Rot and rot ratings

[rein-o]

Was wondering, after watching a disc last night that has only 1 report of rot should lower rot reports be hidden
until it gets over something like 3 or 5 reports??

Its kind of crazy that something like this Killer, The: Special Edition #211 (1989) (Uncut) [CC1363L]

Has over 200 in collections and only 1 rot, that's less than 1%

I always felt that we need some type of rating for people who actually watch their LDs to show there is no rot.
I would gladly click on something to show I just watched a film and its X years old with still no rot.

[takeshi666]

Nah, I think the current stats should give you enough of a clue. The problem is the ratio of people who own them vs people who actually watch them with a critical eye/ear, and the actual level of rot reported. Some titles might have way more rotters out there, they just sit in collections unwatched because the owner got them in a big lot or something.

[deadlegion]

It's 0.5% reported but how many pressings exist?
I for one prefer not to take chances with reported rotters, unless I'm getting something for virtually nothing.

[signofzeta]

Most people can’t identify rot properly so if it’s showing one out of 200 then for sure I’m ignoring that one rot report. Rot is something mostly discussed by noobs and people who don’t buy the format and I’m not interested in their opinions.

[odotb3]

It would be interesting to have a more advanced rot rating section. It may be helpful in identifying certain aspects about rotters you might want to add to your collection. Like if you could add a short comment about how bad the rot is, if it only effects side 2 for 5 mins etc, could be very informative. My copy of Jumanji has rot on the beginning of side 2 and I lose picture and digital sound for about a chapter. Apart from that the disc is fine. This info could be of use/interest to someone but the only way I can currently report this is to grade it a 1. Thats it.

Unfortunately there are many films I want in my collection that are known rotters. I even own a few...

[signofzeta]

That would be good, actually. From a quick comment you may be able to determine if what they are describing is actually rot.

[jlehmusk]

If more accurate stats are wanted, we should be able to do multiple rot reports on same title. For example I have three copies of Heavy Metal. Two are rotten and one is good. I can only make one rot report per title per collection.

[rein-o]

Thanks for bringing this up.
Just got a disc in the mail, won't play at all on one player, skips and stutters all over half way on second player, third player is best but still
has skips and horizontal lines with nothing visual on the disc.

So how does this get rated for rot?????

[je280]

Do most people here not really know what the dreaded rot actually is?

There are quite a few titles that are known rot nightmares like Beauty and the Beast ~ Work in Progress, the US DADC Eraser & the like that are really hard to find perfect copies of & others where you may have to have two or three copies pass through your hands before you find a good one - others though are questionable on the rot reports.

A few years ago I had a bit of a debate with an LD collector about the PIONEER Japanese pressed Japanese 1996 release of THX 1138 which he was very unhappy about as he paid what he though was a high price for a great condition copy of & when it arrived he though it was "a f*@+ing rotter" when he played it. He had checked the rot report on it here & saw it is listed as a low probability rot risk disc with one person marking it as having light rot. Ready to get onto the seller for a refund as he had said he had played it & it was a good player - it was a good player.

At the start, particularly during the opening credits, there are coloured spots on the feature image - "there it is, it's a rotted disc" he insisted but it is a widescreen presentation & I pointed out that the black bars above & below the image were spot free. It took him a while to get his head round the fact that the black bars are part of the work done by Pioneer when mastering the feature for pressing. As the feature runs the spots are not as marked till no spots at all after a short while.

Would most users here not know that it was not rot causing the colour spots but the spots being on the source supplied to PIONEER? Perhaps the person who has marked this as having light rot has been unlucky & got a rotted copy but out of fifty five declared in collections & only one rot report would most people not see the title as a pretty safe bet?

Where more than one plant has pressed the discs for a release perhaps the plant that had the rot issue should be pointed out in the report making it easier for buyers to know what to look out for & what to avoid, very rare for all manufactures on same title pressings to get them wrong.

It would be interesting to know how many titles are wrongly reported but we are not likely to ever know.

[signofzeta]

That’s correct. Many users don’t know what rot is. Most LD users know about the existence of something called “rot” but most LD users live outside of the UK and don’t collect super early titles or PAL imports. I myself have encountered very very few rotters...I think two. Both were pre-1985. The only copies of Beauty and the Beast WIP I’ve seen play fine. New users (in 1990 and today) think every kind of defect is rot. Dirt in the stamper? Rot. Warped? Rot. Detective master? Rot. Two rolling dropouts on a 100 minute disc? That’s rot too.



Something else...this isn’t aimed at anyone in particular but a certain...genre of dude... If a guy buys one copy of Eraser and it’s rotted...and another that’s rotted, and another...that’s because his brain is rotted. Stop buying famously rotted copies of a famously rotten movie! Why the hell would anyone “try like hell to find a clean copy” of some terrible film that doesn’t rot in any other format? Use the brains God gave you and GIVE UP DUMMY. Why is THIS the challenge you’ve put upon yourself? Can I suggest sit-ups? Maybe Great Books? Because rare LDs that suck isn’t a good hobby for anyone. All that junk isn’t going to fit in your coffin, kid.

[takeshi666]

If a guy buys one copy of Eraser and it’s rotted...and another that’s rotted, and another...that’s because his brain is rotted. Stop buying famously rotted copies of a famously rotten movie!

Yeah, buy the Japanese release, at least it has a nicer cover!

[rein-o]

If a guy buys one copy of Eraser and it’s rotted...and another that’s rotted, and another...that’s because his brain is rotted. Stop buying famously rotted copies of a famously rotten movie!

Yeah, buy the Japanese release, at least it has a nicer cover!

Or just buy the DVD at a thrift store for a buck.

I have to say its a horrible film and can't really understand why anybody would want this in their collection, I think 6th day
is actually better, not by much.

[signofzeta]

There probably aren’t very many movies with A in it that I want to see. I was never that big of a fan of his fascist anti-human message in the first place but now that I know how it turned out...that he grew up and became governor of California and started signing actual death warrants...it’s too depressing. The violence fantasy becoming violence reality.

Bad guy appears. A-Bot says something that sounds like a toddler wrote it, but in a monotone marble mouthed way, uses some sort of weapon. Sound FX, guy dies, A-Bot drops another murderous toddler-ism. The shorter ones around A Bot that are still living swoon at his emotionless massiveness. We endure another 11 seconds of nothing at all so the cycle can repeat.

I’d rather throw a Bill Cosby - Michael Jackson film fest than watch those movies again. Maybe Conan...because in that one he plays the part he was made to play; a brain dead murder. And when his girlfriend dies his suffering is, honestly, totally convincing. That movie is almost perfect for what it is and he is perfect in it.

[je280]

I’d rather throw a Bill Cosby - Michael Jackson film fest than watch those movies again. Maybe Conan...because in that one he plays the part he was made to play; a brain dead murder. And when his girlfriend dies his suffering is, honestly, totally convincing. That movie is almost perfect for what it is and he is perfect in it.

Crom!

[takeshi666]

There probably aren’t very many movies with A in it that I want to see. I was never that big of a fan of his fascist anti-human message in the first place but now that I know how it turned out...that he grew up and became governor of California and started signing actual death warrants...it’s too depressing. The violence fantasy becoming violence reality.

Bad guy appears. A-Bot says something that sounds like a toddler wrote it, but in a monotone marble mouthed way, uses some sort of weapon. Sound FX, guy dies, A-Bot drops another murderous toddler-ism. The shorter ones around A Bot that are still living swoon at his emotionless massiveness. We endure another 11 seconds of nothing at all so the cycle can repeat.

I’d rather throw a Bill Cosby - Michael Jackson film fest than watch those movies again. Maybe Conan...because in that one he plays the part he was made to play; a brain dead murder. And when his girlfriend dies his suffering is, honestly, totally convincing. That movie is almost perfect for what it is and he is perfect in it.

You must be a blast at parties.

[signofzeta]

Well...probably not as much fun as the guy with 12 rotted copies of Eraser. That dude is a blast.

[danszld1138]

So (without searching), why don’t we have a rot report sub-forum or something where one can elaborate on the manner in which one identifies and reports in elaborate detail discs, movies, and factories with rot down to the history of the disc and the players involved and TVs used?

I recently fired up my CLD-505 and a few discs gifted from a friend and I thought the CLV disc was rotted a little as there were colored horizontal hash bars occasionally across the screen. It went away as the disc reached 50% or more played.

It also presented on side B the same way. Played a CAV disc and the noise was consistently in the same two scan lines, but also went away, but repeated on side B. Tried different discs. Same problem.

Tried a different player. It’s a player problem! (Look out for my Help thread on that issue when I get more data.).

Then I picked up a Berlin Music video disc and heard static sound on the analog audio in the second chapter/video. It went away after maybe 60s into the video. The rest of the disc was fine. I reported it as rot level 4 (audio) following the descriptions in the rot report page.

[signofzeta]

Rolling dropouts at the beginning of CLV sides is a very common thing. Technically this is a defect but it’s so common that experienced LD people don’t mention it. This is typically an issue with the quality of the pressing itself and not anything to do with rot. Many discs had rolling dropouts when new and they aren’t any worse decades later. Probably most CLV LDs have at least a minor version of this defect. CAV discs don’t…I think. Is that correct? I think it is. Someone check me on that, please.

This type of defect looks like white (not multicolored like rot) dots/lines shooting left to right. Analog players show them pretty profoundly, especially if the laser is getting old. Players with digital field memory minimize them somewhat. Players like CLD-99 sometimes hide them completely.

The same sort of defect can be present in other kinds of analog video so sometimes you’re seeing dropouts on your disc, sometimes you’re seeing dropouts from the master tape. If it’s on the master it will look the same on every player. If they get better or worse depending on what player then it’s just one of those many threshold phenomena you have to be OK with when it comes to antique electronics. The so-so disc and the so-so player combine for a so-so result but nothing is by definition “defective”. Some records have more hiss than others. This is very much like that.