Wah! Bad Verbatims (+R)

[Noahtuck]

i have hundreds of MII and MIS verbs in stock and have compared many burns alternating MII and MIS. the MII never work in a console, whereas all the MIS always work in consoles.

no, a game console as in wii, ps2, etc.

Never had a problem with them in my slim or fat PS2

[Bix]

BREAKING NEWS !!!

RIMA.COM is going out of business !!!

Genuine Taiyo Yuden to be worth more than gold !!!

Gawd ... can you imagine what a nightmare THAT would be LOL

The other stores would keep selling legit TY discs as they have been for years.

I don't trust anyone BUT the coveted RIMA.COM

You do remember the other stores selling fakes

I believe that we went over this awhile ago. I don't believe that SMS, Meritline, or AllMediaOutlet sold fake TYs as real TYs, just house brand discs with faked TY codes for compatibility.

and the so-called "value line" Taiyo Yuden discs ???

Verified as real by people contacting TY years ago, if I remember correctly. It took a few weeks to a month or so for people to ID the fake Maxells and Piodata fake Pioneers years ago. Do you really think that after 3 years, if the TY value line discs were actually fakes, that nobody would've confirmed it? Do you really think SMS would post their "How To Tell if you have Fake or Real Taiyo Yuden" guide that pertains to discs sold by competitors in addition to themselves if they weren't real? If SMS was the only site selling them, then maybe. But not with most of their competitors (including Meritline, whose regular price for 200 is $10 less than SMS) selling the Value Line discs too.

By the way would you like a job at Naked Geek Media?

I think the TY Value Line discs are legit and that SMS, Meritline, AMO, etc. sell real TY Premium discs so I'd make a good salesman for junk media? That's an impressive leap.

[budz]

the MII never work in a console, whereas all the MIS always work in consoles.

If by console you mean standalone, I just put that to the test with an MII disc in my Toshiba standalone, it burned fine. A quick scan with DVDInfoPro gives 98% quality, not bad for a standalone, they never burn as good as a decent PC burner.

IMHO scanning should be done by CD/DVD SPEED version 47715 using a BENQ 1640, 1655, 1650, 1620 drive or with a LITEON dvd burner & even with the latest SAMSUNG drives. Dunno how reliable using DVDINFOPRO would be. Just my 2 cents!

[samijubal]

It's enough to tell me the disc will play flawlessly. Even a 90% disc will play flawlessly. I think I've seen them in the mid 80% that played fine.

I'm not into scanning. Since my discs always play scanning is a waste of time. I've done a few though and know that 98% is very good for a standalone.

I've never had a disc burn completely that didn't play. I've had a few fail during the burn but if they burn they play.

[lordsmurf]

IMHO scanning should be done by CD/DVD SPEED version 47715 using a BENQ 1640, 1655, 1650, 1620 drive or with a LITEON dvd burner & even with the latest SAMSUNG drives. Dunno how reliable using DVDINFOPRO would be. Just my 2 cents!

My problem with scanning is the "best method" is always changing, and the same folks who come up with these methods (few of whom are particularly convincing that they actually know anything about media) then proceed to pooh-pooh and ridicule the older methods that they themselves came up with. This would include anybody now doing it by the so-called "inferior" or "wrong" method. It's hard to take such things seriously.

Testing by these means alone says nothing about media anyway. It's just another computer video game for these folks.

[orsetto]

This may sound dumb but one of the main reasons I buy Verbatim is I can't stand those lame TY spindles. I store my discs on the empty spindles and I definitely don't like the TY spindles.

Gotta agree with you on that one: wassup with TY making some of the finest media on the planet and then loading it onto THE most useless cheap pathetic damned spindles of any mfr?? I mean, c'mon! No other mfr uses these sh*tty spindles- not one- only TY. Not only are they flimsy, they squeak loud enough to wake the neighbors each and every time you remove or replace a disc. Like fingernails on a chalkboard: just horrible. Unfortunately I have no alternative: TY is the only 100% reliable media for my aging standalone recorders. So each time I buy a batch, I also scour eBay and Craig's List looking for people with nicer, empty spindles for sale. They generally end up costing me 50 cents to a dollar apiece. Makes TY yet more expensive to use, but worth it for the peace of mind. For me, anyway.

[jman98]

Even Taiyo Yudens can give bad burns. I can only recall one TY disc where this happened to me, but it is possible with any brand.

Sony USED to sell TY made media in North America or discs made by other high quality manufacturers, but now all they seem to sell here is just made in India crap by CMC and similar low quality companies. TDK did the same - good stuff in the past, cheap crap for sale now in North America. Verbatim and TY seem to be the only consistently high quality brands for sale in North America.

Verbatim outsources everything and they are all over the map as to who makes what. DataLifePlus DVD+/-R discs are made in Taiwan only. DVDs sold in stores like Best Buy are probably made in India, but might be made elsewhere. DVD+R DL discs can be made in India or Singapore, but the DataLifePlus line of these discs is only made in Singapore. Verbatim's CD-R discs are now all made in China or India and I don't think it's possible to get CD-Rs made in any other places that have the Verbatim name on them, no matter what type you get.

[Bix]

Those TY spindles are indeed surprisingly weak. The Valueline tape-wrapped discs hold up to being thrown around during shipping much better.

[lordsmurf]

All the Sony discs I'm aware of are either from Daxon Taiwan (really good) or Daxon Malaysia (crap). Europe apparently has some Indian MBI-made Sony discs with Sony codes. Nothing from CMC. All have SONY codes.

Verbatim discs in Best Buy and Officemax are still all Taiwanese where I am. Nothing from India. What few India I do get are quite fine. The CMC MCC and Prodisc MCC discs all work about the same.

Country of origin isn't always as important as other factors. If nothing else, I think it's often xenophobic fears of anything "foreign" that starts such rumors. We've adapted to places like Singapore and Taiwan being "ok", while India is still "Muslim" or "stealing our jobs" to the uninformed, and China is "evil country that makes poison" to others (although we have to admit most Chinese CD/DVD media sucks due to pathetic manufacturing quality).

[nekrosoft13]

verbatim are good, test at CD-Freaks have proven, just stay away from made in India (MBI manufactured media)

[Gen-An]

Check my results at CD-Freaks (Two Degrees) in the Plextor forum with MBIL Verbatim 16x -R. They're better than most TYG03 I've used.

[PhoneMatt]

After all of this- Verbatim's are on sale this week at Office Max for 19.95 for a spindle of 100. My local Office Max only has the MIT's.

[usually_quiet]

Of late, I have only been seeing MII Verbatim -R's on sale in local stores. Last time Best Buy had a sale, I bought some to try, since I would rather not switch over to mail-ordering discs if I can help it. So far, so good. The 6 MII discs that I have used so far have burned OK and play OK on my rather old equipment. Unfortunately, my burner doesn't allow scanning discs.

Strangely, when I compared the underside of 2 unburned discs (1 MIT and 1 MII), they had a different appearance when held at an angle in strong light. The MII discs showed very regular reflective radial marks inside the disc, like dotted lines, but the MIT discs did not. I am not sure if it is important or not, but something is different about the way the two factories are making discs.

[samijubal]

I scanned an MIT and MII disc from a Toshiba standalone a few days ago, the MIT disc was a little better but the MII disc was fine.

[samijubal]

After all of this- Verbatim's are on sale this week at Office Max for 19.95 for a spindle of 100. My local Office Max only has the MIT's.

You can get a really good deal on Verbatims if you buy 5 of them from OM online. First go there from Live Search, you need a Microsoft ID to get the cashback, that will be about $5 back, then use a $20 off $100 coupon, you have to add something cheap to get to $100, use PayPal to buy them and get another 20% cash back. It comes to about $13-$14/100 depending on how much tax your state charges.

Be warned though, Office Max doesn't package their shipments for crap. I had to take the discs to the nearby store and exchange them last time because the spindles were all busted up.

[PhoneMatt]

My local Office Max had a shelf full of Verbatim's, all MIT. Yeah, I stocked up. Usually, when they are on sale at Best Buy or MicroCenter, all I can find are the MII's. I haven't tried them and don't know whether they are better than MIT's or not (not even going to go into that discussion!), but I know what works for my machines.

[rosbif08]

There's some interesting info on this thread but I need some advice (or predictions :P) on these Verbatim 16x DVD+Rs I've bought. The reason why I'm dubious about them is that I'm in Spain and I got them from a Chinese shop (these Chinese shops are a recent thing here) where you can find a lot of random stuff for quite cheap (although being from the UK most things here are cheap to me anyway). I got a spindle of 10 for 4,50€ (£3.60/6.40$). They're made in Taiwan. I'm quite sure you couldn't get 10 of these for that price in the UK, and if you did then I'd be very suspicious about them... it wouldn't surprise me if they were genuinely that cheap in Spain but coming from a shop that sells a lot of odds and ends throws me, I don't know if they're cheap because they're in Spain or cheap cos they're crap. Have I said anything that raises alarm bells for anyone ? Thanks !

[victoriabears]

well 64 cents aint cheap to North Americans, use some software to get the media code, how are the 10's packed, proper verbatim wrapper or self made?

[rosbif08]

Hmm I'm sure they'd be no less than a fiver in the UK but I could be wrong. I'm not able to get the media code for a few days but I can say that they seem to be packed properly !

[ricoman]

I use to use Verbs and TYs exclusively until this year. Since Verbatim went MII and I hear so many complaints both here and at CDfreak, I now buy TY exclusively. But truthfully, I thought the Verbs were going down hill even before the went MII. Though not a real lot, I was having a few more coasters and more poor scans on my last couple of spindles. My advice, go to Rima or Supermediastore and get the TY PREMIUM LINE.

[rosbif08]

Just to update on my question, I tried burning some videos using MyDVD LE which I found on this comp I'm using and the results were crap after 2 attempts - it said it'd been completed successfully but the videos froze after a while. Then I tried using Nero and it worked perfectly twice. I know you're not all psychic or anything () but could the first 2 results just be because of the software ?? I hope I'm not going too far off topic...

[victoriabears]

Read my original post and use Nero (You can get a free trial off their site) to burn.

All the time you have spent, get a new burner, even an external one, you need to remove the variables.

[lordsmurf]

@rosbif08
Use ImgBurn to burn, skip Nero. What drive make/model is being used to burn these?

@cdfreaks complaints comments
The problem with people who complain at places like cdfreaks is they are often using "scanning drives" to rate the quality of Verbatim. Some of those drives, however, are mediocre burning drives. If the drive is really known to be picky, then the media cannot be blamed for problems. There are too many variables, and if you start to really analyze the complaints, you'll see so many of them are misguided (i.e., finicky drive, custom firmware, overspeed burning, etc). On the other hand, the same folks can be found loving RITEK and CMC (well-known mediocre media), for something as simple as "it scanned well". The inconsistency of these people amazes me.

[ROBERT BLACK]

BTW ... am I the only one who likes to scream TAIYO YUDEN in a deep guttural voice while imagining Ken or Ryu throwing a blue fireball?

Sadly...no you're not.

[ROBERT BLACK]

All the Sony discs I'm aware of are either from Daxon Taiwan (really good) or Daxon Malaysia (crap).

I accidentally bought some of the Malaysia Sony dics in a 10 pack with cases while in a crunch. They burn fine but yielded a high error count when scanned with Nero. Suffice to say I only kept the cases.(no refund) Horrible quality control on these discs and not worth taking the risk except for throwaway tv recordings. Lord Smurf is not exaggerating when he says that they are low grade crap.

[budz]

I accidentally bought some of the Malaysia Sony dics in a 10 pack with cases while in a crunch. They burn fine but yielded a high error count when scanned with Nero. Suffice to say I only kept the cases.(no refund) Horrible quality control on these discs and not worth taking the risk except for throwaway tv recordings. Lord Smurf is not exaggerating when he says that they are low grade crap.

It really depends on what dvd burner you're using to do scanning with CD/DVD speed. Not all brands of dvd burners are capable of doing quality scans. There's nothing wrong with scanning dvd discs as long as you're using a dvd burner that supports it. Some dvd burners are better at burning because of hacked firmwares and by using software like MEDIA CODE SPEED EDIT & Q-SUITE.

SONY has been hit or miss for a long time. I've gone thru spindles where some discs are only allowed to burn at 4x speed. There quality control isn't that great. If you want decent dvd media then buy TAIYO YUDEN from rima.com.
Nuff said!