Why do dvd-r media become unreadable after a few months?

[DrJeepney]

I've read stuff about it in this forum that after a few months dvd-r media becomes unreadable. this is especially true for princo from what i read in the reviews.

Why is that anyways? i use verbatim and princo. and both of them are rejected by my dvd player, i only have one dvd player so i dont know if it is my dvd player that is the problem or the dvd-r.

my dvd player can still read the dvd-r's i made, but it skips in the intro and also in the middle of the disc.

[jester1x]

Don't mean to patronize you, but you get what you pay for in this instance. Cheap DVD-R media may be cheap in price, but it's also cheap in quality too. Trying to save a dollar or two now, may end up costing you more in the long run in having unuseable discs and/or unwatchable ones.

I have read some instances of some folks here on this very board who have had to "redo" a disc because the original was barely readable even by their computer. So, they end up spending more money when they could have spent a few more dollars in the first place to avoid something like this happening at all (if possible).

*I do realize some folks are on a rather modest or tight budget with this hobby.

[robrosen]

I've used large numbers of Princo's without a problem. DVD-R's can skip for any number of reasons, ranging from authoring to burning mistakes. My suggestion is that you get a DVD player that can handle DVD-R's. Not all of them can. The strange thing is that the off-brand players like Apex and Norcent seem to be compatible with just about everything.

[apaw]

i think what he wants to know is what happens chemicallyto make the disc unreadable....

anyone know exactly? is the organic dye more susceptable to change form due to light exposure?or even in total darkness will princos still be unreadable?....

[DrJeepney]

the odd thing is, when my brother made the dvd-r's, i popped them into mintek 1600 dvd player <one of the best $50 dollar dvd player model out there and i watched them, it played flawlessly with no skips whatsoever.

that was last month or so ago.

now, for some reason my dvd player is not reading it properly, because there is a lot of skipping.

i hope best buy or target still sells mintek 1600. the last i heard, they were going for 40$. i want to get a new one if i can't get a replacement of my old one with that warranty i have.

[Faustus]

I've been using mostly Ritek since I started a little over a year ago. The ESBUY branded ones ath I think are the G01s and then later the G03s. After I dunno almost 2 years everything I burned that I haven't scratched to heck is still readable.

Heck even the ones I burned on those crappy DVDPro I got for my first disc are still readable as long as I didn't record all the way up into the "danger zone" near the end of the disc.

[dcsos]

Dr Jeepney
Did you read the thread I started yesterday on this topic?
It seem some brits are discussing this problem here
http://www.dvdoctor.net/cgi-bin/ubb/Forum6/HTML/002546-2.html
I added I only had 2 failures both
ATERRA media which i never had a tool to identify who made it before they failed..completely..I can't even get at the files in a computer

BUT these 2 out of almost 900 burns now