I am a Blockbuster Customer and have only once had a Blu Ray show up damaged, and it honestly looked more like a manufacturing defect than a crack. So far I have been very pleased at how effective the anti-scratch "armor" is on the disks.

Another thought is that while it is typical that a plasctic will become less ductile (bendable) when it becomes harder it is not necessarily the case, especially if we are talking about layers. Samurai swords are both hard and ductile thanx to multiple layers of materials.

I had a PS3 game break like this - we thought we must have done it accidentally somehow, but it didn't show any other signs of damage like scratching - just an enormous crack radiating out from the middle.

No you're not. Most people are not going to buy Blu-Ray just to have Blu-Ray. The majority of people that have it are PS3 owners and were forced to buy it that way.

The tech is already dead in the water. There is not a big enough difference between DVD and Blu-Ray to justify the purchase like there was between VHS and DVD.

I was with you on the "why even bother including that comment" thinking until you went the route of doing the exact same thing. Stop being an ass just to be an ass, it's not very flattering.

Blu-Ray is a stepping stone tech in the opinion of most people. The difference between Blu-Ray and DVD is not the same as VHS to DVD. Until there is a big enough difference between DVD and the next generation disc technology, I doubt we'll see mass adoption.

I think a lot depends on your mail carrier and post office. I haven't had any cracked discs but people I work with have. Since I live in an apartment and have a small maibox, my mail person generally puts the discs either on top of the boxes or in front of my door.

I doubt it's a problem. Blueray is just more expensive.

@h3llc4t: Out of the years of Netflix, I think I only had to complain about 1 damaged DVD. Blu-ray seems to be in a league of it's own with problems.

Thanks all for the information!

Not taking sides on the matter -- but nobody here is in a position to make an accurate statement, rather than just sharing their personal experience, and leaping to a conclusion.

@normyk: If I recall one of the dist centers in located right downtown from where I live. When I called Netflix on the issue, I got the "it happens" speech. Not that I necessarily mind, since they cross ship the replacement as you send it out, but it is annoying nonetheless.

Generally as these things go, I just blame my own damn luck for these things.

For those that don't know GameFly's games are shipped the same way as Netflix movies but there is a cardboard sleeve you put the game in first, I assume to help brevent the disk from breaking. Seems to work well as I've never had a problem.

Go back to my first post in this tangent. AppleKid things that publishers prefer not to use protective cases for media because they want to make money off people buying replacement discs. I disagreed, because publishers don't make meaningful profits off sending people replacement discs. You just showed that publishers don't make meaningful profits off replacement discs. You've proven my point. I thank you for that.

@Megalomania: But all of them? I'm not sure where BR-Discs are made, but I have to imagine it's not likely they're all from the same place. However, about 50% of my BR-Disc rentals from Netflix are cracked regularly (some months, more than 50%), so either it's a defect in the BR-Disc design itself, or it's the way the Postal Service (or, to be fair, Netflix employees) are handling these.

I do work in an office and $6 buys plenty of things. I've also worked in industrial environments. You'd probably have a hard time naming places I haven't worked at. In fact, I've owned my own business for several years and had my own employees. So come off it.

Now, let's pretend you actually need to hire someone fulltime to handle disc replacements. At $12/hr we're talking $40k cost to Disney for this person ($25k salary, $15k incidentals, which is INCREDIBLY high). We'll assume this person spends 2 days a week responding to mail delivered to them, 2 days a week ensuring supplies are stocked, and another day each week on book-keeping and on dropping off the DVDs to whatever company mails them out.

Now, these people are mailing the cost of return shipping as well (supposedly). So we'll leave that out of the equation. We'll assume Disney provides the boxes and that Disney pays $0.25 each for them. The DVDs shouldn't cost Disney more than $0.10 each. Let's assume a (generous) 5 minutes to fill out an order. So, in a given week, that's about 170 DVDs shipped assuming you only get about 7 hours x 2 days of actual mailing work out of the help.

170 x 50 = 8500 DVDs a year, costing about $3,000 in supplies.

$43,000 / 8500 = $5 a DVD.

And I have been so extremely generous right here that it's not even funny. In fact, if any business was *this* sloppily run, they'd cease to exist extremely quickly. A tightly run ship with some automation could easily reduce this cost to ~$2 a DVD, including shipping.

Though I've never rented a Blu-Ray from them, so no experience there.

@Travishamockery:
The post was only missing "FIRST!" to seal the deal

What's your point? The amount they're paying for the replacement discs is very low, right? So the marginal cost of Blu-Ray vs DVD is more than the supposed extra cost of replacing the broken discs, right?

$5 for an out of copyright movie? Target sells that stuff for $1. And they can do that, because the costs are so low. But if you're comparing that to shipping a replacement disc for a movie, you need to google "economy of scale" and do some reading. If they're making any money off those $6 replacement discs, it'd be barely enough to pay for the office Christmas party.

XDCAM, which is the Pro version of Blu-Ray, uses rewritable discs in plastic caddies.

Making $6 to replace a $0.10 DVD without paying license fees isn't a money maker?

If you'd have said $1, you might be right, because there surely is some overhead. But considering I can buy out of copyright movies at Walmart for $5 (and that's the highest price they ever are) $6 is definitely a profit.

@Ferris152:
Where did Netflix say this? I've never seen it publicly stated.

That is the reason for my pining. HDDVD was hardly perfect, otherwise I may have purchased a player. I simply like getting everyone riled up. I am of the camp that considers high-def physical media to be an unnecessary thing. I just preferred the fact that HDDVD included many more features vs Bluray 1.0, better initial video quality, and a lower price point. If people consider that to be me promoting a monopoly, then hand me a top hat and some dice.

Not to jinx myself, but I've yet to have a cracked bluray disc from netflix.

I figure there are at least three good reasons for Blu-Ray rentals to cost more. The discs DO cost substantially more to buy. I'd assume they are distributed much less than standard-def discs, reducing the chance for lovely economy of scale benefits for Netflix. And if they are more susceptible to breakage, thats obviously going to increase costs. Its probably a combination of factors, but I don't see anything nefarious here.

I'll take more rigidity over tons of easy scratching.

@andystep12:
it's your profile... I don't have control over what it says

@madog:
I know... I don't make this stuff up, I just use the abbreviation given by the makers.

@andystep12:
Oh internet how I love thee...

Annoyed /= Anger

There's not a whole lot anyone here can do to make me angry short of genocide, kiddie porn, or overt racism... And even then I know most do it for a rise.

It's a baselss and frankly annoying comment when the real mourning should be for good customer service and a company who deals soley in mailing disc format media finding a way to safely ship product. Moreso when they charge Blu customers a PREMIUM.

@Jaxcmpltlkofsrprz: I've never had a hard drive crash, so obviously they never go bad.............................................................................

THE END!

@KingPsyz here for HappyFunKingPsyz©:

BD: Blu Ray Format.....

Blu Ray..... BD..... BR..... Blu Disk?

I understand, I'm just trying to defend Sony. I recognize that BD and DVD are different materials, I just doubt Sony had USPS in mind when developing their discs.

I just lowered mine from 3 at a time to 2 at a time. Sucks to get less movies, but I'm getting REALLY tired of every one of my bills going up 2-10% in the past year, and pay increases are "frozen" due to "the economy".

The only problem I had is that it wouldn't play but that was from Blockbuster, So I changed and couldn't be happier. Just in case, you cared to know

For those that got cracked discs, do they send an extra one to compensate for time lost?

Oh, wait, I GET IT, you are saying the USPS was running the conspiracy.....good thinking!

I've noticed a fair number of my Netflix DVDs (among other mail) arrive half-opened, as if someone's peeking at the contents. I live in an apartment, though, so I hope this isn't an issue when I finally move into a house.

I was/am a huge HD DVD fan, mainly because it came to market COMPLETE, unlike Blu-ray, which took more than two years to make 1.1 spec a requirement, and still makes the full spec optional. People forget that for a year, Blu-ray only offered single layer discs, resulting extra compression and poor picture quality.

I've been guilty of spouting the whole "ohh, HD DVD, you were so perfect" rhetoric, but it really gets annoying. It's like people who love vinyl records - they praise the fidelity and warm analog sound, but conveniently forget the nicks, pops, and hisses that came with it. HD DVD was a complete format, inexpensive, and had some very cool features, but had less capacity and that undeniably held back the presentation of many movies (lossless audio being the biggest casualty).

@nybiker:
CE: Consumer Electronics
BD: Blu Ray Format
BDA: Blu Ray (Developers?) Association

@mrbenning: I had to stop using Netflix in college because too many of them (standard DVD's, of course) were not quite making it all the way to my mailbox. While Netflix never gave me any hassle about the number of DVD's I claimed as undelivered, it did approximately double the cost of Netflix, which made it not cost effective. Now that I have a house, and far fewer theiving classmates, however, I use them again.

@clickertrainer: They just kept re-sending you the same disk. Mystery solved.

@Inglix_the_Mad: I'll admit it, I do not know what CE & BD & BDA refer to. Please clarify. Thank you.

I don't doubt that some people are seeing occasional cracking, but I don't think it's as wide spread an issue as it's been made out to be.

See this map [www.zeemaps.com]

@Travishamockery: @Applekid:
While that is quite informative, the original comment lacked the insight given here.

It just grinds my gears that everytime BD gets mentioned on the internets someone has to pipe in with their mourning for HDDVD.

And regardless of stiffness or flex, netflix and gamefly use horrible packaging and should really find a better way to ship games/movies.

If I recall correctly, CDs were originally supposed to be in a diskette type case, but of course that would make them last much longer, and the manufacturers stood to profit from damaged discs being replaced. So it didn't fly.

Manufacturers want stuff to break. They don't want it to last forever. But this is just ridiculous.

Drinking the kool-aid a little much, aren't you.

That's right folks, the reason for HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray was a patent war. HD-DVD was a half-a$$ implementation designed to get to market first and ensure Toshiba could maintain it's stranglehold (and profits) over the optical disc market.

BD was a half-a$$ implementation to get more longevity, but also divide up power in the BDA so that there would be no repeat of the DVD Forum (which Toshiba ruled pretty mercilessly) that CE's were desperate to annihilate.

I personally WANT the businesses I like to make a profit and do well. If it costs them $1 more per month to give me the services that I've been asking for and receiving then so be it.

But then, people who raise a stink about a $1 price increase for an increase in services are usually not the type that would be happy with anything a business does.

It really seems to me like people are stretching for reasons to hate on Netflix, when in the end they're very transparent and honest about their business practices, most of which make good sense because in the end, if the business plan isn't solvent that hurts the customers too.

They probably are researching an envelope redesign for Blu Ray, but those sorts of problems take a while to solve, and since this is the first I've heard of this problem there likely isn't a huge outcry and demand for it.

But assuming Netflix was lying about why they increased prices when the increase wasn't near enough to make up for the problem you're highlighting? Please.

Kudos to both of you guys for responding to "this guy has no friends" with geekage.

As for the postal service, they hate Netflix. The mailers aren't liked by sorting machines...

@Jaxcmpltlkofsrprz:

Well, that settles it folks...stop discussing it, and cancel any and all research.

I don't think the drop in profits was slight, and asking them to take a drop is profits in favor of their customers is a kind of crazy thing to ask. As BR uses increase they would have to keep taking a bigger "drop in profits" and this would continue hitting the bottom line. So they would have had to either keep on losing money or raise the price sometime. So if you have to raise a price sometime for a premium product why wait and lose money now, just to piss of more customers later? I think Netflix made a mistake when they didn't charge extra right away. They made BR customer expect not to pay extra for something they normally did see a value in as evidenced by them spending extra on BR equipment knowing that in general BR's cost more.

The real issue is value if you don't think you are getting $3-$4 worth of extra value in BR you shouldn't pay for it. But Netflix extra charge seems in line with what it cost in extra overhead, damage, and costs.

Not passing on the costs also allow the studios to continue to charge extra for it and not have the customers pay extra, meaning they got a free ride and this lowered the incentive for them to lower prices. Now when they DO lower prices for BR I would expect Netflix to thus lower prices. So I expect Netflix charging more will actually hasten a decrease in prices in the future.

I've had no problems with BluRay, actually had a couple regular DVDs come cracked recently. My father has been getting a couple BluRay disks that weren't playing on his player, but he says he checked and they haven't been cracked.

I'm not making excuses, but I imagine they have less BluRay disks, so they get shipped more frequently.

Never had a blu-ray arrived cracked, but had regular DVDs arrive cracked many times. Actually had every dvd over a 3 week period arrive completly cracked in half, and I mean directly down the middle.

In fact if you bother to contact the movie's distributor, they will replace the disc for you if you send in the broken disc and pay for return shipping and handling. With Disney I believe it's about $6 to get a disc replaced. It's not free, but it's also not a money-maker for the company.

Mom always said...we should've stuck with HD DVD!

I like these, similar to the MD: [jewelboxing.com] but still, the best solution is probably a cardboard sleeve.

You'd need a dummy adapter for HD-DVDs, DVDs and CDs then, assuming the device accepts them all (some do).

And then people would moan about what a pain in the ass all these caddies are.

The caddy thing was tried a long time ago with CD-ROMs. It didn't catch on for a reason... :)

The majority of the 1,200 comments in response were negative.
We both canceled blu-ray access, and dropped our service level to 2 discs from 4.
You'll also see hundreds of comments about cracked disc problems which may have to do with the post office in your particular area and how they process DVDs/Blu-Ray discs.

I have recently restarted it but I lowered it from 4 disks at a time down to 1 disk at a time. Mostly I just use it for instant view on Xbox Live.

When I did have blu-ray I received 2 disks in a span of 3 weeks that were broken. One of them was snapped in half. The other was really wierd. The data layers of the disk were seperated from the hardcoat and label side. I didnt even bother trying to play it because an unbalanced disk can kill a bd/dvd-rom realy quickly.

I wouldnt be surprised if the price hike was because of broken disk but honestly either way its BS. The movies pay for themselves really damn quick so Netflix should have taken the slight drop in profits in favor of its customers. They lost my money for a while and like I said I'm back but im paying over $20 less per month so they are losing that too...all because of a $1 price hike.

Basically, they are harder and more scratch resistant, but do not react very well to tensile foces. The DVD being more flexible would just bend slightly and regain shape, but the blu ray, being harder, would crack, instead of yielding.

I'm curious as to whether they need to redesign the blu-ray envelope (to at least look different from the DVD one), or if mail carriers need to handle Netflix mail better. Just think how much business Netflix brings the US Postal service -- you'd think they could get special treatment just for that alone!

I dislike my mailman -- I've had to call the post office twice to complain about him lodging mail in so hard that I need a box opener to get it out of my mailbox. Also, he misdelivers mail frequently. I've had angry neighbors bring me my mail and I've had to deliver neighbor's mail to them. The point being, I kind of just blamed the cracks on the mailman, but perhaps if enough people are experiencing this, it's an issue with the envelope being too flimsy for blu-ray discs? Or maybe it's more along the lines of bad postal service employees who don't give a damn when handling your mail? Any thoughts?

My dist center is more or less in town so I get my discs next day and undamaged for the most part. I've had a couple of DVDs I've had to send back (some unreadable, some with crack from edge or center), but not BRDs and I'm wondering if it's because I have a good dist center or post office handling things. I've seen discussions of this and it seems to be that some people will say they get 50% damaged BRDs and some will say they've never had any so I've got to assume that there is some variable that can be found to explain things.

They are not fragile nor are they structurally inferior to standard dvds.

I've gone round and round on AVS with people saying the same thing. I had 7 of 8 cracked Blu-rays with Netflix before I canceled that part of the service. I have never, ever received a cracked DVD. I don't give a rat's ass what the Blu-ray specifications are, they are obviously more prone to damage than DVDs.

The MPAA likes to say that it's only a license to view a movie and that by having a physical copy you're not entitled to the right to view it on other formats or devices. Meanwhile, if you break the carrier media, no one will send you a free replacement, which you should be entitled to if you really only purchased a license to view.

In the words of Jack Valenti: "Who needs a backup? If you need a backup copy of a DVD just buy another copy."

My fiancé and I between us have at least 6 years (some overlapping, in different households) of Netflix history, and he's never had a damaged DVD arrive before. I had one, or rather my roommate did, in 2004, when a disc arrived literally snapped in half.

We've gone through a bunch of blu-ray discs from Netflix in the last 10-12 months and so far only the one problem... I hope it stays as only one problem.

In short, Blu-ray discs are more rigid, and are therefore easier to crack or break.

Also, add me to the list of Blu-Ray customers who have never received a cracked disc from Netflix.

That's because you look at everything from the perspective that companies hate their customers. We KNOW that Blu-Ray discs are more expensive than DVDs, so it is not unreasonable to expect the small subset of customers who want them to cover that additional cost.

Regarding your theory though, I think you need to take the tinfoil hat off. Discs are incredibly inexpensive to press, and Netflix doesn't have to pay the full cost of the movie to get a new copy when one is damaged. I suspect that the price Netflix pays for replacement discs is much closer to the cost of pressing the disc than it is to the cost of the movie. Which means a disc would have to break a dozen times or so before the cost of replacing it equals the cost difference between Blu-Ray and DVD.

Why don't they just ship BRs in a sturdy plastic case that's also recyclable?

Never happened to me. But conspiracy theories are fun!

@andystep12:
Friends
andystep12 has no friends.

And this is why...

Seriously how would HDDVD be better for Shipping than BLU RAY?

Why do people pine for HDDVD so? It was at best stepping stone tech and they were hoping and counting on BD not being available far later than it ended up being released.

That may be true, but I've been a subscriber for several years and I've only had this problem with Blu-rays.

The discs are not as fragile as one would think. In fact, by spec they're supposed to be stronger than conventional DVDs (though not all are created equal). Then again, that might not mean anything.

We have, however, received two scratched discs and sometimes haven't received any discs at all.

And this problem is not just Netflix's, but Sony's. If Blu-ray discs get a reputation for poor quality, the tech is probably dead in the water as far as consumers are concerned.

It seems that 1 out of every 3 or 4 Blu-ray movies I get from Netflix are damaged. And here I thought it was just me. It's usually that the outside of the disc has a more a nick in it than a scratch. I am not sure if I feel better that I am not alone with this issue, though...