Posted by Connovar at proxy.cogeco.net on May 23, 2003 at 08:43:39:
....on Mallrats. I bought a copy (my VHS version tanked) recently at a local video store, brand new and when I played the movie it basically stopped at chapter 15 after getting jerky with pixels and missing footage. So, I take the disk out, examine it, I notice these weird scuff marks on the outer edge of the disc; scuffs that I couldn't duplicate if I was forced to. So, I ended up returning it as defective and had to reorder another copy.
A week later I go to pick up my new copy and even opened the disc in front of the clerk to make sure it wasn't one from a bad batch. Nada. It was clean. So I pop it into the player and chapter select #15 (the cheesy game show, with the beautiful Brandie). It starts to play normally, but then it get all jerky and the pixels come up, but it manages to struggle through. So I FF through the scene and it seems ok. I return to the beginning of chapter 15 and it played through to the end with only one small hiccup.
This was first for me regarding a quality issue and asked some movie buff friends who are rabid collectors. They even experienced on the odd disc and accounted it to poor recording as opposed to poor disc quality (unlike my first disc's scuff marks). I seriously hope the big names in the industry are producing, PURPOSELY, low quality discs in exchange for our hard earned bucks. Remember, these were brand new discs. Who's in charge of quality control over there? Bubbles?
Any technical insight or opinion on this matter would be appreciated.