Disc Rot Reported On Blue-ray Discs

Filed under ‘Sure is good NOT to be an early adopter of this technology’ is this notice and confirmation of non-exclusivity of ‘laser rot’ on some Sony Blue-ray movie titles.

This is similar to the rot that was found on the original 12″ Pioneer LaserDiscs years ago. The cause then was found to be semi-permeable plastic coatings on the discs which were allowing oxidation of the aluminum substrate. The oxidation would cover large areas of the disc, rendering them useless.

The same thing happened to early CDs, but was resolved a few years ago. There are, however, those who still say that the problem was not completely fixed, and thus began a small market for discs with the substrate material made of gold, which does not oxidize.

Perhaps Sony will replace the substrate material with gold on the Blue-ray discs, which should, as a side benefit, have lower error rates, as it is more malleable. This might actually justify the high cost of the discs.

[tags]laser rot, Blue-ray DVD, Sony, oxidation, substrate layer, Pioneer LaserDiscs[/tags]