Funimation Disc Problems

[Cannonaire]

I was just wondering if anyone else had trouble with Funimation DVD sets. Just a few days ago I bought the new release of Trigun from Best Buy (retail release, still in the shrink-wrap) and disc 3 out of 4 had severe problems. In a regular DVD player, one of the episodes skipped over a large portion after there were some macro-blocking artifacts and sound errors. Looking at the DVD, it was scratched deeply. This was the first time I had taken it out of the case.

This isn't the first time I've had trouble with their discs though. A few months ago KiTo bought both sets of FMA, and more than one of the discs had unrecoverable playback errors similar to what I got with the Trigun discs. These also had deep scratches as well as a large area of dark discoloration on the data side of the disc. Actually, the discoloration was on more than one of the discs, but most played correctly. She had to return the set and exchange for a new one.

I haven't finished watching my Slayers set (first three series), but I just now looked at the discs and there are a few with the same physical problems. I haven't checked playback yet, but I would bet that they have the same issues. Unfortunately, I bought these quite a while ago and I doubt I would be able to exchange them now.

Has anyone else had similar problems recently with Funimation discs?

This is an enormous QA problem. We've purchased 4 different animes in 5 sets from them in the last few months and over half of them have significant issues.

[EkaCoralian]

Hm...
well there were about 2 episodes from Season 2 which massively skipped portions of their content in my Ultra Box Set of School Rumble, but I don't know if that was a one-time thing or not (only watched it once.)

You should probably email them about these problems though. That's a lot of series to be damaged. o-o

[8bit_samurai]

not sure how relevant this is, but http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... 44&t=94450

[Qyot27]

not sure how relevant this is, but http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... 44&t=94450

Probably not very, as the OP is talking about real physical defects. Bad sectors is a defect, yes, but it's more of a filesystem one. The undersides of the discs shouldn't have nasty scratching or dye leak problems if it was just copy-obfuscation-intended bad sectors (although bad sectors is almost certainly a result of the faulty pressings this thread is describing).

And I'm wondering whether the recent ISO decryption method posted in this thread on Doom9 that I helped troubleshoot for MinGW would solve this issue with ripping Funimation discs. I don't own any myself and I'm unsure of which ones count among those my sister owns, so I can't say. Works fine on regular discs, though (I tested it with Toradora!, which has no sort of bastardized encryption on it).

[Cannonaire]

I haven't had any issues ripping the Funimations discs, but then again I have auto-play disabled. I read somewhere that a program automatically launches on some Funimation discs that installs a temporary driver to prevent ripping. Could just be rumors.

Just an update, I was able to rip the 3rd disc of Trigun and it seems to be perfect. I'll try playing it again. Still, unopened DVD sets should be perfect. I can understand a defect every so often, but multiple times within only a few months means there is a serious problem.