Hacker News Reader

Laserdiscs/DiscoVision are analog, they can technically still work but their image quality could be heavily degraded.

Also, storage conditions can deeply affect how well a medium lasts but that's no excuse for defective discs.

One thing I've noticed with older era CDs is that they were heavy and frequently not balanced to play at 48x

Intended use was playing at 1x. I don't think many players had a fast-forward either, just skip tracks or skip a few seconds by seeking the laser.

RTA. They're defective.

skyyler is refuting a comment that implies this is expected by mentioning that their own (non-defective) discs have lasted ~50 years and counting.