What Is Disc Rot? Physical Media’s Greatest Boogeyman Explained

Imagine it: you’re spending a quiet Saturday evening at home, and instead of endlessly searching around a broken algorithm for something to watch on one of 12 streaming services, you simply head over to your shelves to pick out a DVD, Blu-Ray, or 4K Ultra HD disc to view. Maybe it’s a movie you just bought within the last few weeks, or maybe it’s a disc that’s been in your collection for many years. In either case, you get your snacks together, turn off the lights, pop the disc into your player and begin watching. You’re having a ball, delighted at how crisp the picture is and how robust the sound is, and you’re so engaged in the film that it’s almost a shock when, 45 minutes or so into the movie, the disc begins to skip. You try it all — pause and restart, stop and restart, rewind a bit, fast forward a bit, eject the disc and wipe it with a cloth, and so on, but nothing works. Movie night is officially ruined.

As distressing as this is, it’s even more upsetting that not only can this scenario be a common occurrence (it happened to me just a couple weeks ago), but that there really isn’t one solid explanation for it. Physical media has rightfully been lauded for several years now as a superior alternative to streaming media, if for no better reason than it’s one of the last remaining bastions of legitimate ownership of art; where streaming services and digital purchases can (and have) been subject to change or removal without warning, owning a disc means that your movies or TV shows will always be available whenever and however you wish. Yet physical media has its flaws, too, and while the largest issues are storage and cost, the problem of faulty discs is perhaps the most troubling, simply because there isn’t one single cause of it that can be easily avoided.

People crave control and certainty in life, though, and as such, a name for this problem has been created: disc rot. It’s a condition that is real enough to have its own Wikipedia page, which describes the issue as “the tendency of CD, DVD, or other optical discs to become unreadable because of chemical deterioration.” A cursory search online reveals dozens of photographs of discs suffering from this condition, with various visible defects apparent. Recently, JoBlo editor in chief Chris Bumbray declared that a number of his old DVDs released by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment in the mid-’00s have demonstrated signs of disc rot, a problem which the company itself has essentially admitted has merit. Although this appears to be a widespread and verifiable issue, there’s a larger problem still unaddressed: namely, that disc rot has been a bogeyman among physical media enthusiasts for quite some time, and it’s not the catch-all explanation we need for the rampant manufacturing and playback defects that still plague optical discs to this day.

As the JoBlo piece and several others have reported, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment released a statement saying that the company “is aware of potential issues affecting select DVD titles manufactured between 2006 – 2008,” and that they’re “actively working with consumers to replace defective discs.” As I said, this would seem to confirm that these discs are indeed plagued by disc rot, only that term isn’t anywhere to be found in the statement. Sure, this could simply be a case of corporate language covering all bases, but I believe it speaks to the larger issue that there are many various defects with optical discs that neither the consumer nor the manufacturer can quantify at this time. In other words, while disc rot can and does happen, it’s not the only reason why your discs may be experiencing playback issues.

Because of this uncertainty, the issue of disc rot has grown in stature from a rare but possible occurrence to essentially a scapegoat among physical media enthusiasts. It’s become something used as a misdiagnosis for a variety of problems, the way one might say they simply have a bad cold instead of knowing for sure whether they have the flu, or COVID-19, or something else. While the end result is basically the same, the handwave reaction doesn’t cure the disease.

People can’t really be blamed for using disc rot as a generic term for a faulty disc, however, because the reasons for a faulty disc are seemingly completely arbitrary. In my own personal experience, having collected optical disc physical media for about 25 years now, I’ve run across numerous instances of discs that look like they wouldn’t play properly playing just fine, and the opposite problem, where a pristine-looking disc has numerous playback issues. Sometimes it’s more of a player issue than a disc issue, which can be hard to troubleshoot. There are a lot of physical media fans who will cite bad packaging as another possible source of faulty products, where everything from discs coming loose and rattling around inside a box during shipping to discs stacked on top of one another to discs fitted inside a tight cardboard sleeve design have been blamed for causing problems. WBHE’s statement implies that a manufacturing defect may be the root cause of this deterioration those particular releases are now experiencing. This makes maintaining a collection extra frustrating: even if you’re the most conscientious collector, you’re not safe from issues cropping up that you don’t know the actual cause of and cannot fix.

None of this would be as frustrating as it is if there were an easy, quick, foolproof way to determine whether a disc in your possession is faulty or not. The problem is, there’s only one way to be absolutely certain of this, and that’s to actually watch every bit of material on a disc. Of course, that’s a time commitment that no one wants to sign up for, nor should they be made to. Even the shortcut way of doing this — popping a disc in, seeing if it loads, briefly selecting the film and each bonus feature and skipping through all the various chapters — is time consuming, and still ultimately inconclusive. Yes, the most broken discs reveal their true colors without too much fuss, but some act perfectly fine until you’re an hour and 20 minutes into a three-hour film, and then bust.

Again, this could be alleviated if you were able to simply flip your discs over and give them a quick glance, but this is yet another inconclusive method of checking discs for issues. Only the most extreme instances of disc rot present themselves in the way that those photos online demonstrate, with clearly warped and corroded material. In most cases, your discs will look fine to the naked eye, but only show issues if placed under a very bright and direct light source. In other cases, you might see some nasty-looking scratches, discolorations, or other defects, and yet the disc might still play through perfectly. In still other cases, a disc might not be read by one of your players, but work fine on another (and that’s assuming you’re affluent enough to own multiple disc players).

Despite the availability of things like special cloths, cleaning kits, and other such accessories, there’s simply no guaranteed way for consumers to fix a faulty disc. Sometimes a quick wipe will solve the problem, other times no amount of cleaning will work. In some instances, there might be an encoding issue that is even further beyond the buyer’s control, such as an issue I had with a recent boutique release which will not load on a PS5 disc player (when contacted for support, the manufacturer denied their responsibility, citing their policy that they could only guarantee their discs would work on “dedicated Blu-Ray players”). In all instances, the only thing close to a guaranteed solution for a faulty disc is to return your copy and exchange it for a new one — assuming, of course, you aren’t talking about a film sold as a strictly limited edition, something that’s becoming increasingly common as physical media phases into a collectors-only market.

Compounding the problem of disc rot and other manufacturing defects is that there’s seemingly no real culpability in place for the industry anymore. First and foremost, it’s unclear how many optical disc manufacturing plants are left in the world, given that the demand for physical media once commanded has dwindled from its heyday thanks to the rise of streaming. Folks on message boards tend to cite four major remaining facilities as operational: Sony DADC Austria, Sonopress Germany, Vantiva Mexico, and Vantiva Poland. Still others with supposed insider knowledge claim that most boutique physical media companies (Arrow Video, Shout/Scream Factory, Criterion, etc.) utilize the Vantiva facility in Guadalajara exclusively, perhaps because Vantiva used to be Technicolor (a legacy film industry company that’s steadily dying, by the way). Whether today’s discs are being made at just one or one of four facilities, it’s become clear that the standards for quality control need to be raised.

There’s not a lot of hope to be had that it’ll happen; after all, if this widespread disc rot affecting WBHE DVD’s involves discs made in the mid ’00s, which was during physical media’s golden years, what kind of treatment can we expect during this current age? While there’s not much we can do regarding what materials are used to make discs these days, we can certainly ask for smarter packaging, with more care and attention paid to placing discs inside new releases. Hopefully, this will cut down on instances of a new 4K UHD or Blu-ray showing up with scratches all over it as soon as you open the case, and other such easily avoidable issues. Physical media fans have unfortunately become notorious for loudly and vociferously taking issue with many aspects of new releases recently (you should see the comment sections regarding box art and slipcovers, good lord), so hopefully they can put that energy toward an area that really needs help, which is keeping discs fully functional for as long as possible.

Because, despite all the aforementioned problems, physical media remains the absolute best way to enjoy film and television. Not just in terms of picture and sound but also in terms of its wide range of variety, with releases ranging from the dawn of cinema to the present day, from the most obscure indie titles to blockbuster hits. The majority of the mediums aren’t just entertainment, but art, and if all art is political, then it’s also history. Having knowledge of history doesn’t just make art better, but life as a whole. 

Let’s try and get rid of disc rot and all these other issues to help stop humanity from rotting, too.