dual layer dvd blanks

[kimal]

Hello,

As far as I have discovered there are not too many options in the market for DVD DL blanks. I have seen the brands Verbatim, Ritek and Memorex but have not used any of them yet. Can anybody having experience with burning this kind of media comment on the quality of these products? Also any other brand to reccommend? Or after all is this technology still a tad premature?

Thanks for your comments...

[Mawdryn]

I've used about 20 Verbatim and about 10 Ritek double layer disks. (I have not tried any other brands yet, but I think they're all the same as one or the other of these.) I burned them on my Pioneer 108 burner with 1.14 and 1.18 firmware, and the latest versions of both Nero and DVD Decrypter. Mine have all worked perfectly.

The Verbatims are usually more expensive but I like them better for 2 reasons. First, they burn at 4x instead of 2.4x in my Pioneer. (It takes about 24 minutes instead of 40 minutes to burn a full disk.) And second, one of my players (a Philips 642) has a little trouble with the Riteks occasionally. I still haven't figured it out. One day, a disk will play fine. Another day, the same exact disk gets spit back out and the machine says it's not a DVD. Other times, it will play but freeze occasionally. I have no such trouble with the Verbatims, and no trouble with the Riteks on any of my other 3 players.

My experiences so far with DL disks have been very positive. No $10 coasters yet. Others have not been so lucky, and I expect some of them to chime in here. My only complaint is that they cost so much. I can hardly wait for them to become more affordable.

[rr6966]

I've burned about 10 DVD+DL discs, and my vote is on the Verbatim. I have never had a problem, and they are compatable with all my DVD players. Now if they only would get down to around $2- $3 per disc, my last ones were $5 per disc after rebate.

[Mickey79]

Ave,

I've had great success with Memorex. About $6 a piece, i used Pioneer A08 to burn them and haven't had any problems as of yet. They play well on my DVD players and burn with NERO without a glitch.

Can't wait for DVD-R DL though...

Mickey

[BSpielbauer]

My experiences...

I have burned 12 Ritek dual layer discs. 11 successful burns, and only one was not successful. The unsuccessful one was NOT due to media error. It was completely my error. I was using the "older" version of DVDDecrypter to rip and to burn, and I was unaware that this older version did not support the process. The other 11 play fine in three DVD players, and I have watched them all of the way through.

I have also burned 9 Verbatim dual layers discs. All 9 were complete successes. All 9 have been fully tested, again in three standalone DVD players.

My hardware: using a Pioneer External burner, (equivelent of the AO8 internal burner, I believe).

My tools: Latest version of DVDDecrypter. I used this to rip an entire image to the hard drive, in ISO mode, and then to burn the image back to the burner.

Additional: I was extremely cautious, because of the high cost of the media. Thus, my burns were all at 2.4x speeds. I deliberately limited the software to this. I have never been one to risk the quality of the final burn just to gain a few minutes' advantage while burning.

Hope this helps,

-Bruce in Chi-Town

[scajjr]

I have used 5 Ridata and 3 Verbatim in my NEC 3520A. The Ridata burned at 2.4X, 2 of the Verbatim at 4X the other burned at 2.4X using DVD Decryptor.
I set the speed at 4X not sure why one of the Verbatims only did 2.4X.

Have tried the disks in 3 different standalone and 4 pc DVD players and all worked fine.

Sam