What drive(s) CAN reliably burn cheap 8x DL media?

[miamicanes]

What drives are known to be particularly GOOD at burning non-Verbatim cheap 8X DL discs? I mean, there has to be SOMETHING capable of using them reliably, or stores like Best Buy would get tired of endlessly giving refunds and quit selling them.

On a similar note, what exactly IS it about a particular drive that determines its ability to reliably use cheap discs? Mechanical build quality & precision? The underlying firmware? The specific laser diode that went into it? Is it a case of "you can use a cheap drive with expensive media (that has lots of headroom for error), or use an expensive drive with cheap media?" Is there any meaningful spec you can look for, or is it truly blind random luck of the draw, regardless of maker or model?

[budz]

What a waste of time to even think of using cheap DL MEDIA. You pay for whatcha get! Get any drive if you wanna use CHEAP DL MEDIA. :P

[aedipuss]

it's not the drive that determines a good dl burn but the media. if the blank sucks nothing can fix that. a decent drive just gives you the the edge on getting a good blank to burn well.

my first choice is always a pioneer drive.

[Noahtuck]

What a waste of time to even think of using cheap DL MEDIA. You pay for whatcha get! Get any drive if you wanna use CHEAP DL MEDIA. :P

Yeah, i laughed pretty hard just seeing the title of the thread....

reliably burn cheap 8x DL media?

[lordsmurf]

What drives are known to be particularly GOOD at burning non-Verbatim cheap 8X DL discs? I mean, there has to be SOMETHING capable of using them reliably,

No drive will magically make bad media work well.

or stores like Best Buy would get tired of endlessly giving refunds and quit selling them.

People often do not return things when they should. It's one thing stores bank on, along with those who never claim their rebates. Some stores have unreasonable "if you open it" policies too.

On a similar note, what exactly IS it about a particular drive that determines its ability to reliably use cheap discs? Mechanical build quality & precision? The underlying firmware? The specific laser diode that went into it? Is it a case of "you can use a cheap drive with expensive media (that has lots of headroom for error), or use an expensive drive with cheap media?" Is there any meaningful spec you can look for, or is it truly blind random luck of the draw, regardless of maker or model?

Nothing. You've made a bad conclusion and are trying to apply reverse logic to it. The drive can only perform as well as the media. Some drives perform better, but as the poster above said, it only ensures you get the best on experience on a good disc, it does not make a bad disc good.

Some of these cheap discs use pure crap for dye, which is spread unevenly, and uses less-than-transparent polycarbonate platters, with foils that may not be truly flat or very reflective. Some of the dyes fall apart under a laser, while others are such a thick goop that the laser cannot penetrate it well enough to reflect the data back off. It's the disc, not the drive.

[jman98]

If you buy non-Verbatim DL discs, any money you "save" will be made up for in coasters. You'll probably find out that when you throw out the coasters and add up the cost for the good burns that the cost per disc is more than what you could have paid for Verbatim.

Most consumers don't ask for refunds for a few bad burns. There seems to be an endless supply of people looking to save money on cheap media so that's why Best Buy sells cheap stuff. Besides for all we know they may have higher profit margins on the crap media or get some kind of financial incentive for selling it.

If you buy the cheap crap media and you have problems burning it, please don't post here about it. We get enough posts from people who don't know any better and really don't need another one from someone who's been warned not to do this.

[miamicanes]

Yes, there seems to be universal agreement among everyone that only Verbatim DL media gives 100% flawless results. I'm not backing up priceless enterprise data... I'm making copies of ripped DVDs so I can keep the original safe and not have to care whether my niece steps on it. I can deal with 2 or 3 brief video glitches that are no worse than what the disc would probably have after 6 months of abuse anyway. I can't deal with burning coaster after coaster that's outright unplayable, or aborts mid-burn.

Between the two extremes of "flawless perfection" and "unusable garbage", there's a big gray area where the cost drops radically if you can live with at least a tiny bit of error (think: 20 megabyte PNG-24 saved as 900k JPEG at 99% quality). I can tolerate a few bad bits, especially if their impact on the player's ability to play back the video is minor or invisible.

Besides, isn't there some official bare-minimum standard somewhere that a disc HAS to meet to call itself "DVD+R/DL"? I can't believe that whomever owns the trademark rights would let someone like Ritek make discs that are complete crap. Less than 100% flawless, maybe... but bad to the point where literally half or more of the discs fail before the drive even finishes BURNING?!?

[lordsmurf]

Bad discs generally don't have "2 or 3 brief video glitches". We're talking catastrophic total disc failure. The second layer fails to read completely. Huge portions of the disc are unrecoverable. The disc would physically halt in the player, assuming it even spins up.

Verbatim 20-packs were on sale for $25 last week. That's hardly what I'd call an enterprise-class investment (trust me, those run more along the lines of $10k to a few million, per situation). VHS tapes were $2 each, and nobody ever bitched about the price of those, and you got worse quality that was damaged as the tape was used more and aged more.

Your image compression analogy does not apply here.

If you truly do not care about quality, then shrink it. Use DVD Shrink. Burn it to a Verbatim DVD-R or DVD+R, also found last week for $25 per 100-pack. Sure, you can find some shitty media for $10-15 per pack, but it often won't play either.

Buying bad media -- when you know better -- is stubborn and moronic.

Besides, isn't there some official bare-minimum standard somewhere that a disc HAS to meet to call itself "DVD+R/DL"? I can't believe that whomever owns the trademark rights would let someone like Ritek make discs that are complete crap. Less than 100% flawless, maybe... but bad to the point where literally half or more of the discs fail before the drive even finishes BURNING?!?

Sure, in theory. Never happens in practice. All they care about is money. If all we care about is good products, then don't buy their shit, let them lose money. They will learn the hard way.

Or on the other hand, buy whatever you want. Maybe then YOU'LL have to learn the hard way.

The Utopian idea of "all media should burn fine" does not exist in reality.

[miamicanes]

Well, the other thing is... the "Verbatim is perfect, Ritek is utter crap" meme has been around now for two years. I don't think anyone will seriously dispute that Ritek's bad reputation was deserved back then. But for god's sake, nearly every DL disc sold at a retail store in America is now made by Ritek (TDK, Memorex, etc). They can't all be equally bad, or as bad as they were in the past. Not even the most passive, clueless consumer is going to tolerate buying 3 25-packs of DL discs, labeled by 3 different companies who aren't Verbatim, and have them all fail miserably.

Something has to give. Somewhere, somehow, there are people out there using at least SOME of Ritek's DL discs every day, and getting acceptable results. Maybe Ritek has different levels of quality-control for different customers (Memorex, TDK, etc). Maybe some drives are just more aggressive about detecting less than ideal polycarbonate, and have hotter lasers than can burn through. The point is, blind, unquestioning religious faith in anything is a bad thing in the long run. If there IS at least a subset of Ritek's discs that are OK, or an elite group of drives that are more tolerant of them than others, it's in everyone's best interest to find and identify them... if only to keep the fire lit beneath Verbatim's feet and ensure that they DON'T sacrifice quality to value-engineering.

[miamicanes]

OK, I'm at Tiger Direct (having a horrid time trying to browse online reviews w/my Sprint Touch). Are any of these drives likely to NOT be rendered useless a year from now, when 8x DL discs have vanished from stores, only 16x DL discs are readily-available, and I'll need new firmware w/updated writing strategy to handle them?

Lite-On: LH-20A1L06

Lite-On: LH-20A1S2C

Phillips SPD2513BD

HP DVD 1040i

Sony DRU-170C

Plextor px-800a

[budz]

OK, I'm at Tiger Direct (having a horrid time trying to browse online reviews w/my Sprint Touch). Are any of these drives likely to NOT be rendered useless a year from now, when 8x DL discs have vanished from stores, only 16x DL discs are readily-available, and I'll need new firmware w/updated writing strategy to handle them?

Lite-On: LH-20A1L06

Lite-On: LH-20A1S2C

Phillips SPD2513BD

HP DVD 1040i

Sony DRU-170C

Plextor px-800a

It won't matter what dvd burner you buy as long as you're gonna use CHEAP DL MEDIA! :P Toss a coin to decide which one you want.

[miamicanes]

Ok, which drive(s) are the least-likely to be orphaned and most likely to have new firmware capable of burning a hypothetical Verbatim 16x disc at ANY speed 18 months from now, when 8x Verbatim discs have vanished from retail shelves? If I sound bitter & paranoid, it's because I went through the EXACT SAME THING with 8x DVD+R discs and the Ricoh burner that the BenQ one replaced - it couldn't burn 8x discs w/o new firmware, & the bastards at Ricoh weren't interested in doing it.

Anyway, I'm @ Best Buy now & have a few more models to consider:

Samsung sh-s202n/b
Samsung sh-s203n/b
Sony DRU-840a
LG GSA-H55LI
Pioneer DVR-1910LS

[budz]

The PIONEER 1910 is just the retail version of the PIONEER 115. The SONY 840 is a rebadged SAMSUNG drive. LG H55LI uses the MATSUSHITA chip which isn't the greatest even when using SINGLE LAYER discs. IMHO the SAMSUNG S203B drive is the best one on the market right now but there have been reports of problems when using CHEAP DL media. As I said before it wouldn't matter what drive you buy since you're going to use DL media. You should really do your research before venturing out to buy a new dvd burner. If you use VERBATIM DL media you'll have no problems with any dvd burner you purchase. As far as firmware upgrades PIONEER, SAMSUNG & LITEON have frequent ones. It's the DVD MEDIA you use that matters. Do some research at CDFREAKS.com since they have a PIONEER/ASUS, BENQ/PHILIPS, SAMSUNG, LG & SONY/LITEON FORUMS.

[[_chef_]]

OK, I'm at Tiger Direct (having a horrid time trying to browse online reviews w/my Sprint Touch). Are any of these drives likely to NOT be rendered useless a year from now, when 8x DL discs have vanished from stores, only 16x DL discs are readily-available, and I'll need new firmware w/updated writing strategy to handle them?

Lite-On: LH-20A1L06

Lite-On: LH-20A1S2C

Phillips SPD2513BD

HP DVD 1040i

Sony DRU-170C

Plextor px-800a

Buy a crystal ball too if you wanna know.

Rule #1: You get what you pay for. Verbatim DL is the #1 choice for DL.
Rule #2: DVD+R DL > Verbatim DVD-R DL > Verbatim & TY
Rule #3: Very few new DL media beside Verbatim & TY *can* give useful results with the right burner.
MIDs used are RicohjpnD01, CMC MAG D04 and RitekS04.

[JimmyJoeBob]

Just my 2 cents worth.

Over a year ago i purchased 120 Verb DL inkjet printables in spindles of 20 ea from Supermediastore. Rather expensive at the time being printables.

Shortly after that I purchased DVD-Rebuilder Pro. I still have over 100 of the DL Verbs left and haven't looked back. DVD-rebuilder is so good on 99% of all DL movies that it has just about made my Verbs useless. I do movie only using rebuilder not needing the rest of the crap that usually occupies most DVDs.

It is not viewed on a lame system. I use an Oppo to upconvert to a 55" Sony and find the picture quality more than excellent using Rebuilder with bit rate distribution. I have checked the original vs the Rebuilder copy and find them indistinguishable from the original.

That 1% I refered to was movies like Flags of our Fathers or Letters from Iwo Jima where I want the other crap that's on the disc.

Just my 2 cents worth.

[lordsmurf]

Why does everybody always assume everybody else is just copying discs?
Some of us actually make the content, we don't copy.

[OneSickPup]

Why does everybody always assume everybody else is just copying discs?
Some of us actually make the content, we don't copy.

Good point and .................

Hey JimmyJoeBob! Did you get Liggys permission to use that avatar?

[oldandinthe way]

How bad is bad.

On SL media Lord Smurf and I argue all the time. I burn lower grade media to completion consistantly and have not suffered playback problems in the short or mid term (up to 2 years old).

On DL media I join the Verbatim is the only media that consistantly works crowd. But I wouldn't be surprised that when I replace my burner and players I discover that other media (without obvious physical flaws) burns acceptably.

[MysticE]

Well I was given some Memorex DL (Ritek D01-01) 2.4X discs that would not work for him. I burned a couple in my Pioneer 115D 1.06FW with acceptable results. Although the quality scans were rather poor they played properly in JVC, Sony and Phillips players. They would not play in my older Pioneer recorder. I'm assuming the latest FW will help a bit. I don't really have a need for DL, but these discs worked fine as a learning experience, working with layer breaks etc. As far as Verbatim DL there seems to be some heated debates as to the Singapore vs the latest India product.

[cdanddvdpublisher]

Yeah, i laughed pretty hard just seeing the title of the thread....

I actually felt guilty for laughing until I read this.

[henry_nettles]

Basically, I agree with almost everything said by the other posters. For dual-layer media, only buy Verbatim. It is the only dual-layer media which will give consistently decent results. And I agree with the poster who said he shrinks the movies rather than use dual-layer discs.

But..... (You knew there was a "but", right?) I have (or did have) two 25-disc spindles of the cheap Ritek dual layer discs that were given to me some time ago. Occasionally, I have need to record a dual layer disc, when compression is not an option -- operating system or straight computer data. In those cases, I have experimented quite extensively with various drives using the Ritek dual-layer media. The best results I have obtained have been with my Benq 1655. And I have tested with various Liteon drives (1693, 165H6S, 20A1S, 20A4P, 20A3P), Pioneer drives (111, 112, and 212), Samsung 203, LG (H10N, H22N, H42N, H62N), and probably others that I have forgotten. Just remembered to add Nec (3520, 3540, and 3550).

Given this, I would still NOT recommend these discs unless you already own a bunch of them which cannot be returned.

On EDIT: I just noticed the title of the original said "cheap 8x DL". I missed the part about 8x. Heck, I didn't know there was any DL media rated for 8x other than Verbatim. My post was of course refering to "RITEKD01" 2.4x DVD+R DL media.