For Frugal People $4.94 for 50 DVDs starting Sunday Feb 19th @ Staples

[TBoneit]

Take back an ink for $3 discount pay $2 for 50 dvds...Hmmm....

Anyway going onto what rnoski said, Having been in food distribution if you were ever in the back room of supermarkets, Convenience store or Fast food you probably wouldn't want to eat anything not factory sealed where at least you have chance it is sanitary. The amount of dead roaches after the exterminators visit, watching them scurry around on the counter when they open up and turn on the lights. And of course the person they caught ****ing into the pancake batter.

Then spices, you are aware there is a standard for how many insect fragments on a % basis as I understand it. I'm going on hearsay for that but I tend to believe it. I saw a man walking around on the returned bread at a Italian bread commercial bakery one time as he filled up his open top truck, so I asked is this going for animal food? His answer no, Bread Crumbs and so on. Government standards

[SingSing]

But expect any burned media to last forever is not pratical. Only pressed media can do that.

Actually, a lot of research has shown the opposite. Pressed discs will oxidize and "rot" much faster than dye. Be sure to back up important pressed discs.

From what I read. The rotting of factory DVD is not that wide spread ( except those James Bond movies ( must be a particular factory or SON OF THE GOLDFINGER ).

In general, we have more 10 years or older factory working VCD or DVD, then any burned media.

[rnoski]

i have bought half a dozen or more pressed dvd's from retail through the years that did not even work out of the case.....much less down the road.......but i have crap luck with most anything.......that really upsets me though......stand in line buy a dvd get home get my popcorn and bam the darn disc dont work.....and it ain't my dvd player believe me......i go get another one wasting my gas and time and it works fine.....

[rnoski]

my worst experience was a rocky collection from sams that really got me fired up.....it was a christmas present

[rnoski]

maybe it was the stupid security de-mag or whatever......or maybe those stupid rfid tags....who knows im king of ignorant on that subject....all i know is that they wouldnt play right

[smearbrick1]

For all you bargin hunters, here's another great money saving idea for you. The next time you go to the grocery store to buy meat, don't waste all you money at the meat counter. Just pass on by and head for the pet food isle. You can pick up some great deals on canned dog and cat food. Lots of good protein and added vitamins - umm, ummm good! All for less than a buck a can! Take some home to the family, cook it up and serve it over noodles and watch everyone chow down. Oh, don't forget to throw away the can; you wouldn't want anyone to see it.

Maybe you can find a forum somewhere on steaks and chops and post your money saving finding on eating dog food instead of steak. I'm sure your post will be a "smash" hit.

I cannot understand why someone got so upset just because someone
else bought some cheap/crap disks.

I don't know either, but it was damn funny. A little extreme maybe.



RFID tags or magnetic scanners do not affect the playback of a DVD

[SingSing]

The sales has already ended.

[ROF]

The sales has already ended.

Not here. I was at Staples this morning picking up office supplies and they still had Playo's prominently displayed at $5.

[edDV]

FWIW, I just received my $15 rebate from Playo for the first batch (filed the day after Thanksgiving Nov 25).

[unclebud]

I have used 10 to Ghost 3 computers so far. They are readable and appear to be good enough.
Time will tell.
UB

[solidsnake]

I've burned 6 of these discs so far, 2 in my liteon 5005 recorder and 4 in my computer dvd writer, no problems. I'm glad I bought them, thanks to the person who posted this. In fact, if what ROF said is true, I have 2 printer cartridges laying around ready to be put towards 2 more spindles.

[SingSing]

Saw the report on these playo disc on this site, they worked.

https://www.videohelp.com/dvdmedia.php?dvdmediasearch=playo&dvdmediadvdridsearch=&type=...+or+List+Media

[BSpielbauer]

...or an inconsiderate jerk if you use them for somebody else. If 30 cents per disc is too expensive, for good media (TY! MCC! SONY! TDK!), then get another hobby.

I am giggling as I read this thread. This past Thursday, a female co-worker brought in 18 discs which were home movies that her brother had burned for her father, and then mailed them to him from Florida. He bought cases for these, and made custom covers which looked very professional (the guy's graphic design skills are incredible). I was impressed with the packaging, and it was obvious that this was a labor of love. A great deal of time had been spent in making these transfers, which were once on 8mm, and then later were transferred to VHS.

My co-worker brought them to me to see if I could diagnose why "only five of them will play, and then those five keep stuttering, and locking up, and freezing, until they stop and show an error message on his DVD player."

I tried to play some on a few of the DVD players in our library. (We have many different models). I had similar results.

I tried to play a few on my PC at work. I had similar results. Almost none could even get started, regardless of the software and codecs I tried.

Finally, I began running tests, to see what the media was. You guessed it -- Nero CD/DVDSpeed reported that the media was "Playo +R."

I thought I could be the hero, and try to rip them, and then re-burn them on some Taiyo Yudens. I tried DVDDecrypter, and then i tried DVDFabDecrypter (which is notorious for ignoring read errors). Guess what -- out of 18, NOT ONE could be ripped all of the way through without errors being reported. This is the first time I had seen DVDFabDecrypter (a program I do not normally use as it ignores errors) lock up. Ouch.

I finally gave them back, and she called him in Florida. Guess what -- he must now start all over. The files are no longer on his PC, of course.

She is SENDING him 18 Taiyo Yuden discs, so he can re-do. I suggested she ought to just send him a link to one of the places where he can purchase them, or perhaps some Verbatim if he would prefer. She was disgusted, though, and said she does not trust him, and she is afraid he will try again with some other media made by "Cheapo-Cheapo Productions."

In the meantime, this father is still waiting for his Christmas gift.

So sad.

This behavior is not "frugal" as the topic thread implies. It is simply poor judgement.

-Bruce

[OneSickPup]

...or an inconsiderate jerk if you use them for somebody else. If 30 cents per disc is too expensive, for good media (TY! MCC! SONY! TDK!), then get another hobby.

I am giggling as I read this thread. This past Thursday, a female co-worker brought in 18 discs ...

In the meantime, this father is still waiting for his Christmas gift.

So sad.

This behavior is not "frugal" as the topic thread implies. It is simply poor judgement.

-Bruce

Agreed. Sometimes people just have to learn the hard way. Spending a mere 20 to 30 cents more per dvd (.30 x 18 = $5.40) could easily have avoided this disappointment. I honestly think most of the people posting in this thread would know better than to use Playo's in that situation, but overlook the fact that many less knowledgeable people are subject to misinterpretation from viewing this thread. There were over 3200 views before your post. I'm sure there were several parties who left with the impression these were a good buy.

[Faustus]

the data disc failed to read back 16 files.

Thats a pretty raunchy disk. I sometimes move date from my house to a friends house. I use cheapo DVDs for it since the disk is trash a few hours later usually and I always lose RWs. Even the CMCs these days are good for a quick data disk.

[ROF]

@Faustus

I usually use a flash drive for such things unless the data is larger than the 2GB drive.

[TBoneit]

Well i wouldn't use them to send to relatives. However i do use cheapo discs on one time things where i want to recover disk space and it is a subject I may or may not watch... IE timeshifting. I record to my DVD recorder overnight and erase from my DVRs hard drive. If I watch them and they are dead oh well I didn't spend lots of time or money. I may watch 1 in 3 I do that way and so far so good. I just would feel bad about running brand name media through the shredder when I am done with it.

Also FWIW I use verbatim/Sony/Fuji MIJ when I send something out to relatives. OTOH my frugal, really frugal brother supplied a Office Max brand spindle for things he wanted me to do. So far the optodisc seems ok, so he is lucky. I have chucked a few that were scratched or blemished from tha spindle, I didn't even try to burn em.

[SingSing]

Most of the different of different brands of DVD blanks are the coating and not where they are made. The manufacturing of electronics is truely global.

The coating changes when they are "burn" by the laser. The matter of fact, it will also changed under heat, as well as aging. The bottom line is all burned DVD will lost contents after a while, just like burned CD.

So, most of us already figured out this and make multiple copies of important information, because the copy will go bad one at a time.

The debate of good vs cheap media is kind of overheated. The different is the good media maybe can last a year or so longer. But expect any burned media to last forever is not pratical. Only pressed media can do that.

The discussion is moving towards "DVD+/R/W can hold data forever", which is not true.

[OneSickPup]

The discussion is moving towards "DVD+/R/W can hold data forever", which is not true.

HUH!!! Where on earth did that come from??? I draw no such conclusion from this thread!!! That's not the topic being discussed to my knowledge. Could you explain please?

[SingSing]

It was from the general tone of glowing "BRAND" preference, and comments about cheapo, etc..

If we are picking a media to hold data forever, select the wrong make can be fatal.

Since we are just backing up DVD or Video or Data, which we eventually have to update them. Thus, the backups are all disposabled.

The good news is so long as you find out the fading of data early enough, you almost always can locate a DVD drive that is able to read off the content.

[dipstick]

While I'm sure there are horror stories on these disks, I have experienced zero problems with playback and reading these disks. I've given away 20 or so disks out to people and no problems so far. I videoed my son's basketball games and gave the other players copies on these Playo +R's. I didn't ask for any money so I wasn't too worried if they played alright or not. They ended up playing perfectly fine for everybody and everyone was very happy about the videos.

These are not the best disks I've burned, but they are definately not the worst either. Both my Desktop and Laptop buners like these disks just fine.

[TBoneit]

So at 4 cents a disk if you had a ink cartridge to turn in you had good results, good for you.

in the scheme of things saving 20 or 30 cents over brand name ty's doesn't sound important to many but I went back to school in 1996 and some of the others there if it hadn't been for the extra money from the government they'd have been unable to get by. I bunged together a 486 with small hard drive and win95 & a 14" monitor from old parts laying around for one student that had his computer die. He couldn't afford to replace it and had been spending time in the computer lab trying to get homework done. My cost = nil. The return from helping someone = feeling good. Was it state of the art? No. Did it let him get his work done at home and easier too? Yes. Did I ask for any kind of a return? No.

Bottom line sometimes cheap is better than nothing at all.

[OneSickPup]

Bottom line sometimes cheap is better than nothing at all.

Point taken. No way to argue that point. I want you (TBoneit) to understand that I respect your posts and opinions whether we totally agree on points or not. I'm glad you started this thread because obviously it has been debated at great length and proves it was a topic worthy of investigation. My whole issue from the beginning was a fear that VideoHelp newbie's could be somewhat misguided in purchasing Playo's and attempting to use them in situations not well-suited for their use. I hope the lively debate here has provided both pluses and minuses of how this media can be used - which is a huge positive to the VideoHelp community. I hope no offense was taken as none was intended. I would like to add two more comments to the bottom line as far as success with this media:

1. Luck of the draw. Both the UME01... and AML...002 media codes can be very variable from one batch to the next. Some people have good results - some not so good.

2. Burner/Firmware combination. Some burners do quite well with this media, but some do not. If you have the right combo - you may get surprising results.

Good luck and thanks for listening.

[SingSing]

1. Luck of the draw. Both the UME01... and AML...002 media codes can be very variable from one batch to the next. Some people have good results - some not so good.

2. Burner/Firmware combination. Some burners do quite well with this media, but some do not. If you have the right combo - you may get surprising results.

Basically, it depends on many things, and you won't know until you try 20 of those. But at $0.10 a disc. That's viable to try !

[TBoneit]

OneSickPup, You didn't bother me at all. Debate is good and if this thread also educates others to the dangers of price as the only criteria to buy things, then taht is a positive.

Originally I only posted so others that sometimes need as do I really cheap for unimportant things would know.

I would never advocate antything but the best for backups where longevity is a requirement.

So far knock wood, the Princo 1X that I burned before I even knew about media codes and such, they st ill work when I pull one and watch it. Maybe they worked good in a DRU-500A, hard to say. Since they are backup copies I'm not going to recopy as I have the originals safely put away.

As far as your variable comment on the media I don't doubt that at all, Most likely they have no QC at all.

[SingSing]

I think the better bet is to copy important content on two different types of discs, DVD-R and DVD+RW. Check both of them once a while ( QC ), instead of believe in brand/make.

DVD+/-R/W ability to hold information is based on its chemical coating, it life span at best can be predicted but never assured.

[lordsmurf]

DVD+RW/DVD-RW media is a poor choice for anything you want to archive for extended periods of time. They are meant for temp storage only, nothing longterm (months or years).

However, a good DVD-RW/DVD+RW is still probably 100 times better than this Playo crap.

[xxiangg]

There is nothing wrong to warn people the danger of using low quality
disks. But there is also nothing wrong to use cheap disks if you know
what you are doing. The deal has gone and I missed it. I will give it
a try next time when I can get the same deal. Currently, I am using
+RW for frenquent backup of my digital photos. For yearly backup,
I always make multiple copies with quality DVD disks of different
brands. For monthly backup, I use one external HD and 2 +RW. So
if a disk can last between 2 monthly backups, it is good enough. USB
flash drives is a good idea. But 4G flash drive is still too expensive.
I may use it in the future. Using these disks, it will save me time for
backup. If it is not working, $4.95 for a lesson is not too expensive.

[SingSing]

There are no disagreement that the content on CD/DVD+/-R/W will eventually fade away. But don't panics. That's was already a better media for data retention - magnetic media. Floppy Disk and ZIp disk can hold data for much longer, and brand/price was not known to be a major factor. I bet you still get to your legal document on zip disk, twenty years from now. So, we all can sleep better with our important data safely tucked away.

[tomwil]

Floppy Disk and ZIp disk can hold data for much longer, and brand/price was not known to be a major factor. I bet you still get to your legal document on zip disk, twenty years from now.

That data might be still accessible if you can still find a working Zip or floppy drive in 20 years. How many people do you know who still have a 9-track reel-to-reel data tape reader, a format that was heavily used 20 years ago to store data? I imagine if you found a 9-track tape today, it would be very hard to find out what data is on it.