using iffy DVDs for data storage

[Grain]

CMC is not making Mitsubishi media. Mitsubishi (parent corporation of the Verbatim company, brand and products) very much oversees the creation of their own products. They just do it at another facility (CMC, Prodisc, MBI), to cut costs of production. They don't let companies like CMC "run free" to make the media. It's very controlled.

Your contradicting yourself there. CMC is indeed making discs for Verbatim/Mitsubishi, but your correct in saying that it's under the supervision of &/or to Verbatims exacting standards.

As to whether there's a difference between the different manufactors (CMC, Prodisc & MBI) end Verbatim product, if you choose to think there isn't one, that's fine. However, there is a lot of data (quality scans for one) that contradicts that line of thinking. Most people at CDFreaks & CDRLabs, and myself, think otherwise. Having said that, Verbatims poorest is still better than most stuff out there.

[lordsmurf]

Scanning of discs has limited value. Even the early creators of this type of software have acknowledged that in the past. In an uncontrolled home/office setting, it serves more as entertainment (appeasing curiosity) than it does any kind of scientific research value.

[ozymango]

Many people out there expect for homemade burns to look inferior to what you "buy in stores" (referring to commercially produced discs of your favorite movies). And I don't refer to minor quality difference, but major problems, such as image breakup, disc freezing, audio pops, etc.

You and I hang with different people, there's nobody I know who'll put up with image problems with their DVDs.

But yeah, sometimes you do need to pop out a DVD -- even a commercially made pressed movie -- and wipe off fingerprints if you notice playback weirdness. I've had that experience more than a few times, and I gently clean them (the discs), put 'em back in, and they work -- mostly. If they don't, back to the store they go.

I'm sorry, but I've worked in retail way too many years to agree with the statement that there are that many customers out there not ready and eager to complain if things don't work like they want.

[Grain]

Scanning of discs has limited value.

Ah yes, the old "try and discredit the evidence as I've got none of my own" argument.

[ozymango]

The fly in the retail-return-theory ointment is the assumption that the people buying the media in stores have enough knowledge and experience to identify the media as the source of a problem. I'm sure some do, but many others don't. The reason(s) why a given media would be returned could be due to a variety of factors, including many that have nothing to do with quality.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean that -- again no offense to Lord Smurf -- that Lord Smurf's conclusions are any more valid. That is, whilst I agree pretty much with Lord Smurf's website when it comes to DVD blanks, in my personal limited experience -- major caveat there -- I think it would be much more helpful if there were more actual reference data to back up some of these statements.

As you also noted:

No, I wasn't kidding at all. People who come to this site lacking the knowledge and personal experience to make an informed decision about a given topic rely on the advice given by those with more insight, and hope the advice is good. I doubt many here would waste their time trying to help if they thought people were just going to ignore the advice offered, and I suspect most people wouldn't come here to get advice they weren't going to consider.

I know a lot of engineers -- mechanical, chemical, and electrical. They have many viewpoints on many things, and they don't always gibe with mine. But they very often use solid data to back up their claims.

I love this site, and again props to Lord Smurf, but there ain't nobody here I really trust to give me unbiased information on anything. Probably the single greatest thing about this site (to me) is that it has taught me to be skeptical about any claims anybody makes, and it makes me try to find things out for myself. Which is pretty much the best anyone can ever hope for.

I'm skeptical of a lot of the statements about DVD media that I hear bantered about on this board. And that's cool. And I'm not seeing a heck of a lot of solid, technical data to back up pretty much any point of view. I hear many personal anecdotes, which I find immensely useful, but I've also never buy Sony products again based on personal experience.

[VegasBud]

ozymango,

Unfortunately, the only scientific studies done on media haven't been released yet (to the public at least). Until they are released, there is no hard data, and all that's available is anecdotal evidence. One of the really nice features of VideoHelp is it provides a place to store much more anecdotal evidence than any individual could amass, and give a more varied view of the subject. Still, I would be the first to agree that the worth of anecdotal evidence depends entirely on the expertise of the person supplying it.

At this point, I also view much of the advice given here as different viewpoints. When I first started here, though, and hadn't spent years researching and accumulating knowledge on my own, I followed the advice given here to the letter. As a result, I got bit on the backside more than once. Ever since I changed from lurking to sharing the knowledge I had acquired, I have made every effort to minimize the possibility of someone getting backside-bitten by following my advice.

I'm one of the people who never returns media, for any reason. I see no reason to penalize a store because I bought media without proper research beforehand, or knowingly took a chance. Following that philosopy has resulted in my possession of a large box of unuseable media, much of it brand name. Every time I get a new drive, computer, or even just firmware, I get out my crap media box, and re-test them. Based on my experience, there definitely is crap media in that it isn't useable on a wide variety of burners and firmware, or just doesn't play worth !@$#^% once it's burned. At one point, I printed out lordsmurf's media ranking list and checked it against the contents of my box. Yes, there were some differences, but taken as a whole, his list mirrored my experience. That's why I regularly recommend lordsmurf's site as a reference to those who need one. If you know of a more concise, accurate listing to refer people to, I would be happy to take a look at it.

[lordsmurf]

Ah yes, the old "try and discredit the evidence as I've got none of my own" argument.

Discredit? It never had credit. That sole test cannot determine quality, period.

[oldandinthe way]

The problem with anecdotal evidence is my anecdotes may not agree with yours.

I have started another thread about "crap drives" because I believe that there is a bias to the analysis of anecdotal evidence about media which is introduced by the drives which are used.

That is the reason some posters were apoplectic about the VSO burn success data.

This board remains useful about these issues as long as it does not enshrine a particular analysis of statistically flawed but interesting and useful data.

This means one cannot resport to the "well it won't last argument" when all else fails. It may not but to date no one has scientifically proved it.

[bbanderic]

All these posts in this thread trying to justify whether inferior media such as CMC, Ritek and others is "good enough" is bordering on laughable. It's been proven time and time again, from personal experience and experiences of other respected individuals here at Video Help, CD Freaks, AVS, ImgBurn forums/Other that CMC, Ritek etc. can not be trusted for archiving anything of importance. In fact the only media you can truly trust is Taiyo Yuden and Verbatim. Although, I don't like the idea of Verbatim outsourcing the manufacturing of their media.

The amount of store returns and the fact that Fuji, Maxell and others put their name on this junk means nothing to me. The only data I need to determine what's good and what's not is from us folks who actually "use" it.

[VegasBud]

oldandinthe way,

As I said earlier:

I would be the first to agree that the worth of anecdotal evidence depends entirely on the expertise of the person supplying it.

Even worse, anecdotal evidence cannot be scientically analyzed since it is based on experience, not scientific data. It can only be used to provide possible guidelines. The inescapable reality is all we have is anecdotal evidence. It isn't like there's a choice. You use what you've got.

Yes, I've been familiar with the VSO database, and various analyses of it's contents, for quite some time. The problem with it is that besides the components of the burn (burner, media, etc), it just records whether the burn completed without failing. It does not consider how the burn verified, or how well the burned disk plays, so it isn't very useful for measuring the usability of the burned media, just that it completed the burn.

[dcsos]

Pleas check Jery Hartke's MEDIA SCIENCE website
He is pushing to understand how to quanify these difference
http://www.mscience.com


http://www.mscience.com/free.html

[oldandinthe way]

The data is inadequate in evaluating media over its lifespan but far more informative about the drives.

And some drives stand far lower chances of burning many types of media. This is a characteristic of the drive - for better or worse.

Whether the media is readable for 1 hour, 1 day, 1 month or 1 year, if the burn does not complete you cannot evaluate anything else about the media.

Many of the attempts to analyze media quality, use data which is derived from drives which cannot reach the level of success documented in the vso data.

It is very difficult, even with experience, to utilize such skewed data for a scientifically valid hypothesis, let alone reach a conclusion.

To be blunt, the results with a drive which can only burn TY and MCC at rated speeds approach useless in analyzing media or anything else. The results of a drive which cannot burn any media at rated speed are also dubious.

Many guitar players used Black Diamond Guitar Strings which were available in pawn shops all over the US. Many is the guitar player who suffered needlessly with them. Guy Clark wrote a song in tribute "Black Diamond Strings - cause its all you can get."

If my drive only reliably wrote TY and MCC I'd use TY and MCC. I'd probably look at other peoples experience and say everyone should use TY and MCC. But I don't have such a drive when I look at anecdotal evidence I eliminate all of those people who have such a drive, and fail to be convinced that they result in superior burns.

As a trained scientist if I were to set up a scientific study of media burns for reliability, I would eliminate the following types of drives:

1. Drives with a preselected preference for a specific type of media.
2. Drives which cannot burn all of the media in the study media at full speed.
3. Drives who do not have a factory provided media strategy for the media (no hacked firmware).
4. Drives that have been used prior to the study.

Excluding participants from studies is done with regularity based on such criteria to insure the elimination of factors not related to the central issue.

Based on my anecdotal observations using the videohelp media list I suspect the results of such a study could yield some different conclusions.

Anecdotal evidence led to such conclusions as the world is flat, and the Earth is the center of the Universe. All of the experience of the scientific community combined to reach improper conclusions. Only the ability to frame and test a hypothesis found the truth.

P.S. No industry group is likely to perform such a study. By their nature standards groups promote inclusiveness.

[oldandinthe way]

Pleas check Jery Hartke's MEDIA SCIENCE website
He is pushing to understand how to quanify these difference
http://www.mscience.com


http://www.mscience.com/free.html

Very interesting, it would be hard to argue with comparisons of media based on reasonable samples and some of the tests that he performs. I'd love to see comparative data.

Like his explanation of why low PIE disks fail.

I'm going to do some more reading on his site when I'm on a system with a faster Internet link.

[lordsmurf]

One problem I have with people who analyze scans is they do it to "prove a point" (plus they like to use science words and acronyms). Many of them think use of the words and software alone makes them correct. We could talk about PIE and PIF and BLER all day long, but it doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot to end users. It just sounds all scientific-like, and some people are impressed by such smoke-and-mirrors behavior. It sounds fun, all geeky-like, and any idiot can press a few buttons in free software, so they do. Then they get together on fanboy-quality sites and talk about how clever they are because they can scan media. They trade scans like a 10-year-old trading his Pokemon cards on the playground.

The truth is that a lot of the raw data you get from some of these tests is just that... raw data. It's not valid as a point of conclusion.

When performed by the unqualified, very often the "proof" from scans is fudged. I've seen people re-scan over and over until they got an "expected" result. It's ridiculous. Add in user issues, hardware issues, etc ... and all hell breaks loose. You get wildly differing opinions, and quite a few of them are wrong opinions (yes, opinions can be wrong, when based on baloney).

The people who really need to scan media are not chatting about it in online forums.

[lordsmurf]

I like this quote from the mscience site:
"Although PIE is one of many useful quality indicators, predictable readability can only be assured when full electrical parameter and error evaluation, mechanical and visual inspection, and logical format tests are utilized to assure full compliance with the requirements of all standards for interchange."

Translation: "PIE is one test of many, used alone it does not mean much." Although not said, it infers the same can be said of all 'scanning' type testing.

I'm saying the same thing, but some of you only respect the mscience version because it uses fancy words. I've definitely made my point.

[dcsos]

Meaningless indeed in the home environment , SMURF
...but I hope you're not saying he should quit working on levelling the playing field
and I'm sure you'd agree someone's gotta test the crap outta this stuff
cause as you say its all about the dollar...not the quality!

plus he's gotta lotta free utility prog (third party..he's just hosting some of the freeware)

http://www.mscience.com/free.html

[oldandinthe way]

Lordsmurf

You do remember that OSTA also takes a negative view of scanning.

[lordsmurf]

You do remember that ....

No!
Ever see that episode of Married With Children, where Kelly Bundy is cramming for a quiz show? While she studies, you see one new fact go in one ear, and something she used to know falls out the other side.

I remember a great deal, but sometimes I can relate to that episode. A reason I keep so many notes, although even that mass of digital data and paperwork has turned into a monster these last couple of years.

I don't readily recall that of OSTA, but I would not be at all surprised, and I probably have documentation on it somewhere. What I remember about OSTA is largely in relation to CD and DVD longevity methodolgy. I don't remember if it was OSTA or NIST that also looked into unburned media lifespans.

|

dcsos, somebody has to do it, absolutely. It's just not us. That's why R&D engineers make the big bucks and have so much education in their field.

[videobread]

WOW! What a wacky thread. Thought I was reading another Ritek good vs evil slime fest.

It's your burner. It's your burners firmware. Your burners firmware has not been programed to write these "new" discs. I stay current on hardware and firmware. I have 4 DVR 111D's and just bought 2 DVR 112D's. I only buy TY and no value line. I never have a coaster - not even one, ever. The only "disc rot" I have ever had was with Ritek a few years ago. I will never buy Ritek again.

My DVR 112D's were $40 delivered. That's about the cost of a 100 pack of discs. First thing I did was install the newest firmware version 1.21. Manufactures don't keep updating/supporting firmware for their older drives. It make no business sense. Not so "brand name" burners may NEVER update firmware.

You need to keep your drives current if you are going to keep using different brand discs. Don't keep using the cheapest discontinued or newest crap you can find. Just buy TY and forget about it. If you have an older burner and find a disc it burns well stick with that disc.

Don't take too seriously the self proclaimed experts on this forum. We see their avatars on line. In real life they sell comic books to Bart Simpson. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!