inefficient DVD burning

[slaird]

Howdy-

I currently own a DVD-RW that I bought over a year ago. It was from NewEgg and was "generic" I believe. It burns at 4x and has been useful. I use it to make DVD's from my MiniDVD Recorder, make my computer backups, and sometimes make a DVD backup when I buy a new DVD.

My problem is that the DVD's don't always work. Most of the time it won't make coasters, but occasionally it does. However when I take the DVD's to different players, then they sometimes don't work. As you can imagine this is quite a problem when I'm doing something like a wedding video for family. It isn't too cool if the new couple can't see their wedding video or if it is very jumpy.

I recently found out the hardway that my backup of my computer using Ghost imager didn't work either. It cost me a lot of time when my computer crashed.

The other problem is that the reader in the DVD-RW isn't very good. Sometimes I can't read DVD's that my DVD-ROM can read.

My questions are:

1) Would you suspect my media being a major problem? What media is considered reliable (if you could direct me to a good post, I'm sure this has been covered)? What media is very reliable (cost doesn't matter as much)? What media is the best quality for cost?(I know this changes, but what is your opinion?)

2) Would upgrading my DVD-RW resolve some of my issues (other than the Readability issue)? or is it mostly dependent on my media?

Are there any recommendations for better readability DVD-RW's?

3) Any othre suggestions?

Thank you so much in advanced. This is something I have been pondering for over a month now.

[rkr1958]

Most likely poor quality media. What media are you using? I really love the 8x Taiyo Yuden DVD-R from rima.com.
http://www.rima.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=R&Product_Code=1736-100

You might make sure that your burner has the latest firmware. But I'd say all-in-all it's probably poor quality media.

[slaird]

I've used a variety of media-
the ones that I remember(I'm away from my desk right now) are Memorex and Ridata.