[jccuneo@mail.bellsouth.net]

Maurice,


>I read a recent article (somehwere, can't bloody remember where now) which
>suggested that 10% of DVDs will decompose. It cited a few specific DVDs
>which people have reported as already decomposing.
Well that sounds like a manufacturing defect that needs to be corrected.  I 
would love to see the article if you can find it - I have not heard of a 
failure rate for DVDs anywhere near that. 10% failure rate is not that 
good.  That being said I have ~300 DVDs and had only one unreadable disc in 
the bunch.


>That said, it's hard to know what to believe about these things any more.
>They tell us that these things will outlive us if handled carefully. Who
>knows really. Personally I've started making copies of all my CDs. It's
>also better for when I leave them in the car - at least thieves can only
>steal a copy. Backing up all those Oils CDs is going to cost a bit though!
>
>To make this a bit more Oilsy though, I should mention the fact that one
>of my Oils discs is no longer playable. It was a Cd-single featuring The
>Dead Heart (Extended Version) which I think I bought off Ebay. I have
>played the disc about 3 or 4 times. Was recently going to make better MP3s
>from it, and found it virtually unreadable. It won't play in a standard CD
>player or a CD-ROM drive, and I could just about get MusicMatch Jukebox to
>rip it at between 0.1x and 0.2x. Which took I think 40 minutes or so to
>rip one song!
That is an old CD (what, '87?) - a good number of those had quality problems.


>Inspecting the surface of the disc I see no problems. There are no
>scratches, no fingerprints, and no dirt on the surface. The only anomaly
>with this disc is that I can see through it. It is possible to read the
>printed text on the label looking through the playing side. And I don't
>mean by holding it up to a light! My theory is that the reflective surface
>is too thin, and some of the laser light is actually passing through the
>disc rather than reflecting off it.
>
>It's a UK CBS release (if memory serves me correct.) Can anyone else
>report something similar.

I have a good number of those old Oily CDs, and can't remember having any 
that will not play.  I would not be terribly surprised if one of those 
vintage '87 or '88 CDs refused to play, though.  Have you tried a different 
player?  Some of those CDs get picky about what players will let them work 
right.

Take care.

Jacques