CD Rot
From the “Who Knew?” department, this article about CD and DVD longevity notes that it is much easier to damage a disc from the top (label) side of CDs than from the bottom.
I’ve certainly noticed a bit of rot in my collection. U2’s Achtung Baby, purchased circa 1992, no longer plays right through on any CD player.
More notably though, it seems like DVDs are particularly susceptible to damage. Stand-alone DVD players are decent at masking errors, but my computer’s DVD player regularly chokes on rental DVDs, occasionally even to the point of crashing the computer. Rentals obviously see a lot more abuse than individually-owned DVDs, but we’re still talking new releases here. It isn’t hard to scratch a 50ยข piece of plastic.
This may not be news to anyone except the author of the article, but technology isn’t a panacea. And though paper is easy to smudge or burn, it doesn’t get hurt when you drop it on the floor, or stack it in a pile. I’m sure librarians have been telling us this for decades now, but data longevity is going to be — probably already is — a massive problem. In our relentless search to make things cheaper, and more productive, we inevitably skimp on quality. Grandpa’s old 78s will last a lot longer than Junior’s Christmas 2003 custom-burned reggae mix CD.
Previously: Why, I Could Just Melt
Subsequently: Writers in the Sky
Comments
I’ve had to stop renting DVDs because of how the scratches wreck my movie-watching experience. Even on my [Sony] stand-alone player freezes or starts skipping around on rented DVDs. The result is that I end up missing parts of the movie because certain portions of the DVD are lost. It’s extremely maddening, and even the satisfaction of demanding my money back at the rental store and succeeding still does not make up for the fact that I wasn’t able to watch the entire movie.
— Patrick | May. 7, 2004 — 11 AM
Grandpa?s old 78s will last a lot longer than Junior?s Christmas 2003 custom-burned reggae mix CD.
Not only that, but when some two-bit punk breaks into your house he won’t bother to steal the vinyl or the turntable.
— Tedd McHenry | May. 12, 2004 — 10 AM
but it looks like cd will not have much future anyway more like compactflash and sd card and they at least have multicard reader music cd s you can always change them too mp3 file and put it in a expenicvie (hopfuly mean quality )mp3 player (machins normal dont broke after 10-15 years if you lucky they can last 20 years and put them mp3 player in a box and not use it before alle the cd s are broken maybe not a conicedes that dvd dont last more then 10 years since they going to realse a hd dvd (that have twice the space and you can record one) next year maybe you should buy a new expensiv hd dvd palyer and a bunch of dvd record sp you get quality
— hansrn | Jun. 3, 2004 — 10 AM