Bad Burner or Media?

[youngblood]

I have a question, I have a Plextor 708A (all the firmware is updated) which I bought a couple years ago and I do burn alot of DVD's. My question is I am having problems with the DVD's skipping and fraggin out only at the end of the disc. I have been using Memorex 8X DVD-R, Ritex Go4 -R,. I usually only burn at 4x anyway and sometime I have to burn Disc to Disc at 2x and sometimes I still have the problem. I am using Roxio 7 to burn. I just want to know can a burner burn bad at the end of of a disc or would you think the burner would just go bad completely and not burn at all. I started using Taiyo Yuden 4X DVD-R discs with a little luck. I did notice that some of the black memorex discs have hub & no hubs. I wonder is they are changing manufactorers?

Thank You
YB

[budz]

Use the RECOMMENDED BRANDS OF DVD MEDIA that PLEXTOR supports. MEMOREX uses different manufacturers for their dvd media. In my opinion ROXIO isn't the best software to use.

Here's the link for the RECOMMENDED BRANDS that PLEXTOR supports:
http://www.plextor.com/english/support/media_708.html

Best media to use with the PLEXTOR 708A is FUJI (TAIYO YUDEN), MAXELL (media codes MXL series), RICOH which MAXELL uses for some of their 4X DVD+R media, TDK (TTGO1 media code) is also good to use. Download DVDINFO PRO or DVD IDENTIFIER to find out the exact media codes. RITEK used to be good a long time ago but their quality is crappy now. Also RITEK is on PLEXTOR'S COMPATIBLE list which doesn't necessarily mean they will work with the 708a drive. Check out the PLEXTOR FORUM at cdfreaks.com.

[youngblood]

Budz,
Thank You for the info. Also do you think the burner could be going bad. I mean did you ever hear of bad burns at the end of the discs do to the burner??

Thank You again for the help
YB

[jtoolman2000]

Band burns ( you mean read errors ) at the end of disk are usually due to crap media. Memorex -R was always know to be crap. Try TY media and then you can at least eliminate media as a possible cause. Can the bunr cause end of disk problems? Of course it can but you need to eliminate the obvious first.

[budz]

Budz,
Thank You for the info. Also do you think the burner could be going bad. I mean did you ever hear of bad burns at the end of the discs do to the burner??

In my opinion your drive isn't going bad. Use the RECOMMENDED BRANDS OF MEDIA that PLEXTOR supports and you'll do fine.

[youngblood]

Thank You guys...

YB

[mofohead]

Hey Youngblood....I have the exact same problem....Same model of writer and I'm currently using Fuji media. I have been searching for a few days to find the answer to this problem. I don't mean to offend anyone else who is posting on this thread but I would NOT agree with Budz...I think it's the Plextor. I had a spindle of 100 disks. I had at least 80 good burns from that spindle before I started to have problems. I first noticed the problem the second week of January. At first it was only on the occasional disk. Then it started to do it to every single disk I burned. When it first started for me, it was only doing it towards the end of the disk but now it does it randomly throughout the burn. Sometimes the disk is bad only five minutes into the movie and other times it can make it an hour and a half into a movie before it messes up. I should probably define "messes up". On my bad burns the movie will play fine for awhile. Then the movie starts to get a little pixelated. Then the picture gets really pixelly and the audio starts to cut out a little then eventually it just stops all together with. I installed new drivers. I updated the Plextor 708a firmware to version 1.08. I am using Nero 6 and DVDShrink for burning so I uninstalled both of them and reinstalled. I even went out and bought some new, different DVD-Rs....after all of that I had the exact same results. Needless to say, I am tired of screwing around with it and I'm currently in the market for a new writer....oh well, this is a perfect excuse to upgrade to a dual layer I guess.

[budz]

Hey Youngblood....I have the exact same problem....Same model of writer and I'm currently using Fuji media. I have been searching for a few days to find the answer to this problem. I don't mean to offend anyone else who is posting on this thread but I would NOT agree with Budz...I think it's the Plextor. I had a spindle of 100 disks. I had at least 80 good burns from that spindle before I started to have problems. I first noticed the problem the second week of January. At first it was only on the occasional disk. Then it started to do it to every single disk I burned. When it first started for me, it was only doing it towards the end of the disk but now it does it randomly throughout the burn. Sometimes the disk is bad only five minutes into the movie and other times it can make it an hour and a half into a movie before it messes up. I should probably define "messes up". On my bad burns the movie will play fine for awhile. Then the movie starts to get a little pixelated. Then the picture gets really pixelly and the audio starts to cut out a little then eventually it just stops all together with. I installed new drivers. I updated the Plextor 708a firmware to version 1.08. I am using Nero 6 and DVDShrink for burning so I uninstalled both of them and reinstalled. I even went out and bought some new, different DVD-Rs....after all of that I had the exact same results. Needless to say, I am tired of screwing around with it and I'm currently in the market for a new writer....oh well, this is a perfect excuse to upgrade to a dual layer I guess.

You mentioned FUJI discs but did not say what the MEDIA CODE was. Was it DVD+R or DVD-R? If you bought them from BEST BUY it is a known fact that there was a bad batch of FUJI discs that were being sold. Check the PLEXTOR FORUM at cdfreaks.com and do a search. If you're convinced that it is the burner and not media then go ahead and buy a new dual layer drive. By the way when you uninstalled NERO BURN I hope you used the NERO CLEAN TOOL before you reinstalled it. As for your pixelation problems that could be from DVD SHRINK which is known to cause that.

[mofohead]

You mentioned FUJI discs but did not say what the MEDIA CODE was. Was it DVD+R or DVD-R? If you bought them from BEST BUY it is a known fact that there was a bad batch of FUJI discs that were being sold. Check the PLEXTOR FORUM at cdfreaks.com and do a search. If you're convinced that it is the burner and not media then go ahead and buy a new dual layer drive. By the way when you uninstalled NERO BURN I hope you used the NERO CLEAN TOOL before you reinstalled it. As for your pixelation problems that could be from DVD SHRINK which is known to cause that.

The disks were DVD-R. I also mentioned that I did try other DVD-Rs as well. I've tried three other brands now. As far as DVDShrink goes...that's irrelevant because I don't use DVDShrink for every burn. If I'm doing a disk to disk backup then I'll use DVDShrink. If I have an ISO image then I just burn with Nero. I've experienced the exact same results burning both ways. Either way, the one single common point in this situation is the burner and now I've heard of someone else with the exact same problem.

[Hack73]

Hey Youngblood.... Sometimes the disk is bad only five minutes into the movie and other times it can make it an hour and a half into a movie before it messes up. I should probably define "messes up". On my bad burns the movie will play fine for awhile. Then the movie starts to get a little pixelated. Then the picture gets really pixelly and the audio starts to cut out a little then eventually it just stops all together with.

Hey Mofohead,

I have noticed this same thing with my brand new Plextor 716A drive. The issue was that I was using Memorex 4X DVD+Rs that worked on my Sony DRU-510A which were not supported by Plextor. However, after switching to the supported brand, same issue. I took that same DVD and played it in another stand alone DVD player and it works fine. This means the burn was good. Therefore, two things need to be checked.

1. Supported Media type for the burner
2. If the stand alone player supports that brand and media type

Hope this helps. I always never think it could be stand alone player that has the issue.

[D.A.R.J.R.]

I have the 708a and I dont think they should have made it a 8x burner, anything burnt above 6x has a really bad chance of playing in set top dvd players. Also, you mentioned that you burned 2x to 2x, was this on the fly? That could be causing errors o the discs. Why not rip the disc to the hard drive and reburn it?

PS: Memorex is really bad media for the 708a. I tried a 5 pack once and got one disc to work. Never will try them again.

[mofohead]

Two of the DVD-Rs that I tried were on Plextors supported/recommended media list. I've tried Verbatim, TDK, Fuji, and Maxell. Verbatim and TDK are recomended by Plextor.

Hack73, it's funny that you should mention the DVD player because at first, that's what I thought was wrong. I got a brand new DVD player and put my old one in my daughter's room. Immediately after that is when I started to notice the problems. Of course I thought the new DVD player didn't support DVD-Rs. I took one of the problem disks and tried it in my old Toshiba DVD player that has always played everything in the past and sure enough, I got the exact same results. Then I tried the same disk in my PS2 and my Xbox and got the same results again. Then I put the disk back in my Plextor and opened the movie in Media Player.....guess what.....it worked just fine. After that I assumed the problem was with the burn (maybe it was burned to fast). I took the same ISO image and burned the movie again to a "supported" DVD-R but this time I set the burn speed to 1X...yes it took forever and yes it failed just like all of the others.

Also, none of my disks were burned "on the fly". I always rip to the hard drive then burn.

One more thing...just a recap....I have in the past successfully burned 80 or more disks from the same spindle of DVD-Rs and had no problems at all. This all started approximately 7 weeks ago and has been getting progressively worse. Before I started to experience these problems there were no major software changes and no hardware changes.....it just started to happen.

[budz]

media code, media code, media code!!!!! i asked you what the media code was. fuji doesn't tell me anything. fuji uses TAIYO YUDEN if the spindle you purchased said MADE IN JAPAN. if it said MADE IN TAIWAN there is your problem. use DVDINFO PRO or DVD IDENTIFIER to find out the exact MEDIA CODE! Sure FUJI is on the list of plextor but remember it's the MEDIA code that is important. TDK, MAXELL all use other manufacturers for their dvd blanks. TDK uses crappy CMC & MAXELL also uses RITEK. btw although you've successfully burned 80 discs from the same spindle it could be the rest of the discs are bad. it does happen when you get closer to end of the spindle the discs are bad. why? i have no clue but others have experience that. i've used only the recommended brands of dvd media that plextor supports, TAIYO YUDEN, MAXELL (not any of the RITEK media codes), RICOH, VERBATIM & TDK (only TTG01 media codes). as for burning at speeds beyond 4x some older dvd players are not capable of reading them. although my apex 1500 can playback DVD+R media that is burned at 8x with my plextor 708a drive. i have no problems with my 708a drive and perhaps your 708a is just on it's way up to that big heaven in the sky.

[mofohead]

I'm not debating the possibility of bad disks. I completely understand that. I just think the media code is irrelevant at this point since I have also tried TDK, Verbatim and Maxell and I got the exact same results on 4 different brands. All four brands are on the Plextor 708 compatability list and two of those brands are on the Plextor 708 RECOMMENDED list. All media code BS aside....in my individual situation I think my Plextor is, as you said, on it's way to that big heaven in the sky.

This really dissapppoints me because I have always had incredible luck with Plextors....until now. This particular drive is less than 9 months old and had less then 125 total burns on it......in all my years of dealing with PC equipment that translates into P.O.S.

[HAMP]

mofohead wrote:

I would NOT agree with Budz...

Budz has said everything correct, he is not leading you in the wrong direction

You also wrote:

I just think the media code is irrelevant at this point

Media code is always important

in my individual situation I think my Plextor is, as you said, on it's way to that big heaven in the sky.

This could be true, the example's you gave, a partner of mine had that issue and he RMA'ed his and got another, No problem

This particular drive is less than 9 months old

One-year full warranty (parts and labor)
Unlimited toll-free tech support

RMA the drive, get another one

[mofohead]

Budz has said everything correct, he is not leading you in the wrong direction

Since some people like to read into things a bit to much allow me to clarify. I never claimed that Budz was or was attempting to mislead me...I simply said that I did not agree with him when he told youngblood that it was not a burner issue. I'm sure Budz knows what he is talking about.

Also, I'm sure media code is important in most cases.....however, I simply stated that I doubted it was a media issue in my particular case because I had tried 4 different brands of DVD-Rs, some of which were recommended, and I got the exact same results on all of them.

You are right though....I think this is going to end up as an RMA situation for me.

[youngblood]

Mofohead,
I went out a got bought a new Plextor 716A burner. I have been using the Roxio 7 Basic it came with and also bought Taiyo Yuden 4X DVD-R media and not had one bad burn. Also DVD Shrink has always worked well for me. My Plextor 708a lasted a little over a year before I replaced it.

Hope this helps
YB

[mofohead]

Yes it does thank you. I think it's time for me to upgrade as well.

[HAMP]

Sorry to hear that, I got my 708A I think in Oct2003, I know I bugged the hell out of Plextor to get me one asap, I was on a waiting list and I still called in twice a week.

I have no idea how many(just looking at the empty spindel's, I see atleast 6-100 spindel's) FULL DVD's I have burnt with it, and it is going so strong.

When I heard about the 712A I called about that one aswell, Plextor was talking about charging me with Stalking charges at the time, I just love mine.....

[mofohead]

I've always been partial to Plextor and this is the very first time I've had a problem with one......doesn't mean I won't have another.

[budz]

let me say this about the plextor 708a drive when the chips were down the drive came through for me. i had posted a few months ago about a disc i had that was badly scratched. it could only be read by the 708a drive. all my other drives, toshiba dvdroms, pioneer 107 dvd burner, liteon 411 dvd burner and my benq 1620 could not read the files correctly. my old 708a works well for what it's worth in reading and writing. i cross my fingers that this drive will outlast any of the other dvd burners that i own. one thing i have noticed with the 708a drive is the buffer in nero burn is stable at 92 but using my other dvd burners the buffer will fluctuate constantly between 84-94. in my opinion the 708a write quality surpasses any of the other burners i own. the benq 1620 comes a close second then the pioneer 107 and the liteon is dead last. i only use it to rip dvds or to do kprobe scans if needed.

[youngblood]

Let me clear this up. When I first posted about the problems I was having with the DVD's or the Plextor these guys on the forum came through for me. I had no idea what it was any maybe to this day I still don't know the problem so I am not accusing anyone wrong here. They have been very supportive on answering all my questions. I figure for the price the burners are coming down let me give it a shot. Yes my Plextor 708a was great and it still rates as one of the top burners so that is why I went out a bought another plextor. In closing this by far is one of the best forums to get info on and the guys/gals are the best.

Thanks
YB