DVD burning conundrum problems

[seaking]

I hope someone can help me here.

I produce my own videos which I ship worldwide, edited with Premier, authored in TMPeng (sp) and burnt from file images with latest Nero.

For the past 18 months I have been using BenQ 8X DVD+R in my Pioneer 109 (latest firmware) and never once suffered a return due to someone's player incompatibility. over 200 discs had been ship and everyone's happy.

Problem NOW is that I can't find these DVDs anywhere and had to use something else. After going through reviews and checking with other people I tried Maxell DVD+R but though they work in all my test settop players, they failed in about 40% of the ones I shipped out. Then I tried Fujis, and the same thing. I've asked the clients to go out and test them in other machines but they get the same thing. spins up, down, whirrs and then NO DVD message comes back. wth? After going through the forums looking for answers I even asked the clients to remove the press on labels to see if THAT was causing an instability issue with the media and their drives. Still waiting on an answer with that one.

These clients have already received my products burnt with the BenQs and never had a problem. But now nothing works for them.

Now, my MAIN question is, instead of going through various cakes of DVD blank media until I find something that can or will work in as many players possible, what can I do? Is there a blank media brand that will pretty well close be the miracle DVD that will NOT fail?

I'm trying to shorten my trial by error period here.. I know that there is no perfect science behind this, that the magic between burner and media isn't an exact science but man, what can I do to reduce the wasteage?!

Should I be switching over to -R's? Stick with +R?

Thanks in advance if anyone can help!

[Nelson37]

Taiyo Yudens and NO LABELS. There may be issues specific to your burner and particular brands.

[lordsmurf]

You're already using good media.
Labels are likely the problem.

DVD-R is more compatible than DVD+R, yes, slightly.

[seaking]

You're already using good media.
Labels are likely the problem.

DVD-R is more compatible than DVD+R, yes, slightly.

I read the 2003 article how -R is more compatible than +R but it's almost 3 yr old info. I was always under the impression that +R was the way to go.

I have someone offering me some -R Ritek/ Ridata tonight to try out.. see how that works.

if LABELS might cause problems with balance, will direct printing on suitable surfaced DVDs not cause the same thing if there's a bit of ink on one side more than the other side of the centre?

[Nelson37]

There are many, many theories on why labels cause problems. What is known for certain is that for a large number of people and players, they do.

Most plausible theory, at least to me, is not a balance issue but warping caused by different expansion rates of the label and the disk media.

I have not seen any errors whatsoever directly attributable to printing directly on the disk.