What DVD-r to buy now ...? With all the #@$ going around...

[Cholerabob]

With all the #@$% going around lately , Prodiscs going bad, Riteks going bad, and so on.... What's to buy ? I'm coming to the end of my last Prodiscs S03 HUB printable spindle, and can't seem to find any good reviews on any brand....

[steve2713]

oops, just realized you wanted -R, nevermind. I've had good luck with my Fuji TY discs, but beyond that most of my discs are either +R or cheapo -R discs.

[cyflyer]

Good question, but I suspect the replies will be something like: "buy branded media, buy Maxell, Verbatim, etc, buy expensive. I think you mean "Whats to buy, reasonable priced, ......but, good ?", like Riteks USED to be ? I long for the answer to this question also !

[RottenFoxBreath]

i got a tub of datawrite grey dvd-r 8speed,with fuji03 dye.
brilliant,best discs ive had in a while.

[Bodyslide]

I have had great success with the Prodiscs04 from www.supermediastore.com. I also have gotten Prodisc MCC 02RG20 media from www.Rima.com. I have ordered some Sonic 8X which are suppose to be TY hub printable from www.shop4tech.com . I'll see them on Tuesday.

[Capmaster]

Taiyo Yuden TYG02

[aanaravs]

Taiyo Yuden TYG02

The best of the best. Considering that they cost around 48 cents a piece at Rima, it is a very good investment.

[888888]

Has Prodisc "gone bad"? I suggest you try a small quantity MCC02RG2 discs for yourself to decide.

[iooi]

i got a tub of datawrite grey dvd-r 8speed,with fuji03 dye.
brilliant,best discs ive had in a while.

Even a full face printable with that dye now....

[RottenFoxBreath]

yeah,just looking at them just now,might invest in a hundred or two.

[Toaster]

I personally had problems with the Matrix -R 8x ones I bought from them... They burned ok at 4x on my Liteon 812s, but never could get a reliable burn at 8x. I went through like 400 disc (almost- on my last spindle now). Cant complain for the price, even at 4x... but I'd like to burn them at 8x with good results too.

I'm 99% sure the sonics are fakes too, but the price is right, and the 3 reviews claim to be ok. I guess we'll see.

[accountwiz]

I just know I'm going to hear grief over this, but I got caught short when an online disc order went bad this week, so I ran over to Staples and bought a 20-pack of the 8x Teon DVD-R discs for $4.94 to get me through. They are CMC id, but burned 20 out of 20 in my Pioneer 108 with perfect results, so I stopped in tonight and got 10 20-packs for 50 bucks plus sales tax.

If you can give CMC a chance in its newest generations, I think you might save some real cash and be pleasantly surprised.

[Bodyslide]

Have you ran any Disc scans to see if the finished products have any defects?

[888888]

Have you ran any Disc scans to see if the finished products have any defects?

The best "disc scan" is watching the DVD carefully. This is a much better method than a bunch of PI/PO numbers. By perfect results, I am assuming he has watched or used (for data) all 20 DVDs completely.

I have discs that are all green in Nero Scandisc and DVDInfo Pro, but skip and pixelate when played back. I also have several CMC+R discs that have played back perfectly from start to finish. I don't have a compatible drive so I have never been able to use KProbe or the like. I also use Nero Verification but I have gotten incorrect results from it at times.

[accountwiz]

I certainly haven't played back all 20, but I have watched 3-4 right up to the 4.37gb mark and had no pixellation. I typically start with a Nero verify, followed by loading the movie into PowerDVD and running it at 4x speed just to see if it plays thru without lockups.

This evaluation of discs is a subjective thing, in my opinion. Not only do you have to get a good clean burn (there's endless controversy over just how high that threshold of measurement should be), but you want a disk that holds up over time, too. Just take it for what it's worth. It's an admittedly small sample, but large enough that one or two should have red-flagged if the media was total crap. Also, I'm not putting my family heirloom pictures/data on these things. Just movie/tv show backups that can be replaced. And, at 25 cents/disc, they satisfy me.

Media can really be frustrating. I'm just trying to make my way through the minefield and report back what I find to others.

[lordsmurf]

www.nomorecoasters.com

[chas0039]

Has Prodisc "gone bad"? I suggest you try a small quantity MCC02RG2 discs for yourself to decide.

While you might be correct that some Prodisc is still OK, the problem is that you never know what you will get. For their 4X and 8X -R they vary between 7 different media codes. Some are great and some are crap. Some print and some don't. This is just as Ritek's "slide" in quality. Some G04s were good and some not.

Any way you look at it, when I order and do not know whether I will be getting good media I consider the brand to have gone bad. When I run out of S03s I will be TY exclusively. No surprises.

[Toaster]

I heard the TY's do not print well though?

[cyflyer]

Heard so much about the TY's and I'd like to give them a try if they're available locally, but I don't know what to look for. How are they labelled, under what brand ?

[aanaravs]

Heard so much about the TY's and I'd like to give them a try if they're available locally, but I don't know what to look for. How are they labelled, under what brand ?

Generally as Fuji (Made In Japan) and Maxell (made in Japan) For more info, checl out lordsmurf's site: nomorecoasters.com

[RickTheRed]

I heard the TY's do not print well though?

I was thinking that before, but I now select cd/dvd premium or even premium semi-gloss photo paper and the results are fine.

[Italic]

Recently I had a good experience with Memorex - Media code CMC MAG AE 01.Checking with Kprobe the quality of disk appears to be better than Datawrite Classic (Fujifilm03) and Ridata (RitekG04).
I had also good burning result with Verbatim MCC02 but after I had some problems with some players (skip).
I don't know if this kind of Memorex is avalaible in USA.

[accountwiz]

The CMC MAG AE 01 media code is the same as the Teon's I referenced earlier. I'm 28 for 28 through today.

[kenowell]

had 100 prodisc mcc code thought they were great till i got to the last 25 discs,all coasters registered nothing but errors in dvdinfopro

[chas0039]

Heard so much about the TY's and I'd like to give them a try if they're available locally, but I don't know what to look for. How are they labelled, under what brand ?

I wouldn't mess around paying a middleman markup and taking a chance they might not even be TY. Go to Rima.com

[lordsmurf]

Fuji inkjet, 8x, made in Japan ... rare

[mcorpse]

And then there are those like I who do not give much of a shit about PI/PF scans, and simply care if the disc will verify properly in DVDDecryptor. Unless I'm burning something such as a hard drive backup, etc. I really have no problems at all with using whatever cheap media is available for 50 cents each at Future Shop or Best Buy here in Canada. Players play them perfectly, only a few coasters unless I use my picky BenQ drive with a -R. (NU-Tech and Sony drives burn them great.) And if I ever wish to play them in a player that does not like them, I merely need to insert them into the drive I was able to verify them with, and make another copy. (This does not take into account discs going bad over time and such, however I have been at this for two years and have yet to have a disc go bad like that in that space of time, and also, DVD technology is in it's infancy, and it has been proven that not even TY DVD-R discs last very long either. Remember CDs? It was many years before all companies made discs that generally were compatible with everything, with very few errors, and for the first long while, CD-R media didn't last very long, either.)

[lordsmurf]

DVD single layer dye-based media is not in infancy anymore. It's about 5-6 years old at this point in time (available to USA consumers for about 4-5 years now). DVD-R General has been around since early 2001.

[mcorpse]

Yes, my choice of words was horrible. What I mean is, it has not yet reached a mature stage at which generally speaking you can achieve similar results with a majority of configurations of drives/media, etc. Any old brand of cheap crap CD is going to produce a readable burn (albeit probably having a large amount of C1 errors, and not lasting very long).

However, DVD technology has not yet progressed so far, yet. Hence the fact that some people prefer to use higher quality, expensive media (which I can respect, albeit grudgingly since I really have no problems with certain brands of cheap media - even I will use a TY disc if I am backing up something important or burning an important show capped off of TV, etc.). Now I'm not saying it's not definately quite usable. I own three writers, have burned hundreds of discs. I am just saying that perhaps aside from the very important things we'd like to keep for as long as possible, I'd like to think it would be good to hold off until the technology improves to the point where the high-end CDs have, where the discs will last for a good hundred years (I quote that rough figure from old Kodak media tests from back when Kodak actually made their own, quality CD media), before buying expensive discs that may only last a short while longer than the (good) cheap discs.

But perhaps I am ahead of myself. Anyone know of any actual accelerated aging tests done to look into the lifetime of DVD-R media?

[lordsmurf]

Yes. Some of them have even shown dye media will last longer than pressed. Go figure.