Criterion Issues Walkabout Blu-ray Warning

Last month we saw a Criterion Collection re-release that warranted all of the acclaim heaped upon it. The Blu-ray release of Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout is currently one of my favorite releases of 2010 so far. The image quality / transfer, the uncompressed audio, and all of the supplements add up to an incredible package, proving that when Criterion makes you double dip, it’s well worth your while.

You can read James’ review of the Blu-ray here, and Rudie’s review of the DVD release here. We also recently recorded a really fun episode with Battleship Pretension‘s own David Bax.

Last week Amazon pulled the Blu-ray, citing that the disc was under review based on some customer’s complaints that the discs weren’t working in their players. I had sent out some informal polls amongst our readers on Twitter, to see if anyone had experienced problems with their discs, but didn’t come up with any significant results. Today, Criterion released the following on their blog:

We have been alerted to a manufacturing problem with our Walkabout Blu-ray edition that occurs on a limited numbers of players. The affected players are:

Sony BDP-350 and BDP-360
Pioneer BDP-05FD and BDP-120
Sharp BD-HP22U, BD-HP21U, and BD-HP20U
Memorex MVBD2520
Insignia NS-2BRDVD

The disc will not load in the Insignia and Memorex players, and with the others, about fifty minutes into the feature, the audio and video begin to skip and stutter. We are working with the pressing plant to resolve this issue as soon as possible. If you have our Walkabout Blu-ray disc and own one of these players, please e-mail Jon Mulvaney so that we can notify you as soon as replacement copies become available.

Did you pick up this Walkabout Blu-ray? Experience any problems? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.