DVDs do not last forever!

[Rev. Rye]

Other than the plastic breaking down what could happen to a DVD that is in storage?

I would thing the deterioration of the plastic would take a few million years though.

Poor manufacturing and poor quality.  Unlike CDs, most DVDs are imbedded in the plastic rather than laid on top, however, as it turns out, some DVDs are laid on top.  The top layer can then corrode and the layered ones can sometimes split.  This is information I gleaned from the net.

I cannot see any defects, even with good lighting and magnification.  Whether I can see or not is a moot point as the sundry of DVD players I have do.

I've also heard that sometimes, cost-cutting measures lead to certain batches "bronzing" and becoming unplayable. This has even happened recently. Case in point: The Criterion Collection did this sort of thing with some of their early Blu-Ray titles. Let me repeat that: CRITERION (the high-end R1 DVD company) did this on BLU-RAY (the theoretically more durable medium). At this point, I would not be surprised if this happened with the DVDs you bought.

Really, not having access to the actual DVDs, I can only guess.