Why are there no "crap" DVDwriters on Videohelp

[SCDVD]

One of the variables that makes it hard to sort out the "crap" media is that some of the media manufacturers have huge quality variations from batch to batch. So user A happens to buy from a good batch and user B happens to buy from a bad batch and then user A and user B get into an argument about the quality of the media from this particular manufacturer. Some of the media manufacturers have no compunction about selling sub standard media. They figure its better to take your money than to recycle the plastic from a bad batch of media.

Another factor is who is between the manufacturer and you. You are more likely to get bad CMC media for example if you purchase it as house brand media from a chain store. If you purchased Sony branded media who OEMed it from CMC, it is likely to be better media because of the quality enforcement procedures that Sony has in place. There is one thing that I can tell you for sure - If you consistently buy Ritek or CMC media, you WILL get burned. If you disagree, that's fine; the playability problems that you will have in the future don't affect me any - so have a ball!

[lordsmurf]

You're one of the few people that seems to understand what a "bad batch" is (a flaw in a whole line of media that is far more infrequent than some online believe in, it's not just a spindle here and there), and that understands a few (not many at all) manufacturers have varying grade levels (which may or may not actually affect quality), while others just make and ship, with no apparent regard to the product line quality.

[oldandinthe way]

I have used CMC media with Imation, TDK, and HP labels and never had a "bad batch".

I have used CMC media with Staples house brand labels and have recieved spindles with 20% of the disks with visible physical flaws.

I admit to be mystified. At the cost levels associated with DVDs there can be no quality control requiring human inspection, other than sampling. (And not much of that). Quality control must be automated or non-existant. I am acquainted with a variety of engineers who assure me it is in fact non-existant. But if it exists it must be sensor based and would detect these problems.

The fact that they appear to be more prevalent on house brands, suggests that tests are skipped, or obsolete production lines are being used. Neither of which damn all of the media but certainly damn the manufacturer.

The bad batches I see would not be solved by level grading, bad is bad. I don't even need to take out the magnifying glass.

[oldandinthe way]

I started this thread out of frustration with people being unable to use their new DVDwriters to sucessfully burn and verify a DVD, posting a cry for help on this site, and getting media and software responses, rather than being told that they can't burn the DVDs they bought because drives from their vendor can't burn this media.

Certainly they are entitled to suggestions as to what quality media is. Certainly they should be told of what software has problems.

But DVDwriters are not sacred artifacts. They are entitled to criticism. Why should they be improved, if no one tells the manufacturer there is a problem.

It is clear, there are "crap" drives. Sure there's "crap" media but the solution to crap drives is not high quality media.

If a brand new drive won't burn any name-brand media, it should be returned to the vendor or the manufacturer.

Factory built computers for the most part recognize this and drives which generate support calls are not reordered. (Some exceptions - who are price driven either budget more support costs or shirk on support).

I periodically look at the media reports on this site. The same drives are responsible for 80% of the poor ratings. When a stray brand which is usually media tolerant appears, it almost always has out of rev firmware.

Although maximum DVDplayer compatibility is important to a number of the posters on this site, who distribute their work to the public. Most users need compatibility with relatively few players, their own and some relatives, and need not make any effort for broad compatibility.

Statisically there is a greater chance that a relative has a recent commodity player based on a chipmaker's reference design which can read anything.

ImgBurn is a great product. So is Nero. The reasons given for using IMGBurn rather than Nero on SL media typically relate to an obscure spec violation which can make a single point of failure render a disk unusable, when the spec provides an alternative. This is real but statistically insignificant. What is important is the IMGBurn recommendation for DL media. It is important and often lost in the noise.

[Rich86]

my $.02 - trying not to be too repetitive of what has already been said . .

All the factors mentioned play a role - the drive, the firmware, the media, the burning engine, the computer environment, the capabilities of the device the burned media will be read or played on, the critter sitting between the keyboard and the seat back . . .

I have very good experiences burning to dvd media - most any kind - using my Benq and/or Lite-On burners. These days, I mostly use TDK (CMC oem) since it is available very reasonably at the local club warehouse store on a coupon annually (more than enough media for me, for sure). It is inkjet printable 16x DVD+R. I do not ever burn at 16x - mostly 4x - pretty much 100% reliably - since I'm not burning in any hurry or in any appreciable volume.
I also have used Ritek - and did run into a bad batch of 4x media. But that only happened once, so although I am wary of Ritek, I haven't declared them "junk". The last batch of inkjet printable 8x -R Ritek I used burned 100% reliably.
My first drive was a Sony 510a - it worked just fine - until Sony turned their backs on their customers and couldn't be bothered to make firmware updates available. Once available media was pretty much limited to 8x and higher - this drive went into coaster mode.
Then I became a fan of Benq - a 1620 - 1650 - 1655 - excellent drives (although the 1620 did die after a while). I also have a Lite-On 16x sata drive in my newly built tower - and it works great also.

My suggestion to folks is usually to:
1. read up and find a drive with lots of positive comments - and don't be fooled by price - more money doesn't equate to better performance all the time. don't be fooled by the brand name on the box - open it and see what it really is!
2. lean towards a drive that offers some sort of "smartburn" capabilties, where the firmware write strategy is established for unknown media in the process of burning to it (rather than just using some default write strategy). I believe Benq and Lite-On work well partially due to this.
3. select a drive that supports booktype setting to enhance readability with DVD+R media.
4. buy decent media that gets reasonably good reports by users. make sure you know the oem manufacturer before you buy.
5. once you have a burn process that works reliably - stick to it.
6. don't push your drive and media to their top rated speeds. I generally stay in the middle of the road burn speed wise with consistently good results.
7. burn from images or files off your hard disk with no other running processes competing for computer resources or cycles.
8. keep a small supply of rewritable media on hand to experiment with before making a lot of coasters unnecessarily while you learn.

This approach has worked well for me.

[rkr1958]

Crap Writer = Plextor PX712A with firmware earlier than 1.05
Coaster City.

Scared me there ... I been using Plextor 712a for around 3 years now; however, I flashed it to 1.05 to get DVD+R bitsetting before my first use. It's flashed to 1.07 now. I've been very happy with it's burns. However, I mostly use TY's and I do burn at 4x, even though the media can be burned at 8x. I got this drive for $35 after rebate three years ago.

[lordsmurf]

Certainly they are entitled to suggestions as to what quality media is. Certainly they should be told of what software has problems......But DVDwriters are not sacred artifacts. They are entitled to criticism. ......It is clear, there are "crap" drives. Sure there's "crap" media but the solution to crap drives is not high quality media.

Why didn't you say that in the first place!

It's very true.

All I would add is that a good drive WILL NOT made crap media burn well. You seemed to argue that one at first, but maybe I (and others) just read you wrong.

There are many avenues of blame here. The writer is definitely one of the top 4 reasons for burn failures, although it is not the number 1 reason.

[oldandinthe way]

Here we go again with "good enough". Crap drives burning crap media are a disaster.

A quality drive will burn "crap media" to its full potential. Whether its full potential is adequate to a users needs can be argued. But even crap media may then burn to completion and verify.

A crap drive will often burn quality media to completion and verify. Whether its that disk is adequate to a users needs can be argued.

In either of the above cases case it is unlikely the user will know whether the result was adequate until the disk fails.

Until venues like this avoid encouraging throwing quality media at crap drives users will not get the full value of your work on media.

Comments like "However, I mostly use TY's and I do burn at 4x, even though the media can be burned at 8x." make me suspect the drive may not be of quality.

Being one of 4 causes of bad burns is not enough, if the solution to every problem is "use TY or MCC, burn at half speed, stand on one foot".

[lordsmurf]

Burning slower is a physics thing, not a drive issue. It goes back to the accuracy of the media, the write quality at the wobble level of the sustained speed. The drive can affect this, but not as much as the media affects itself.

The drive becomes an issue mostly only in a P-CAV vs CAV or Z-CLV vs CLV argument. The zonal transitions or gradual speed increases being handled poorly can cause problems here.

But there is a lot of media that is "rated" (there is no OFFICIAL control over this these days, you do understand, right?) faster than it should be. Some drives cut back on the burn speed for this reasons, others leave that call to the user (and many don't pay any attention to speed, they just hit "go" and walk away).

[oldandinthe way]

I repeat, if there is one stock answer to all drive problems, it is impossible to determine whether the problem is drive or medium.

I chose this example because we have one poster who listed a drive as a crap drive and another who clearly values his drive.

The scanners on cdfreaks have been extremely busy with the introduction of 18x and 20x drives, which burn a selected number of 16x media at the higher speeds.

On the LG-H42 testing, there seem to be many who are surprised by the high quality of the scans, and the elimination of some of the advantages certain media had, in 16x testing on other drives.

I'm not a believer in scanning but do believe that drive quality might explain their results (if the results are indeed valid).

There are other interesting results, such as very high quality results from the "fake" made in china MCC media.

The mechanics of the drive can contribute significantly to its inability to burn at rated speed. And the accuracy of laser positioning - it ain't all the media. And the mechanics of modern drives are cheap and flimsy. I'll speak of my experience with LG drives, since I have no emotional investment in the brand. With heavy use they begin to have problems positioning the laser. Many owners find the need to lubricate their drives with a variety of ad hoc procedures.

Can drives have undue positioning slop when new, sure. Do write strategies differ enough so that some drives have difficulty implementing some write strategies - probably. If as drive can't probably implement a write strategy is that the drive or the media's fault?

By the way, if I was burning at 4x, I'd hit go and away. I do that at 8x on my laptop. I tend to hang around at 16x or 18x.

[Rich86]

By the way, if I was burning at 4x, I'd hit go and away. I do that at 8x on my laptop. I tend to hang around at 16x or 18x.

I always walk away - regardless of speed - there are better ways to use whatever time I have left on this earth than watching a blinking light on a cd or dvd burner . . . .

[rkr1958]

Comments like "However, I mostly use TY's and I do burn at 4x, even though the media can be burned at 8x."

Oh, I also use Imgburn to burn my video DVDs and even sometimes to burn my data DVDs. I like to burn from image files (data discs must be burned from image files with Imgburn), which requires an extra step to convert the video folder to an image file.

So, I used TY's, convert my video folder to an image file, burn that image file at half the rated speed (e.g. 4x for 8x TY's) and if it's important (e.g. data discs containing transfers of my DV home movies) make two copies.

Over the last 3-years using this strategy I've had maybe two video discs not play well in my settop players. The cause in both cases was traced back to physical defects on the discs that I didn't catch before burn.

Also, the strategy of making two copies of important data gives me reasonable confidence that my data discs will survive until a new storage type becomes affordable and available and I transfer the data to the new type.

Even when I replace my Plextor 712a with a new writer, I'll continue to use "my strategy" to burn discs. By the way I do have a new NEC ND3500a that I get from frys.com for $30 w/free shipping over six months ago. I don't really see a need to replace my 712a until quality DL media comes down a lot in price or my 712a dies (or starts to die).

[TBoneit]

Didn't work reliable with MIJ Fuji or Sony, or Verbatim. I could never go through a spindle without several bad burns on that Pioneer 109. I updated firmware whenever new FW was released. For me that drive was not good. It is possible that the one I got had all the different parts at one of of the tolerance range and lordsmurfs had all of them right in the middle. That sort of thing does happen.

OTOH I have a version of that drive as I understand it in a Pioneer 531h DVD Recorder that works OK.

[pepegot1]

As an Industrial Statistician, I used to design experiments to answer the above questions as a Q.C. function. I wonder how much of this goes on today? One basic experiment that comes to mind is a 2 way ANOVA (random model), with repeated cell entries to determine the error variance. One variable would be several randomly selected Burners (the same model) and several brands of media (same speed and type.) We can measure the Burner to Burner variation, the Media to Media variation, and the experimental error. Thus, we can obtain a measure of the total the variation. We can see where the greatest variation lies-Burner, Media, or error. We can test if Interaction exists (various brand combinations have a special effect, and which ones they are. From what this Forum has stated, I would expect the variation to be greatest from Media to Media, or even within batches, if the error term is large.
Media is a batch process. Variation can take place between batches and within batches. If the proces is in Statistical Control, then the "between batch variation" would equal the "within batch variation." Other experiments between various Burners models and the same Media could also be done, but the above is the most basic as we are dealing with a random selection of the same Burner and different brands of Media.
Therefore, being in a state of statistical ignorance, I would buy the best media and the best burner(s) to mitigate the total variation envolved. I hope this helps.

[MOVIEGEEK]

I say it's crap media and a crappy writer.
My first DVD writer was a Sony DRU500(which I still have) and it had good burns on crappy media,my second writer was an Optorite DD203 and the thing was a POS...it would give crappy burns on TY or MCC media.

[usually_quiet]

I have to agree with the people who say it's easier just to buy the media you know works well with your burner and software. At any rate, I buy what has worked most reliably in the past (Verbatim 16X DVD-R) and avoid the rest. I also try to burn at 8X. If sombody needs a recommendation for DVD-R media, I always say buy TY or Verbatim (MCC) because they seem to generate the fewest complaints.

I have an LG GSA-4163B, which has the preferred chipset, but a fair percentage of CMC media (Philips) or TDK media that I tried either failed to burn, or failed data verification. I have only used a few Ritek discs, and they all burned and verified. Go figure. (As a side note, I use Ritek DVD-RW for my standalone DVD recorder. They have a higher failure rate than the Verbatim DVD-R I use, but since I have been told that is typical, I really can't complain.)

My LG burner was a new model out less than a year at the time I tried CMC and TDK media, so it shouldn't have been the firmware. Some of these discs had obvious flaws, but other times I couldn't tell that anything was physically wrong. Of course, sometimes it might have been the OEM version of Nero Express 6 that I was using, since others say DVD Decryptor or ImgBurn are better.

This whole discussion does make me wonder why real MCC and TY appear to be more reliable for so many users, if everything is manufactured to meet the same requirements. Perhaps someone can explain why other major manufacturer's products seemingly aren't as good.

[MOVIEGEEK]

This whole discussion does make me wonder why real MCC and TY appear to be more reliable for so many users, if everything is manufactured to meet the same requirements. Perhaps someone can explain why other major manufacturer's products seemingly aren't as good.

It all comes down to the quality of dye used and the way it is manufactured:
http://www.clir.org/PUBS/reports/pub121/sec4.html

[SCDVD]

It all comes down to the quality of dye used and the way it is sandwiched between the polycarbonate.

- AND the attitude of the manufacturer. Some of these cruds think that literally anything they do to take your money is OK. One example among MANY - The FDA has issued a warning to throw away toothpaste made in China because it has become "fashionable" with some of the toothpaste manufacturers in China to put Diethylene glycol in toothpaste because it makes it taste sweet and helps thicken the toothpaste! When I said "anything to take your money", I meant ANYTHING! Diethylene glycol is the primary ingredient in antifreeze and it's poisonous. It is very dangerous to cats and dogs if it left where they can get to it because they are attracted to its sweet taste. If these bastards don't mind putting poison in toothpaste, what makes you think they won't monkey around with the dye used to make media!? The West is very naive about the attitudes in some other parts of the world.

So why would the toothpaste makers put Diethylene glycol in toothpaste? Here's a quote:

"Over the years, counterfeiters have found it profitable to substitute Diethylene glycol for its chemical cousin, glycerin, which is usually more expensive. Glycerin is a safe additive commonly found in food, drugs and household products. In toothpaste, glycerin is used as a thickening agent."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/02/us/02toothpaste.html?hp

http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01646.html

Last year 51 people died in Panama because a Chinese manufacturer of cough syrup used Diethylene glycol to sweeten cough syrup! That's 51 people dead! Wake up folks!

[lordsmurf]

I often wonder what some of those "organic" portions of dyes are made of, in those really crappy quality discs. It could be horse shit and smashed worms for all we know.

The better medias tend to use synthetics and metallics.

[lordsmurf]

http://www.clir.org/PUBS/reports/pub121/sec4.html

This is a decent read. The author has ties to NIST. You'll notice everything is broad descriptions, no actual media manufacturers or estimations on lifetime are given (excluding his reference to others, he makes none himself).