What exactly is bad about Princo DVD-Rs?

[Bix]

I've had a 100% success rate w/ the white top Princos so far in my E30, I can't say the same for Accu or Samsung BeAll. I've read some stuff about "DVD rot," what exactly is this and how does it happen? I don't exactly understand how a DVD can "go bad."

Thanks,
-David

[txpharoah]

"DVD rot" is just myth for the most part. The process is one caused by excessive heat for long periods of time. Baking a CD-R in the dashboard is common. But who does that?

People claiming their DVDs quit working after a few months need to look at issues such as scratches and warped media (some cases are not flat and bend the discs). It's not because the dye magically "sank" or "faded" or some other absurd crap I've heard on these forums.

Princo DVD-R (one of my favorites too with a 98% succes rate here) are like any other cheap DVD-R. They have balancing issues. So when burned, they may wiggle a bit too much and cause data to write outside the range where it needs to be.

Hence files will not open. Video breaks up. usually ONLY after th 3.9 gigabyte area. It's the narrow 4.0 - 4.38 area where all hell breaks loose. I rarely write a disc that full. It's too common an issue on even the best discs, and you won't be gaining much by eaking out 400 more meg, in fact you stand to lose more in the end.

Princo DVD-R are not always cooperative in older 103 and 104 drives. They work amazingly well in my 105 drive as compared to my 103 and my buddy's 103 and 104.

Princo is better than Ritek and uncaoted discs, as most Princo have a white coating. Uncoated discs leave the data exposed to more light, causing them to die, as well as expose them to more scratches from the topside (more dangerous than bottom-side scratches) since the protective layer is missing. I've experienced that from many of my 1994-1998 CD-R burns that no longer function are because I was dumb and used crap.

[Bix]

Pharoh-

Thanks for the excellent reply. So basically if I follow normal CD/DVD care procedure, my discs should have a long and fruitful existance?

Does burning a disc to be "full" according to the E-30 standalone recorder record in the narrow section (sounds like a stupid question, I know, but I'm a newbie and making sure). Everything I've burnt so far one the Princos have played fine.

Thanks again,
-David

[txpharoah]

I'd avoid filling the disc up 100%. Stop at about 95% or so (you could figure out the exact percentage using the numbers I gave earlier).

Not sure how the recorder you has works exactly, but I've seen bad discs come off a Panasonic model using the Princo to the very end. And poor guy wasted all that time. He should have stopped earlier on the disc.

Buy decent discs and take good care of them, and you should be fine.

And if you use a wallet for storage, be sure it has felt or something non-abrasive on it touching the surface. Avoid uncoated discs, as the slightest thing can ruin them.

I like Princo, and they sell out all the time at the online stores. Obviously somebody likes them.

[LanEvo7]

Well I don't think its just a myth when about 10% of the people that posted their experiences on this SITE alone say that DVD rot has occured.

Accus are definitly better than Princo's. I've Accus with a 100% success rate. I've bought a sample pack, one of the two failed.

[txpharoah]

Well, if it is not a myth, I'd sure like to see the explanation on it. Science is working against these people, and I'm not surprised that 10% may have misinformation or have easily blamed another problem on the first thing they could think of without researching it a bit.

If a car dies, is it suddenly a "piece of crap" (ala the Princo rumor) when maybe the user stored it badly and has nothing to do with the workmanship of the car?

[nerdboy69]

I have bought about 80 PRINCO DVD's in all.

I have only had 1 (known) coaster. I verify all DVD's I write, so I know at least I have a chance of retrieving it's content on the burner drive even if other drives fail (assuming a burning issue and not a wear/tear issue).

The only complaint I have is that my Sony drive will only burn at 2X on the 4X media. Such is life.

Ridiculous as it sounds, I also like the nice clean white surface. Makes any labelling with markers easy to read.

[vric]

I have some princo.. disk are ok for 4.0 meg or less (4.38 is the max, we wont talk about 4.7 shit)

If you pass the 4gig limit, you will have skip at the end it's 98% sure.

for the life time, i don't know.. my first princo disk was burn 1 month ago and still work (under 4gig)

[flaninacupboard]

I've been using some Princos. I've got an unopened tub, which will never be opened. When the discs are first burned they work 100% in the burner, and about 80% in my standalone. after a while (say four months or so) this becomes 100% in the burner and 60% in the stand alone. so far i have had a 0% success rate on other stand alones with the princo media. this is a pioneer model a bush model and a sony PS2. The discs are stored out of sunlight in a cabinet each in a black dvd case. is it rot? could be. is it the discs warping from being held up in cases? could be. are they just crap to start with? could be. whatever the reason, i have been re-burning all my DVD-R's to better media, with which i have a 100% success on my stand alone, and 100% on other stand alones.

Txpharoh,
did you ever have a laser disc player? rotting discs is nothing like a myth, it's a fact. do a little research online and you'll see how many titles were re called and rereleased because of rot, and i can tell you -any- of my discs more than a decade old have degraded to one degree or another. The common blame for the problem was the glue used to stick the two layers of disc together. the glue decomposed with time, and as it did so attacked the data layer. uneven glue also lead to tracking problems and unstable noisy discs. sounds a bit like princo to me....

[simmons3d]

I can't speak for anyone else but my experience with Princo's has been somewhat unpleasant. I have used them numerous times in my Pioneer A04. They do not play well in any of the 5 dvd players that I have access to, and when they do they are prone to lock-ups especially near the end of the program. They also do not like to be re-ripped with both smart ripper and decrypter often just giving up on them.

I am not an expert on dvd-r manufacturing, but compare the dye depth and color of a princo (light pink) to a ritek (deep purple). This seems to have a direct relationship to the quality and reliability of the media.

Anyone that has had good results with princo should consider themselves lucky that they can get that kind of performance from such cheap media, I sure can't.

[pacmania_2001]

I have a friend who works in a large chain video store and every month or so they get a newsletter out about issues affecting the industry/store.

Anyway back on topic I was having a read of it when I was over there and they were referring to disc rot as being caused by tiny air pockets developing between the layers. It seemed to be happening in about 1 in every 100 or so discs that the company was buying.

[LanEvo7]

Well, if it is not a myth, I'd sure like to see the explanation on it. Science is working against these people, and I'm not surprised that 10% may have misinformation or have easily blamed another problem on the first thing they could think of without researching it a bit.

If a car dies, is it suddenly a "piece of crap" (ala the Princo rumor) when maybe the user stored it badly and has nothing to do with the workmanship of the car?

The explaination is that the dye is bad. 10% failure rate is not good, in fact thats just only from the people on this site.

You also keep claiming that accus are bad, yet I've never read anybody with degradtion problems relating to their media. There have been the occational error here and there, but nothing near what Princo's have. Oh yea, I can burn ALL the way until the end of the disc without the video skipping.

I think you need to do more research before blatenly putting up info. [/code]

[txpharoah]

I've burned close to 100,000 different DVDs for commercial purposes, and the errors people complain about are normally myth or things that can affect any brand of disc. I've tested about everything that exists for DVD-R format.

There are only a few manufacturers/assemblers of discs in the entire world. There are only a few companies that make the parts for disc assembly in this world (i.e. glue, metals, plastics, dyes, etc).

If anybody needs to do research, it's the people that complain and blame media. Sure. Problems can happen. But is it confined to one "branding" of the same media that many many more companies sell under their own brand? No! Not at all.

I'd love to explain how manufacturing businesses work, with vendors, suppliers, etc, but that's not my job. I've had enough of this post. Too many people passing out misinformation here, and talking about something they know too little about. Sure. Blame Princo! Why not? And as the old saying goes, let's just "blame Canada" too. Might as well.

FYI: You can see air bubbles on discs. If it has a bubble now, it won't move much later. Learn about vacuuming and air pressure, etc. So check your media surface before sticking it in the burner. I get those too every now and then. Even found one on a Pioneer once. It happens. Mass production can let things slip sometimes, but not 10% of all discs. I don't think so.

[txpharoah]

I am not an expert on dvd-r manufacturing, but compare the dye depth and color of a princo (light pink) to a ritek (deep purple). This seems to have a direct relationship to the quality and reliability of the media.

It could be pink with polka dots and this wouldn't matter.

[LanEvo7]

I've burned close to 100,000 different DVDs for commercial purposes, and the errors people complain about are normally myth or things that can affect any brand of disc. I've tested about everything that exists for DVD-R format.

There are only a few manufacturers/assemblers of discs in the entire world. There are only a few companies that make the parts for disc assembly in this world (i.e. glue, metals, plastics, dyes, etc).

If anybody needs to do research, it's the people that complain and blame media. Sure. Problems can happen. But is it confined to one "branding" of the same media that many many more companies sell under their own brand? No! Not at all.

There's obviously something wrong with the Princo discs since so many people complain about it. If the disc says 4.3 gigs, it should burn 4.3 gigs not, 3.8 gigs. Just look at the facts. Take the top generic brands of dvd-r, accu, ritek, lead data, optodisc and compare it to Princo. None of them has as much reports about degradtion and errors as Princo does. Why is that? Everybody that buys Princo is an idiot and doesn't know how to treat their discs right?
I'm tired of you making yourself seem that you know everything about DVD-R media in every thread and when people point you out, you either ignore it or make excuses about them not knowing how to treat their dvd-rs.

[Chips144]

I have backed-up over 500 movies from my dvd collection. I have used both Ritek and Princo dvd-r's initially at 1X, then 2X and the last 250 or so at 4X. I gave up on my Sony DRU500A since it simply would not consistently write at 4X (only about 10% succes at 4X). I tried EVERY firmware version and trick listed on many different forums. Nothing worked. I bought a Cendyne (rebadged Pioneer AO5) and have had 100% success writing at 4X on both the Riteks and Princos. I have yet to experience a problem with a disk failing months after it was written. Perhaps I will in the future, but for now my disks written over 1 year ago are still working fine.

Relative to Princo failures that people are reporting:
Let us say for the sake of argument that ALL disks have the same failure rate of 1 bad disk per 100 sold.
Princo sells 1,000,000 disks and therefore will have 10,000 bad disks.
Ritek sells 500,000 disks and therefore will have 5,000 bad disks.
Brand X sells 50,000 disks and therefore will have 500 bad disks.
If EVERYBODY reports EVERY bad disk on a forum, then Brand X will only have 500 reports and this fact will be lost among the 10,000 reports about the Princos. Since Princos are the least expensive (I purposely did not use the word cheapest), I assume that their sales are much greater than the others and therefore it stands to reason that more failurea would be reported. You cannot confuse this with failure rate.

Chips

[gavmiester]

Princo not so bad...yet?
Between myself and one buddy, wever burned about 100 on the princos with only 3 coasters.....and they have worked on about 8 dvd brand stand alone players....panasonics and sonys amongst them. Weve been doing this for about 3 months and havnt experienced any of the "rot".......maybe some people got caught with aq bad batch

[LanEvo7]

Relative to Princo failures that people are reporting:
Let us say for the sake of argument that ALL disks have the same failure rate of 1 bad disk per 100 sold.
Princo sells 1,000,000 disks and therefore will have 10,000 bad disks.
Ritek sells 500,000 disks and therefore will have 5,000 bad disks.
Brand X sells 50,000 disks and therefore will have 500 bad disks.
If EVERYBODY reports EVERY bad disk on a forum, then Brand X will only have 500 reports and this fact will be lost among the 10,000 reports about the Princos. Since Princos are the least expensive (I purposely did not use the word cheapest), I assume that their sales are much greater than the others and therefore it stands to reason that more failurea would be reported. You cannot confuse this with failure rate.

Just so you know, RITEK is the leader in sales of DVD-R media.

[txpharoah]

Just so you know, RITEK is the leader in sales of DVD-R media.

This may very well be true, but statements like this don't mean squat unless you can back it up with a link to a reliable industry report stating such a fact for this past quarter (Q1 2003).

Thanks.

[LanEvo7]

This may very well be true, but statements like this don't mean squat unless you can back it up with a link to a reliable industry report stating such a fact for this past quarter (Q1 2003).

I have yet seen you prove ANY of your statements in this forum. Being a little hypocritical there aren't we? To lazy to read up on the latest news?
If you read a little more, you would know the three biggest Taiwanese DVD-R media are Ritek, CMC, and Prodisc. Princo doesn't even come close to their league. Whoever is first sometimes flucuates between these three, but Princo never comes close.

Here are some links:
http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/Article1.asp?datePublish=2003/04/01&pages=15&seq=89
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/6788
http://www.consumerdvreviews.com/news/0302/03152002_01.asp
http://www.dvd-recordable.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=140&mo...rder=0&thold=0


Now show me some FACTS that ACCUs and RITEKs will degrade faster than crappy Princos.
[/url]

[txpharoah]

That's what I thought:
1. Ritek is leader in the + market. We're talking about -- discs here.
2. I cannot trust a report that writes about 2.4x DVD-R media. They obviously have issues with facts, and if they worked for me, they'd be fined or fired for the mistakes.
2. Other forum posts mean squat.
3. CMC is the leader from what I know. And even then, most material for ALL DISCS come from a few key players that make the dyes, plastics, metals, etc., from Japan and Germany and Taiwan.

This is what I've been trying to bring across here. Princo is not bad. At least not any worse than anything else. It's all made from the same exact stuff.

Some just choose to make it balance better. That's the only real key here. Balancing for better speeds. And in some cheap media cases, balancing to be good at even the lowest 1x speed seems to be an issue - as in Princo, Ritek, Accu, and plenty of no-names, many of which are Princo and Ritek without their names being used - you can tell by it being white or silver on top.

As far as reports on the breakdown of uncoated discs, I'll find a report I read last year or the year before. It's in an issue of a industry report at work. It was pretty damning against uncoated discs.

[disturbed1]

Just the facts here please

Sales figures-
Ritek #1 (Over 1 Mil a month)
Prodisc #2 (Over 1 Mil a month)
Princo #3 (+/- 1 Mil a month)
CMC #2-4? (Declined exact number statement, but said it was close to Ritek)
Gigastorage and Lead Data #5-6 (just under 1 mil a month)

Those are for DVD-R media only. As stated April 22. You can poll the respected companies' investor relations for more info. Most are more than happy to give you the sales numbers.

The margin between Ritek and Princo for monthly sales is less than 50,000 on average.


I'd agree with most of what txpharoah has said. The only part I disagree with is Princo being better than Ritek.

I don't think Ritek is better than Princo though either. Princo has a fault in the dye layer beyond the 2,000,000 sector mark. Most of Princo's discs will achieve read errors at this point and beyond.

DVD rot for Princos have not surfaced in any of my 1.5-2 year old Princo discs. I use most of them everyday to retrieve data. Plus my g/f watches her TV shows that were archieved to Princo discs also. Playback is fine on PS2, Apex, Philips, and Pioneer players.

1 out of 5 Riteks fail in power calibration on my Panasonic LF-D321, no other disc fails (Gigastorage, Verbatium, Mitsui, Maxell, Princo). Ritek is one of the most horrid CD-R blank makers. If they've refined their manufacturing techniques, why hasn't passed on to the CD line?


As far as user reports go, I don't have the confidence in the reports because of things I'd rather not say to keep from hurting peoples feelings

[FulciLives]

SUBJECT: OPTICAL DISC "ROT"

Hello

There was another poster earlier that mentioned this was a REAL issue with LaserDiscs and that is true. Optical Disc "Rot" is not a fantasy or myth. It exists. It seemed to happen alot with LaserDiscs because you had two disc platters glued together. If the glue degraded and let air in then you would get was was called "rot". This could happen from the glue degrading and breaking down to the two platters not being glued together correctly and thus leaving air pockets or "holes" that allowed air to get into it. I have a very dear friend who has been collecting CD (music) ever since the format came out. He has close to 3,000 CD discs (many are import CD releases from all over the world). He has experienced "rot" with a few of his CD's and not always very old discs either. Often times it is more of a manufactoring problem than an age problem. Again either the glue was defective or the layers weren't glued together correctly etc.

Basically "rot" can happen anytime air comprimises the "seal" of the optical disc. This can happen to CDs, LaserDiscs, DVDs etc.

I cannot comment if that is the problem with the Princo media but Laser "Rot" as it was called in the days of LaserDiscs definately exists and can happen to any type of optical disc known today.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
Oddly enough most LaserDiscs makers tried to downplay the problem of Laser "Rot" back in the day ... they would not exchange a title for that reason ... yet if it happened to an entire "batch" there often would be a recall. There were also many titles (the extended CAV LD of ALIENS comes to mind) that were known to have the Laser "Rot" issue. Also certain "plants" (like the god awful WEA Warner plant or Technidisc WAY back in the day) were known to produce "crap" quality LaserDisc titles. In fact Warner would often not press certain "well regarded" titles at the WEA plant for this reason. Towards the end of the LaserDisc heyday many titles (including Warner titles) would proudly advertise on the Jacket that they had been made in Japan (due to customer awareness of problems with other processing plants). I still remember the UTTER horror of the LaserDisc community when Warner finally released a remastered widescreen and never before true STEREO (surround as well if I recall) LaserDisc of EXCALIBUR only to then press it at the dreaded WEA plant. Shortly after that nightmare came the aforementioned "made in Japan" stickers on certain high profile titles. I'm still waiting for a good home video print of EXCALIBUR as the Warner DVD is riddled with artifacts due, I suppose, to a poor mpeg2 encoding. I swear that title is CURSED hehehe!

One final note to add to the nightmare ... when will DVD9 discs start to "rot" since they are two layers of info glued together?

[KTH]

Txpharoah, I'll admit that you do know a lot about video and DVD authoring but are wrong in basically saying there is no such thing as laser rot. That people are imagining it or it is caused by scratches and other user abuse. I'm sure that some problems can be explained by abuse, but not all of them. The term "Laser Rot" was first used widely to explain problems in the LD (Laser Disc) format. LD's are manufactured in two halves which are glued together. Laser Rot on LD's was normally caused by bad glue or the manufacturing process that caused air to leak beneath the surface of the disc and reacting with the disc's reflective surface. This usually caused black dots to appear under the surface of the disc and would cause the video to get very noisy (dots on screen), freeze, or the disc not to play at all in the worst case. In the early stage of Laser Rot the picture usually starts getting noisy (a lot of lines/dots in picture). Black dots may not be visible yet. In the later stages is when the picture normally starts to freeze and or not play at all. Imation/3M was one of the companies that manufactured disc's as well as glue and disc's manufactured by them had one of the highest defect rates because of Laser Rot. In fact the form that you had to fill out to return defective disc's listed Laser Rot as one of the reasons for the return. In fact I know someone a tech in Pioneer Tech service department who will back me up in saying "That Laser Rot Exist". How's that for a reliable source?


I terms of heat being a problems with some DVD-R's. I have run some of my own test and found that the prolonged exposure to heat in some players is enough to make some disc's go bad. It didn't take leaving them on the dash of my car to do it. For example I tried burning four disc's in exactly the same way from the same spindle of disc's. I then tried playing them all in a player that runs relatively cool to verify that they work OK. I then put two disc in a Sony player that runs very hot. I left each of the two disc in the player with the player on but not playing for several days each (This took a total of four days). At the same time I repeated this same proceedure using a Pioneer that runs relatively cool. After exposure to the heat from the players the disc's that were in the Sony would pixelate and get stuck. While the disc in the Pioneer played fine. This seems to indicate that heat could be affecting these disc's. The disc's that had problems playing after exposure to heat were not scratched and did not have smudges on them. This rules out user abuse.

The bottom line is that no matter how much you know about something there is always someone who knows more than you.

[txpharoah]

Thank you for the information disturbed1. Reported sales numbers for those manufacturers is a good start since no real report seem to exist to compare the facts that were sought after. Thanks for compiling it.

Again, my only preference on Princo over Ritek is coatings. Both are crappy discs compared to Apple, Pioneer, and other name brands that take time to make quality. My only thing was that at least Princo tried to somewhat protect its discs more. TDK is even now coating the bottoms of discs with its clear "Armor" plastics because media loss from scratches is the biggest problem, not something as obscure as disc rot.

I do remember laser rot and that was almost 10 years ago. But laserdiscs and recordable DVD/CD media are not even close to the same in manufacturing from what I know. So no real comparison. I still think the of "DVD disc rot" ideas as being more of an assumption without any real proof of such errors. Now the DVD9 scare... yeah, I know... I sure hope not.

Leaving discs in an area where they can overheat is user abuse. Sorry. The dashboard? Are you kidding me? In the sun? Leaving them in a player for 4 days while the player spins and heats up? Put them away and take better care of your discs. Not to mention abusing that poor player and ruining it motors. Here's one for you: Would driving my car in the desert without radiator fluid at 110 mph make the car a piece of junk when it died? The "authoritative media tests" some of you people come up with are pretty off-the-wall!

And sure, I don't know everything. I only speak when I know what I'm doing. On other things, I shut up. It's really easy. Some of these people should catch on to that philosophy.

[KTH]

Forgot to mention that I agree with Txpharoah about Princo DVD-R's not being as bad as people say. I recently bought some LEDA brand DVD-R's which are really Princos (White Topped) and have so far burned 50+ disc's with no coasters to date. I also sold twenty to a friend to use on his Panasonic E30 and so far after 10 disc's he hasn't had any problems with the Princo's.

[KTH]

Txpharoah, About the comment about LEAVING THE DISC ON THE DASH OF A CAR to test them. It was meant as a joke in reference to your first post in this topic. I would never leave or even suggest that people leave a any kind of disc on the dash of a car in the sun. That would be just plain stupid. Anyone who did that should be locked up for their own good!!! You are a little off in reply to my post. I did not leave each disc in the player for four days. It was two days for each disc used in the test. This was done to simulate the effects over prolonged exposure to heat. In fact I have had DVD-R disc go bad with normal use (taking the disc out of the player right after being played), but this can take a lot longer (a month or two) to occur. So I decided to speed up the process by leaving the disc in the player. Also the players used for the test (to heat up the disc's) both have bad optical assemblys so I didn't have to worry about wearing them out (They were already broken). One more thing to note is that I've tried this test on Maxell & TDK DVD-R disc's and they worked fine after being in my Sony player which runs hot. So apparently different brands do hold up better than others in terms of heat.

[txpharoah]

So apparently different brands do hold up better than others in terms of heat.

There are a few kinds of glues, so I can see that happening.

You can melt anything if you just apply enough heat.

Your tests remind me of the crash dummies. How many cars drive into a brick wall at 50mph? Good tests sure, but results are kind of suspect, as the lab tests don't necessarily hold up to real life all the time.

... and if this sounds like I'm arguing with you... I'm not...

[KTH]

Txpharoah, I think we've gone off topic enough and should let people go back to the original discussion of "What exactly is bad about Princo DVD-R's?" Well at least we stayed on the topic of disc's. I've seen other post go from "What DVD-R is the best" to "who's right in the case of the woman who spilled hot coffee from McDonalds on herself". By the way I am amazed that you are still up. Isn't it like 3:30am where your at? Don't you sleep?

[spidey]

If you care about what you are burning DO NOT USE Princo. I have seen first hand multiple instances of them rotting. They work great for approximately 1 month, are cared for properly, then a few months later, they do not work at all.

They are so tanked you can not even extract your files off of them............

Princo's are utter crap period, no matter how you care for them. You can even physically feel it in their quality, they even physically seem to be a 1/3 thinner disc, hence the wobbling txpharoah spoke of.....

I'd recommend you not wasting your money on them.

Fuel for you to read:

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=148433
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=148523
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=152051
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=152777
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=148998