UFO preservation in digital - can DVDs rot?

Hey UFO-Heads,

I'm going totally paranoid. Someone told me about the 'DVD rotting'
phenomenon. I did some research on the net... basically, it seems a
DVD is not eternal like I've previously envised.

Thanks God, if they have already digitalized the UFO series, the
episodes are now stored into a database of some sort which acts
like "plaster caster" for the DVD releases. Anyway, we should purchase
more copies of the DVDs, keeping them in the packages, un-opened: in
order to preserve the UFO series forever and ever!

Is it definitely true that DVDs can rot, anyway?

> I'm going totally paranoid. Someone told me about the 'DVD rotting'
> phenomenon. I did some research on the net... basically, it seems a
> DVD is not eternal like I've previously envised.

Does it need to be eternal? DVD's will eventually be replaced by
something else (HD-DVD or Blu-Ray high definition discs, perhaps),
and UFO will likely be reissued again, and you may not care much
about your UFO DVD's when that happens...

Or, you can always burn yourself some backup copies on DVD-R
(or eventually the recordable versions of the high-def discs).
Or keep them on your hard drive!

We're certainly in a much better situation than we were 10 years
ago, when I wondered if UFO was ever going to be widely available
on home video.

As for "DVD rot", I haven't read a whole lot about this being
a big problem, although DVD's do seem to be easily damaged
by mishandling. Laser video discs in the 1980's and 90's
had a *big* problem with laser rot, and many discs turned to
snow after only a few years.

Even compact discs are reportedly supposed to rot, although
I have CD's purchased in the mid 1980's that still play just
fine...

Marc

Marc Martin wrote:
>> I'm going totally paranoid. Someone told me about the 'DVD rotting'
>> phenomenon. I did some research on the net... basically, it seems a
>> DVD is not eternal like I've previously envised.

Somewhat relevant NIST study plus Slashdot discussion:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/05/0024258&tid=198

Paul