Seen any Double Layers under a buck???

[jsmithepa]

Whasssamatter, don't they know blueRay is gonna take over anytime now?

[redwudz]

No DL's I would want to buy for that price. The format is still in it's infancy, as far as I'm concerned. Verbatim is about the only manufacturer that has fairly consistent results. You can try other cheaper media, but don't expect the best results.

[TBoneit]

If as you state BlueRay is going to take over they shouldn't bother with DLs.

However you are wrong. A HD recordable media may replace DVDs eventually, not soon IMHO.

Making a quality DL isn't as easy and I don't expect to see decent DL media cheap for a while.

[mstone321]

I beg to differ. DL is very easy. Lots 'o threads, won't get into that except to say RipIt4Me and ImgBurn are your friends.

Verbatim +R DL goes on sale at Future Shop (Blame Canada!) from time to time. Last sale was 20pcs. for $25.

How much better can life get?

[zoobie]

I'd hate to see how much a blu ray blank disc goes for...

[redwudz]

I've seen present prices from $15US to $30US each for Blu-Ray, many of them likely bogus. And there is no guarantee that they will be any more dependable than DL is at present. I would wait quite a while before I would invest in the system.

[jsmithepa]

I dunn need good quality, I won't be sharing with anbody nor do I need it to work anywhere else, just for my personal short term archiving. Lasts 1 yr, I'd be ecstatic.

Dunn make no sense, DL's been available for a coupla of yrs now.

[jman98]

http://www.newegg.com had a really good sale on Verbatim +R DL discs where the price was under a dollar a disc after a rebate. If you don't care if they last more than a year then buy Memorex or any other crap brand you can find and use it. DL defects are quite high on the manufacturing line. When they first came out, about 50% of the discs off the line were rejected as defective. That's a rather high number of defects as I think for single layer discs rejects are usually around 1%. Rejects may not be at 50% now for DL discs but I bet they are still a lot higher than for single layer discs and that is why they are expensive. I don't believe Taiyo Yuden even makes a dual layer disc, which might mean that they think it's too troublesome to be worth the effort.

[lordsmurf]

I beg to differ. DL is very easy. Lots 'o threads, won't get into that except to say RipIt4Me and ImgBurn are your friends.

There is life beyond copying DVDs. For those of us that actually author our own content, your friends are also good authorware (Ulead DVDWS2, DVDSP, etc), and then PgcEdit for layer break, and ImgBurn for burning. It's flawless. Use a good disc (Verbatim), and you're all set.

I dunn need good quality, I won't be sharing with anbody nor do I need it to work anywhere else, just for my personal short term archiving. Lasts 1 yr, I'd be ecstatic.

You're missing the point. Data does not magically disappear. When we say the discs are crap, we mean they fail to work ever. If it's good right away, then odds are that it will be fine in many more years too (unless there is severe defect in workmanship, but even then, something like that tends to be immediate, not developing).

[jsmithepa]

You're missing the point. Data does not magically disappear. When we say the discs are crap, we mean they fail to work ever. If it's good right away, then odds are that it will be fine in many more years too (unless there is severe defect in workmanship, but even then, something like that tends to be immediate, not developing).

OKAY then... are current burners not capable of "skipping" or "relocating bad burned sectors" of bad/questionable spots on the media?

[oldandinthe way]

With optical disks, there is no way to detect bad sectors before you burn them. So you can't skip them when you are writing or relocate the data.

When dealing with optical media you cannot make assumptions from your experience with magnetic media.

The process of writing optical disks requires greater adaptation of the writer to the media. Optical disk writers must implement a write strategy for each brand of DVD they write and change the operation of the laser to implement this. This differs from magnetic heads which do not sense the media or adapt to differing oxide coatings.

If your writer does not adequately adapt to differing media, the results are indistinguishable from what LordSmurf calls crap media.

When you view the media reports on this site, and see that ratings for a given mediaID are mixed, and problems seem to be restricted to certain brands of drives, you have seen evidence of this phenomenon.