If you’re a fan of collecting old DVDs, then it might be time to take a look at your collection to see how well they’re holding up. Recent news reports from Ars Technica have revealed that some older DVD titles from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment have experienced a type of rot, destroying the disks and preventing playback.
Though DVDs are designed to last at least 30 years, a manufacturing defect has vastly shortened the lifespan of some of WBs 2006-2008 releases. Though WB is offering a replacement for some of these titles, losing right for some media means a direct replacement for others is impossible.
As collectors everywhere work through their libraries to track down any problems, this issue raises other questions about media preservation. Is there really such a thing as permanent media, and what can be done by users and companies to maintain the life of existing products?
Nothing Physical Lasts Forever
The simple fact of storage media is like everything else in life, it won’t last forever. Everything degrades over time, and while different mediums have different degradation rates and environment matters, destruction is inevitable.
As stated above, properly printed DVDs which are stored and maintained will can last at least 30 years, in some cases up to 100. As noted by Scan Café, older storage media like VHS tapes tend to deteriorate around 10-20% over ten to 25 years, but tend to be more climate-dependent. A video game cartridge might last up to 50 years, and a floppy disk could reliably reach up to 20. Each have different lifespans, but all ultimately meet the same fate.
Evolution and Transference
While this might seem all doom and gloom, the issue is largely solvable through thanks to the strengths of digital media. Unlike analog systems which degrade after each copy, a digital duplicate can be a perfect match of the original. In other words, as long as you keep changing where digital data is stored to newer drives, it remains intact.
The ability to transfer plays the first part, but just as important is the ability to play the media. Since digital media needs software to play, if the software isn't maintained, the media can become inaccessible.
This was an issue faced by thousands of online casino games with the death of the Flash platform, where evolution became the key. When Flash died, titles like Slingo games updated their software to run on HTML5 instead. This made titles like Arcade Pop and Fowl Play still accessible, while also providing wider access across smartphones, tablets, desktops, and laptops thanks to the flexibility of the newer basis.
The takeaway here is there preserving old media into the future requires a two-pronged approach. Firstly, the media needs to be transferrable digitally, and secondly, the software to run the media needs to be updated for newer operating systems. Should we meet these criteria, there’s no practical limit on how long media can be maintained. That is, until the heat death of the universe, but that's not something we really need to concern ourselves with
