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Apologies if this is addressed somewhere else, but I can't find it anywhere. In going though the discs I have for sale I found that both the original Criterion release of Pickup on South Street and 3/5 of WB's William Powell and Myrna Loy collection won't play in any player. I've tried them on four different players, and none of them will read the discs. I didn't find out about the Criterion until I sold it and the buyer did a return. None of the discs have any visible damage--they look like normal scratch free discs. Does anyone know what might be going on? Google turned up nothing.

This is a common issue with WB DVDs produced at a few different plants. We’ve definitely discussed it before, but I couldn’t find it either. In any case, the only way to test the disc is to check chapter by chapter, as often they freeze/become unplayable on layer switches

Look at the underside ring for IFPI numbers beginning with “2U” or “2F” or “60”, as these indicate they came from facilities with known high failure rate. Prioritize testing these

You won’t be able to get pressed copies, but you can contact WB customer service and they can send you DVD-Rs if the titles are in print via the Archive

There's some discussion after this post.

I've had some problems with Warner discs myself and I remember someone on this forum highlighting the Gangsters Collections as being particularly bad regarding disc rot (probably in yet another thread).

Thanks, Domino and martin!

If it helps you narrow down which Warner DVDs to check, I have a box full of defective ones and I believe (nearly) all of them were released in 2007 and 2008. I never tried to get WB to replace them with DVD-Rs because I wasn't sure the best way to contact them about this.

I recently bought a still-sealed copy of When the Levees Broke, only to discover that Discs 2 and 3 won't load on any of my devices, as if they were never encoded with any data at all. (Disc 1 plays fine.) I was wondering if this is known to be an issue with this title and if so whether there is any way to identify which copies are safe since I'd like to try buying a replacement.

Just checked mine and only the first disc would play. This is yet another example of why I've all but abandoned the hobby of buying Blu-rays/DVDs after more than a decade of annoying technical issues (some hardware-related but also many dead discs). I'll still buy the occasional Criterion blu-ray because they supply replacements when there's a problem on their end.

Being an HBO release, I think this is just part of that whole run of problematic Warner discs from that period, unfortunately.

Yeah, it looks like there were two DVD pressings for When the Levees Broke, one in 2006 and another in 2016. If you got the 2006 version, it probably has the rot and will have playback issues. My 2006 pressing of They All Laughed didn't work, no matter how many replacements I got (obviously), but once I figured out the problem, I grabbed the 2013 version and it played fine. That's the benefit of buying from retailers like Amazon - they'll take it back and refund you, and then you can click on the other version and snag it. Not sure where you got your copies, but hopefully there's some way to return, and with this knowledge you can avoid the hassle of continual replacements with no fix given that they're almost always going to be replacing with the same pressed edition

Just checked my copy of When the Levees Broke and it's dead too. Thankfully my copy of They All Laughed still plays fine.

Thanks for the information Therewillblus.

I must admit I'm reluctant to replace When the Levees Broke as there are a couple of recent reviews on Amazon complaining about discs not playing that are very recent.

From what I can tell, When the Levees Broke became a MOD title in 2016. I would assume any post-2016 copies don't have the same manufacturing errors that the original run had. The downside is that they will be DVD-Rs. I have to wonder if there are any actual pressed discs from 2006-2016 that were not defective, and if there's any way to identify them easily based on the outer packaging.

Sites like Amazon are horrible when it comes to trying to determine which edition of a disc you are actually purchasing, by the way. Amazon's listings for When the Levees Broke give little indication whether you're buying an MOD, one of the original 2006 editions (likely to be defective), or possibly a corrected repressing of the 2006 edition (if such a thing even exists). A site like Movies Unlimited at least gives an indication that you're buying an MOD. The recently posted customer reviewers on Amazon that Aunt Peg mentions would indicate that the defective 2006 box sets are probably still being sold as "new."

Independent sellers on Amazon and eBay are also often just as unhelpful, if not clueless, when it comes to known errors like this one. Many will list an item without being aware that the disc is, or could be, defective. I've tried PMing a few sellers in an attempt to verify that the discs play, and only got one helpful response. Most of those messages have gone ignored, and one seller responded to say they couldn't be bothered to check the disc they're selling.

Randomly, I did come upon a copy of a for-your-consideration screener for sale on eBay and bought this, mostly out of curiosity to see if it is pressed and playable. However it now occurs to me that it will probably have a watermark. ](*,) The search continues...

(Edited for typos)

My copy of When the Levees Broke is from 2006, and it looks as though I've just successfully ripped all three discs to MKV files (six in total: the four parts of the original film, the fifth follow-up part, and the Water is Rising stills gallery).

Certainly, spot checks suggest that everything's fine (running times are correct; corrupted files are often miles out), and I'd assume that an actual manufacturing flaw would have caused MakeMKV to throw in the towel when it comes to individual files being affected.

Interesting, Michael-- thank you. If you have a set with pressed discs that actually play, maybe there are more floating around out there!

A shame, it's possibly one of Lee's best films. (I've only seen it once from start-to-finish and have revisited sections of it later, but it's definitely one of my favorites, up there with Do the Right Things and 25th Hour.)

An HD master should exist - HBO began broadcasting in 1080i as early as 1999. A good Blu-ray upgrade would be a nice solution to these defective discs, but I guess someone like Criterion would have to do it.

Just an update to say that, after much trial and error, I succeeded in getting a good playable copy of When the Levees Broke, from the UK (Region 2). All three discs are pressed and play without any issues. I can only assume the Region 2 discs weren't subject to the error that rendered the Region 1 pressing defective. The packaging is slimmer than the US edition, too!

Several people onn Bluray.com are reporting their Shout Factory BDs of Psycho II from 2013 are dead.

MichaelB wrote: Fri May 12, 2023 2:17 pm My copy of When the Levees Broke is from 2006, and it looks as though I've just successfully ripped all three discs to MKV files (six in total: the four parts of the original film, the fifth follow-up part, and the Water is Rising stills gallery).

Certainly, spot checks suggest that everything's fine (running times are correct; corrupted files are often miles out), and I'd assume that an actual manufacturing flaw would have caused MakeMKV to throw in the towel when it comes to individual files being affected.

I'm running into the same issue others are having with this set, and strangely the only episode that doesn't rip properly is 4. 1-3 and 5 are just fine. I even got one of the DVD-R pressings from a local library to see if it was better than my own late 2000s DVD and it behaves just as strangely, possibly an authoring error. Any chance you'd be interested in sharing the MKV of that single episode (with commentary audio track) with someone who can't get it no matter how hard he tries?

My R1 copy of Annie Hall won't play fully. Bad luck? I've played it at least twice before.

This is way too late, but I should add my old DVD of The Hustler slowly began to have playback problems where one chapter was unreadable then the whole thing eventually failed to load. This was a very long time ago and I only held on to it because it was a dirt cheap and OOP DVD and I was planning on getting the Blu-ray (which I did).

denti alligator wrote: Sat Feb 22, 2025 2:46 am My R1 copy of Annie Hall won't play fully. Bad luck? I've played it at least twice before.

Interesting. My R1 copy of Manhattan, purchased in a combo with Annie Hall, now craps out two-thirds of the way through. Rewatched the Annie Hall disc not too long ago and it played fine, but maybe not for long.

It makes me queasy going down that unofficial list and seeing things that have no newer or alternative releases like the Astaire and Rogers sets, the Classic Musicals From the Dream Factory sets, the first two Forbidden Hollywood sets, the Looney Tunes Golden Collection sets, The Val Lewton set, Mr. Skeffington.

I was regretting selling my out-of-print Top Hat and Zabriskie Point DVD's before an upgrade actually happened, but now, not so much.

My disc of Payday (1973) refuses to play after the first hour. F@ckin' annoying!

The TCM 4 film sets should be safe to cover Astaire and Rogers at least. My copy of Top Hat went bad from the full Astaire & Rogers set, but I replaced it with the Warner Archive DVD-R.

I think the burned Warner Archive discs are a good way to go if you want back catalog DVDs from the problematic time period. I’ve never heard of anyone having trouble with them