film releases from that era seem to have been largely unaffected. Sadly for many of us here a lot of Animation releases were affected, including DCAU discs, Animaniacs, several of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection volumes and other vintage cartoon sets.
Please note if you have a copy of one of the items on this list, it does not necessarily mean that your copy has been affected, just that it could be. In some cases, there were later pressings of these discs when the plant was no longer being used, and they will be safe. But even if your copy was manufactured in that era it is (or at least seems to be) a case by case basis.
For me it's lucky I live in the UK, as most of my collection are Region 2 releases that I believe were manufactured elsewhere and thus do not fall into this danger zone. However I did import a few titles that were never released in the UK. So far I have checked (either by playing through in the background recently or performing a quick check):
- Popeye Volume 1: 1933-1938 Last few cartoons on the fourth/last disc seem not to work, nor some of the special features. Sadly John K's abysmal commentaries seem to be unaffected (no hindsight needed to evaluate those either)
- Tex Avery's Droopy 2 Disc Set Extras on the second disc seem not to work, but all cartoons are fine, can live with this as I believe they were pretty much puff pieces
- Tom & Jerry Spotlight Collection Volume 2 Seems to run perfectly fine. I bought these sets in around 2011 and I believe they were later pressings after it was discovered some censored shorts had been included by mistake, so may have been out of the danger zone
I've currently got Volume 2 and 3 of Popeye winging their way to me, so it wasn't the best time for me to really discover this! Hopefully they were manufactured a bit later or otherwise unaffected.
I'd posted this back in 2016, over ten years ago!
