Booting shipped live CDs?

[postmast3r]

I just got my free shipment of Ubuntu CDs.  Unfortunately, NONE of the
live CDs that were shipped can successfully boot and get stuck at
"Retrieving casper" (the part immediately after I choose my language).
 After half a minute of funny noises coming from my drive while at
that stage, I am told there is a read error and to retry.  So, I
retried...10 times and it never gets past that stage.  I see no
visible scratches or anything on any of the CDs yet they all fail at
exactly the same spot when booted.

I had no problems booting Ubuntu's live CD that I downloaded straight
from www.ubuntu.com and burned myself onto a CDR.

Did anyone else have this same problem with their shipped live CDs?