DVD are rotting away on the shelf?
 

bob (photoartists1966@aol.com) is e-mailing you about
Interested in video conversion or restoration.

Message: Your article on the fact that DVD's are not rotting away on the shelf is full of shit. I have dozens that just quit working for no reason.

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Referring Page: http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/media/longevity.htm

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Today brought us another inbox gem. :rolleyes:

No Bob, sorry, but your information is wrong. Not just wrong, but a myth.

As we've stated many times on this site, DVD media and DVD readers (players/burners) are complex.

It's almost always one of these conditions:

- media was never checked to begin with, and was always a faulty of marginal burn
- damaged surface, including micro-abrasions invisible to human eyes (but a problem with the tiny 600-ish nanometer laser)
- aging readers, which now have issues with a marginal quality burn
- marginal readers, which always have issues reading burns or even presses -- and sadly, that's most of the DVD drives available in 2018, and is something we've warned about for more than a decade now (ie, the discs will outlast the availability of drives to read them)
- poor storage, especially when not temperature controlled (indoor home/office, with AC and heat)

... and there are more, but that's enough. That proves my point.

While discs will eventually degrade, such time frames are measured in decades, and again assuming the media was always good, always stored properly, never damaged. And it must be user in a known good burner. The idea that a disc evaporates on a shelf is simply wrong.

It really saddens me how society has devolved from scientific educated debate to monkeys flinging poo from behind a keyboard. Rather than have a discussion on the forum, you decided to email your vile. That's unacceptable behavior at this site.