Worst DVD media ever - Courtesy of CircuitCity

[SingSing]

I have been burnning DVD-R for movie for years. I often use cheap media for most occassion, because I only need them to last couple of years. Many of them last many years, and those with full label will die after a few years. Life is good, and life goes on. UNTIL....

Bought a 50 pack of NEXXTECH 16x DVD-R from CircuitCity, and it causes all kinds of problems that a simple plastics disc with chemical coating that can ruining your days.

This bloody NEXXTECH DVD-R made for and dsitributted by CircuitCity managed to :

Set a NEC 1500A burner to 2.4x burn speed, then could not burn.

Set a Maddog megastor burner to 2.4x burn speed, then could not burn, then made all subsequence burning of other DVD-R media failed, then mess up Nero Ultra burning ROM, that I need to re-install.

Agreed to burn at 16x on the TSST corp DVD buner, and produced a DVD disc that no DVD burner, or reader, or player can figured out what it is !

I did feel a bit sorry for all the problems about CircuitCity. NOT ANYMORE. Please go down in flame, and take these NEXXTECH DVD-R with it.

Manufacturer Name : Ume Disc Manufacturing Ltd.
Manufacturer ID : UME02.

It was original priced at $29.00. I would say that's questionable. Won't you

[jman98]

I can go to rima.com and mail order a 50 pack of Verbatim DataLife Plus DVD-R discs for $15.99. Add shipping and I still save money over what you paid. I could also buy a 100 pack of Taiyo Yuden DVD-R discs for just a little more than what you paid for 50 discs.

If you don't care if your DVDs are bad, that's your business, but to pay more in the store than to order by mail AND get worse discs doesn't really make sense.

[redwudz]

I was in Circuit City yesterday to pick up some parts for a in-law and noticed those NEXXTECH DVDs. He needed DVDs, but I went with some TDKs as CC didn't seem to have much of a selection. I haven't tried the TDKs, but I use TY or Verbatim at home.

I have no idea how some DVD manufacturers survive making poor quality discs. Thanks for the warning.

[zoobie]

When I had credit at CC, I bought those Sonys per Smurf's recommendation and they still seem to work...but, personally, I wouldn't even step foot in the store if something wasn't seriously on sale. Since then, I've also had Verbatim simply delivered to my front door at a cheaper price.

[Po|arbeaR]

The tdk's at CC are decent, I've burned quite a few with no problems.


Just my two cents.. I try and stick to sony's as well when financially possible.


-PB

[budz]

The tdk's at CC are decent, I've burned quite a few with no problems.


Just my two cents.. I try and stick to sony's as well when financially possible.


-PB

TDK outsources to CMC & RITEK which IMHO is crappy media. As for the Sony media it ain't the greatest since they decided not to use TAIYO YUDEN for their dvd media. Hit and miss when it comes to Sony media these days. Just my 2 cents!

Plain and simple that Nexxtech has never been good media to use.

[Video Head]

Do you know where they were made?

Last year I bought a 100 pack of Memorex 16X at BB on sale for $17. I had used the Memorex 16X ones before and they had all functioned flawlessly. The only difference I could see was the fact that they were made in India. All of the other discs I had ever bought were MIT (made in Taiwan). Out of the 100 every one burned fine but was not recognizable in any player...not even the burner that created them.

Needless to say it was an expensive excersize in trying to save a few bucks. Live and learn and buyer beware applies here...

I typically use Verbatim, Sony or Maxell for single layer. Verbatim or Fuji for DL. I always check the package to make sure they are MIT's. Other than that one batch of Memorex made in India's I have never had a disc that was unreadable. I have also never had a disc become unreadable - DVD or CD, and some of my burned CD's are now approaching 12 years of hard use. I have a friend who left their black CD wallet in the back window of their car on a hot summer day...that was not good.

[redwudz]

The biggest problem with the cheaper discs seems to be lack of quality control. You 'may' get a batch that performs well and the next box generates all coasters. It may be they are coming from different factories, or the equipment is wearing out, who knows? But the better brands seem to be much more reliable and consistant. I have yet to have problems with TY or Verbatim, so I try to stick to them.

[guns1inger]

TDKs outsourcing differs from market to market. In the UK, some TDKs are TY, and over here, the better TDK -R are MCC. Also, TDK, like many brands, has different tiers of disc, and some are better than others. Avoid the cheap stuff, even within a brand, as they just aren't worth it.

[solarfox]

Your "bargain" brand media from Circuit City:

$0.60 per disc, @ $29.95 / 50 pack. (Not including sales tax.)

Proper top-tier Taiyo Yuden media from Supermediastore.com:

$0.42 per disc @ $41.99 / 100 pack (not including shipping)

Explain to me again how this constitutes a "bargain"?

[solarfox]

I have no idea how some DVD manufacturers survive making poor quality discs.

Why is it that everything's Made in China these days? Same reason -- because too many people in this country base their buying decisions solely on price; they want the instant gratification of having a couple extra dollars left in their wallet today, and never bother to think about how much it will end up costing them six months from now when their "bargain" breaks and they have to buy another one to replace it.

Now, believe me, I can understand how the bargain media was irresistably tempting back in the early-adopter days, when the price spread between top-tier discs and bargain-basement ones was $2 or more per disc... but nowadays, the price spread is generally within a dime per disc. If the data you're saving is worth so little to you that you won't even spend ten cents more to ensure that you're saving it to reliable media, then why are you even bothering to archive it in the first place?

[oldandinthe way]

UME02 - an uncommon media ID.

Suggest your NEC and MadDog burners did not have a write strategy for it. Hence defaulting to 2.4x burn speed. Would expect a crummy burn if it completed.

The TSST more puzzling. If it burned at 16x it probably had a write strategy. But still not a quality media.

I'm sure you didn't pay $29.95 for it. You've been around here a while. The original prices in all of the big box stores are meaningless. They sell what's"on sale" that week.

I've seen a lot of Nexxtech returned media included in lots on liquidation.com. Suggest it doesn;t work for lots of folks.

[SingSing]

Took those Nexxtech back to CircuitCity. Returned them and got my $9.99/50 back.

Went to Stapler two doors down, and picked up HP DVD+R at $8.99/50. Burn the three "Back to future" movies on these HP, all work. End of my rant.

Note: Stores don't carry TY, and brand name DVD media are all OEM, and they change vender by the batch. So, I actually have a better take with those generic brands.

[Video Head]

I have no idea how some DVD manufacturers survive making poor quality discs.

Why is it that everything's Made in China these days?

Because North America, Europe and parts of Asia have priced themselves out of the manufacturing market...labour wise. To compete in today's global economy you simply can't afford to pay someone $70,000 per year plus all of the related benefit and regulatory overheads to pull a handle that drops parts on a conveyor belt. North America, Europe and parts of Asia have become brain centers, while developing nations have taken over the manual labour.

Goods manufactured in China that are poorly designed or manufactured are rarely the result of Chinese manufacturing deficiencies. The Chinese manufacture foreign goods to spec...if you specify lead paint on toy firetrucks then that is what you get...if you specify a car to exceed Bentley performance and finish then that is what you will get. But you will pay for it.

Too many importers/manufacturers are using the "the Chinese did it" defense. 4 words and you are off the hook for anything and everything...mighty convenient if you ask me.

[SingSing]

Well said.

These Nexxtech are made for and distributed by CircuitCity. Any consumer will hold them responsible. Can't blame China or India or even Yoda333.

[usually_quiet]

Yeah, you can blame China, in some cases. Some Chinese manufacturers through greed or ignorance are perfectly willing to substitute one thing for another in the spec, and the item is no longer as designed. Otherwise we would not have some of the recent product safety issues. Then there is the problem of couterfeit products. Huge numbers of them come in and are sold to unsuspecting parties as the genuine article. Some of these are definitely not safe.

To illustrate what goes on daily: The company my brother-in-law works for is building a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in China. Specs said 3-inch stainless steel steel pipe. remove the covers, which were to spec, and you see 2 inch galvanized pipe. He tells me this is not the only problem like that they've had.

This kind of dishonesty is not universal, but it's prevalent enough to be cause for concern.

[zoobie]

reminds me of the bootlegging overseas....when I read the article, only 3 guys were enforcers for all of europe

[Shocker Milwaukee]

In this day & age, I don't trust any store-bought media.

[handyguy]

I have no idea how some DVD manufacturers survive making poor quality discs.

Why is it that everything's Made in China these days?

Sometimes it's because your writer doesn't have a firmware update to recognize the media.

[negritude]

TDK outsources to CMC & RITEK which IMHO is crappy media.

Do people ever get tired of the hyperbole?

CMC MAG AE1 and CMC MAG E01 can burn better than TY or Verbatim. If you can't burn it well, your burner sucks.

CMC MAG AM3 is average but decent and stable media.

RITEKF1, RITEKF16, RITEKP16, and all 16x Ritek media are fully stable. The RITEKG05 fiasco is ancient history.

[solarfox]

Just because it seems to burn OK means nothing.

The real criterion is, can it be read reliably a year or two later. For most cheap-crap media, the answer is "probably not."

[solarfox]

Yeah, you can blame China, in some cases. Some Chinese manufacturers through greed or ignorance are perfectly willing to substitute one thing for another in the spec, and the item is no longer as designed. Otherwise we would not have some of the recent product safety issues. Then there is the problem of couterfeit products. Huge numbers of them come in and are sold to unsuspecting parties as the genuine article. Some of these are definitely not safe.

Exactly. I'm not sure where Video Head gets the idea otherwise, but being in the high-tech industry, I can assure him that he's dead wrong about Chinese outfits building things to spec. They are constantly trying to pull fast ones by substituting cheaper knockoff parts instead of the ones specified so they can pocket the differences; one PCB house even went so far as to change our design to use another manufacturer's part (which was itself a Chinese knockoff of a TI component, incidentally) that was completely different than the one specified. (As if we wouldn't notice that an 8-pin surface-mount IC had suddenly turned into a 3-pin through-hole part with a heat-sink tab!)

In any case, the point was not to invite horror stories of Made in China goods, but to answer redwudz' question about how companies manage to stay in business selling substandard media. The answer, in both cases, is the same: because there are enough customers out there who vote solely with their pocketbooks, and ignore the adage "you get what you pay for", to keep the shoddy manufacturers in business.

[Video Head]

Yeah, you can blame China, in some cases. Some Chinese manufacturers through greed or ignorance are perfectly willing to substitute one thing for another in the spec, and the item is no longer as designed. Otherwise we would not have some of the recent product safety issues. Then there is the problem of couterfeit products. Huge numbers of them come in and are sold to unsuspecting parties as the genuine article. Some of these are definitely not safe.

Exactly. I'm not sure where Video Head gets the idea otherwise, but being in the high-tech industry, I can assure him that he's dead wrong about Chinese outfits building things to spec. They are constantly trying to pull fast ones by substituting cheaper knockoff parts instead of the ones specified so they can pocket the differences; one PCB house even went so far as to change our design to use another manufacturer's part (which was itself a Chinese knockoff of a TI component, incidentally) that was completely different than the one specified. (As if we wouldn't notice that an 8-pin surface-mount IC had suddenly turned into a 3-pin through-hole part with a heat-sink tab!)

In any case, the point was not to invite horror stories of Made in China goods, but to answer redwudz' question about how companies manage to stay in business selling substandard media. The answer, in both cases, is the same: because there are enough customers out there who vote solely with their pocketbooks, and ignore the adage "you get what you pay for", to keep the shoddy manufacturers in business.

I get my ideas from executive dealings with mainland China manufacturers on a daily basis...maybe you deal with Taiwan? Do YOU spec and order the components or are you just an employee who recieves some goods and then complains? Possibly you are unaware of all aspects of the agreement.

No right minded executive at a mainland China manufacturing plant would take the risk of intentionally exporting manufactured goods that did not meet the agreed upon specification...China is in the business of outsourced manufacturing and export...any Chinese national who places China's business position in jeopordy may find themselves in a very bad personal position. Think about it.

[jman98]

Video Head - Is it so hard to believe that there might be dishonest companies in China? You and solarfox could both be right - your experiences may be very positive and his may be very negative. However, as an observer I would not feel comfortable making some kind of blanket statement that Chinese business don't ever cut corners or cheat on manufacturing. Have you not heard of the heparin fiasco?

I've been to Taiwan (and China too) and if you honestly think that China is more honest than Taiwan, you need to have your head examined. Or better yet, go to Taiwan and get your perceptions changed.

China is filled with insanely greedy people. The current government encourages a "make money, whatever you have to do" kind of attitude and some people literally risk their lives (and lose them) over dishonest business practices. Yes, the government would certainly prefer that people running businesses do so honestly, but I read all the time about execs who get executed or thrown in jail for all kinds of misdeeds and corner cutting, some of which does lead to consumer fatalities. This kind of thing simply does NOT happen in Taiwan. Perhaps in the past Taiwan might have cheated on contracts to save money, but those days are long gone. The whole country understands that they are simply not in a position to not run honest businesses because they need money coming in to survive.

This thread is now seriously diverging from the original post, but I can't stand by and let Taiwan bashing go unchallenged.

[solarfox]

Don't patronize me, Video Head.

Actually, yes, I do specify the components to be used, seeing as how I'm one of the engineers who designs the products. I may not be the one who actually signs the contract with the board house, but seeing as how we are a relatively small company (<50 employees), and the person who does do the paperwork is about two offices down the hall from me, I'm not exactly out of the loop, and I can cite numerous examples of parts being substituted without authorization.

jman98 -- You're right, Taiwan is an entirely different matter than mainland China (which is why I'm currently trying to push the idea of moving our manufacturing to a Taiwanese board house). This is a subject that actually came up among a group of my peers and I at a recent tradeshow; the general consensus among those who had done business in both countries was that even though the Taiwanese houses subcontract a lot of work out to mainland China these days, they're still safer to work with because their general business philosophy is closer to that of the Japanese (in terms of attitudes about quality, honoring agreements, etc.) -- and since they understand the mainland China culture better than Westerners do, they know how to close all the loopholes and keep the Chinese subcontractors in line.

[orsetto]

TDK outsources to CMC & RITEK which IMHO is crappy media.

Do people ever get tired of the hyperbole? CMC MAG AE1 and CMC MAG E01 can burn better than TY or Verbatim. If you can't burn it well, your burner sucks. CMC MAG AM3 is average but decent and stable media. RITEKF1, RITEKF16, RITEKP16, and all 16x Ritek media are fully stable. The RITEKG05 fiasco is ancient history.

First of all, good luck actually finding CMC MAG AE1 or EO1: gone gone gone. Aside from their slightly better Verbatim production, everything CMC makes for TDK and the other "brand names" long ago slipped to MAG.AM3, which is their lowest of the low grade. Eighteen months ago it would at least burn in most recorders, with perhaps a 10-20% failure rate. But ten months ago they reformulated it for the umpteenth time into absolutely useless unburnable landfill material unless you had just bought a brand new burner or DVD recorder. And you still hear Ritek complaints: they may have cleaned up their own self-labeled discs a bit but the stuff they oem for others is still hit-or-miss. The UME stuff is just completely hopeless as anything but bait for Circuit City sale flyers.

There seems to be a hardcore group of members here who burn exclusively on their PCs and replace their burners every two months with new ones. If you are one of those people, you will have MUCH better than average luck with a wider variety of media than those of us who are using it in standalone DVD recorders. You need to bear in mind that the burners in DVD recorders have custom chips to deal with digital rights management and they are often not replaceable with anything but the exact same burner model. In the USA, the very versatile DVD recorders with hard drives were pulled off the market two years ago leaving many of us to deal with aging units with write strategies dating from 2004. We can't just go buy a new DVD/HDD recorder, because there aren't any (except for one Phillips model). We can't update their burners with new ones, because they're proprietary. So for a sizable minority here, the rapidly dwindling choice of media at retail is a problem and we jaw about it endlessly. I know it annoys the PC burning crowd, but try to put yourselves in our place before saying we're crazy and telling us you never have a problem with any media. We certainly believe you, please believe us in return.

[SingSing]

We use a MARKET system to reward the companies make and/or distribute good products.

We WALK away with our wallet from those companies make and/or distribute bad products.

The global market does make figuring who make what difficult to track, but internet let consumers figured out most of easy.

I should type "Nexxtech complaint" on google before I bought them. and it should show me these :
"Nexxtech DVD-R MADE IN HONG KONG - Club CD Freaks - Knowledge is Power. Let me be one to tell you to NOT BUY Nexxtech blank dvd media (made in HONG KONG ... I know I'm not the first to complain about this.. quality for dvd's ..."

"Worst DVD media ever - Courtesy of CircuitCity - VideoHelp.comMay 5, 2008 ... Bought a 50 pack of NEXXTECH 16x DVD-R from CircuitCity, ..... And you still hear Ritek complaints: they may have cleaned up their own ... "

[solarfox]

The global market does make figuring who make what difficult to track, but internet let consumers figured out most of easy.

Now that, I'll agree with. Personally, I think there ought to be some kind of truth-in-labeling law which requires companies -- especially companies which sell re-badged items like this -- to fully disclose where the products are actually made and who the real manufacturer of the product is.

[negritude]

There seems to be a hardcore group of members here who burn exclusively on their PCs and replace their burners every two months with new ones. If you are one of those people, you will have MUCH better than average luck with a wider variety of media than those of us who are using it in standalone DVD recorders. You need to bear in mind that the burners in DVD recorders have custom chips to deal with digital rights management and they are often not replaceable with anything but the exact same burner model. In the USA, the very versatile DVD recorders with hard drives were pulled off the market two years ago leaving many of us to deal with aging units with write strategies dating from 2004. We can't just go buy a new DVD/HDD recorder, because there aren't any (except for one Phillips model). We can't update their burners with new ones, because they're proprietary. So for a sizable minority here, the rapidly dwindling choice of media at retail is a problem and we jaw about it endlessly. I know it annoys the PC burning crowd, but try to put yourselves in our place before saying we're crazy and telling us you never have a problem with any media. We certainly believe you, please believe us in return.

Well, obviously, standalone recorders are a different animal entirely. They, along with slimline burners found in laptops, tend to be much more picky about the kinds of media they work well with. Neither product usually gets the kind of firmware updates or support that standard-size desktop computer burners do. So yes, I agree with you 100%, but the difference is, I don't consider the limitations of these other burning devices to be a proper overall judge of media quality. It's OK to say that they don't work as well with recorders, but not to then extrapolate that to mean they are trash overall. There's a lot of media out there that simply wasn't designed to work as well at the slower 1x and 2x speeds of recorders, and with the poor firmware support for slimline drives, they should only be used for occasional burning, but not depended on for anything heavy-duty.

Your best bet for recorders and slimlines is to use 16x Verbatim media exclusively. That's easily available from a number of retail stores, and it often goes on sale at reasonable prices. You can also consider Taiyo Yuden, although you should stick with the 8x TYG02 or YUDEN000 T02, because older devices may not have the proper support for 16x TY codes.

[OneSickPup]

If talking standalone dvd recorders - I would use either of these depending on your needs for + or - R:

http://www.rima.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=R&Product_Code=1792&C...y_Code=DMRVRTM

or

http://www.rima.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=R&Product_Code=1798&C...ory_Code=DVPVB