Disc-rot. -It happens but it’s not as common as its made out to be. In my collection it’s only occured in 2 out of 500+ discs.
apparently xbox 360 discs were particularly susceptible.
A couple years ago I made a big project to rip all my DVDs.
Out of several hundred movies only 6 were unplayable. There didn’t seem to be a pattern to it either; age of the disc, wear or handling, big budget then current release or old movie slapped onto a disc in one of those cheap cardboard sleeves.
Out of my collection of TV shows on DVD, easily a quarter of the discs failed, and if one disc in a season of a show didn’t work most of them probably wouldn’t. Many had visible blotch marks in them. I figure they probably used a cheaper manufacturing process for TV shows where they were selling 3 to 6 discs rather than one, maybe two discs with a single movie on it.
and that’s why I left all my 360 games on top of the TV all these years. we rotate them out as coasters just to make sure they’re still getting used.
I’m old enough to remember people lying that compact discs were practically indestructible.
I think the early rounds of those trying to get people to switch to the format were motivated by the fact that tapes were easily recordable by everyone.
Prime motivation was getting the clients to buy their whole collection a second time.
I have Audio-CDs from the 80s that are still playing 40 years later. And I have CDs with deep scratches that also play without problems.
And I have PDO pressings of Faith No More albums that are almost 40 years old and have just started to rot. Common occurrence with PDO pressings apparently; one manufacturing error is all it takes.
Disk rot usually happens when air gets in contact with the reflective coating and oxidises it. With CD’s, it’s actually the top side you need to be worried about, as it’s right there under a thin lacquer coating. Any ding to that can expose the layer or just literally chip off a chunk of data.
At least on DVD’s it’s sandwiched inside the disk, so usually the only reason is a manufacturing error, and not really something the user can cause.
Plastic shopping bag: lasts 1000 years stuck in a bush outside a Tesco without breaking down
Carefully engineered storage medium stored in ambient temperature indoors in a case:
CRUMBLING
Yo ho, to the seas we go!!
This happened to about five of my 360 games. I was so disappointed when I set it up after YEARS and went to play old favorites and the discs were rotted…
Damn, I still have a collection of old 360 titles. I’m scared to open their cases.
This is one of my motivations for dumping my games and modding my consoles. Pull out Wii sports and it doesn’t work? No problems I’ll run it off usb.
There are so many high quality rips out there. Bothering to rip these yourself makes not much sense, unless its very obscure stuff.
It’s the letter of the law: media shifting is legal in some places where downloading a copy from an unofficial site is not. Also, there are people out there who would not have the first idea where to look for an existing rip.
I don’t know the situation in all of the countries, but the ones I know that allow you to make a copy of what you purchased also require that in making a copy you are not allowed to break any DRM. I don’t think there are many media being sold that do not include some kind of DRM these days.
Edit: agree that people may not know how to pirate stuff but ripping something in decent enough quality also requires quite specialist knowledge.
And a mix of available copies/qualities are better.
…unless its very obscure stuff.
That’s primarily why you’d be ripping stuff. There is so much stuff only available on VHS and DVD.
Most rips tend to apply some compression. Ripping them yourself will generally give you a better result unless you also intend to compress them.
obscure stuff.
Obi-Wan meme: That’s why I’m here
What about Linux? I’m a recent conver that was used to makemkv
I’m a fan of ARM. https://github.com/automatic-ripping-machine/automatic-ripping-machine
I run it in a podman container, passing my BluRay drive though. It rips automatically, and attempts to even lookup the metadata for the disk to file it properly. It’s not perfect, but it does work quite well. The only issue I have with it is it does a poor job on TV shows, but I’ve found nothing better, so it is good enough for me.
Makemkv supports linux, works great on linux to. https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=224
I love me some MakeMKV and Linux……sucks it’s in Russia. Oh well, thanks Mike!
Handbrake works.
I thought I needed makemkv to put it in handbrake. Have I been doing it wrong?
Handbrake can handle DVDs directly; you’ll need Make MKV for Blu-Rays.
Back them up while you can.
“Optical Media Bad”
Beer good!
Need to buy that 5th copy of the same media.
