BassPig
1st January 2009, 08:39
I recently burned a "proof" disc for the purpose of checking menu functionality on an actual set-top player, as I usually do in the process of authoring and production.
This particular disc was left in the player over the weekend with the power turned on, so the title menu was looping all weekend.
A few days later, I noticed that the menu was getting 'hung' occasionally, but would eventually start to play again. I could still play the disc.
The following afternoon, I had some visitors over (the 2nd camera operator who assisted with shooting this concert video) and some other people. I attempted to show him the draft disc, and we watched a few minutes of the first half of the concert. Then we had dinner together and returned a few hours later, where I attempted to play a performance of interest on the second half of the concert. However, the menu was frozen and none of the remote's buttons could effect any change. All I could do was eject the disc and reload it. We waited a minute and the player came back with "cannot play this disc". I was rather stunned by this. The disc deteriorated from marginal to completely unplayable in a matter of hours!
Just to be sure it wasn't the player (A new Sony BDP-S301), I popped in some other DVD-R titles that we produced. All of them played without any difficulty.
The disc in question was tried again just a few minutes ago, and is still unplayable.
This incident really shook my faith in recordable DVDs. It seems that leaving them in the player for too long eventually erases the dye patterns recorded by the writer. This means that DVD-R media have a much shorter life than many users are led to believe (30+ years) and can be as short as a few dozen hours of play time.
In case anyone is interested, the brand of disc was Samsung BeAll, which is touted by the manufacturer as being suitable for government and medical records archiving.
This particular disc was left in the player over the weekend with the power turned on, so the title menu was looping all weekend.
A few days later, I noticed that the menu was getting 'hung' occasionally, but would eventually start to play again. I could still play the disc.
The following afternoon, I had some visitors over (the 2nd camera operator who assisted with shooting this concert video) and some other people. I attempted to show him the draft disc, and we watched a few minutes of the first half of the concert. Then we had dinner together and returned a few hours later, where I attempted to play a performance of interest on the second half of the concert. However, the menu was frozen and none of the remote's buttons could effect any change. All I could do was eject the disc and reload it. We waited a minute and the player came back with "cannot play this disc". I was rather stunned by this. The disc deteriorated from marginal to completely unplayable in a matter of hours!
Just to be sure it wasn't the player (A new Sony BDP-S301), I popped in some other DVD-R titles that we produced. All of them played without any difficulty.
The disc in question was tried again just a few minutes ago, and is still unplayable.
This incident really shook my faith in recordable DVDs. It seems that leaving them in the player for too long eventually erases the dye patterns recorded by the writer. This means that DVD-R media have a much shorter life than many users are led to believe (30+ years) and can be as short as a few dozen hours of play time.
In case anyone is interested, the brand of disc was Samsung BeAll, which is touted by the manufacturer as being suitable for government and medical records archiving.