What can i do to prolong the life of the DVD's i burn. They seem to
last a few months then can't be read in a DVD player. I have used LG,
Pioneer and Lite-On burners with a vaiety of discs both cheap and
expensive but always the same result. I'm interested if anyone else has
this problem and any way around it.
In order to understand what has happened and what to do about it we
need to divide the history of dye-based blank DVDs into two time
periods: 1) Before about a year ago; 2) From a year ago.
Before a year ago, several manufacturers based in Japan supplied
quality discs. But after a year ago, all but one of them started
outsourcing from startups in Taiwan and other non-Japanese countries
in order to meet the explosive demand.
Therefore past history is not indicative of current history. No matter
what anyone tells you about how great a particular brand was a year or
more ago, it does not mean a thing in the last year - with one
exception.
That exception is Taiyo Yuden. All the other manufacturers have been
selling what is basically cheap foreign (non-Japanese) crap on the
open market. One of the more notorious Taiwanese companies is CMC and
the crap they put out is the some of the worst of the entire mess.
Even such venerable names as FujiFilm, which used to tell TY discs,
are now forced to sell CMC crap because TY only sells directly
nowadays.
I realize that what I have just said is a huge generalization, and
there are some exceptions but they are still not as good as genuine TY
discs made only by TY in Japan. And here's the good news - the
wholesalers like rima.com sell genuine TY discs at an affordable price
nowadays, so there is no excuse for buying anything else.
Visit CDFreaks and find out why about 60% of those who participated in
a media quality survey spec TY, with Verbatim a distant second and
Ritek an even more distant third. Since the survey includes RW discs,
and TY doesn't make RW discs, and Verbatim is the best maker of RW
discs, it showed up on the radar.
The conclusion of all this is for you to buy only genuine TY discs in
+/-R and Mitsubishi Verbatim in +/-RW discs. Do not buy anything else
or you are participating in a crap shoot at best or using pure crap at
worst. Rima.com is consistently the best supplier but there are a
couple others like Meritline.com and SuperMediaStore.com. Meritline
was accused of selling fake TYs a while ago, so I always buy from Rima
since their prices are always the lowest.
Now we come to the DVD burner. The CDFreaks have a love affair with
the NEC product line. They also like the recent BenQ offerings
although they are beginning to find that they can fall apart early.
Some are diehard LiteOn people. They used to love Plextor but recently
it has fallen out of favor. I recommend the NEC units because they
have some very clever design features built in. And they are not
expensive like the Plextor.
Absolutely stay away from anything Sony makes. I despise that company
with a passion only reserved for the federal govt. They are a bunch of
dirty dealing crooked bastards who sell low-end OEM crap. You do not
have to buy their shit so don't do it. If you do, I guarantee you will
one day regret it. We had to throw away 100 discs that would not play
after 6 months because of that piece of shit Sony we had.
So, I recommend the NEC burner with TY 8x -R discs. Burn at 8x. I do
not like 16x because the CDFreak experts tell you to burn them at 12x
and the saving in burn time is not worth it cost wise. I also
recommend Verbatim 4x +RWs which I burn at 2.4x. BTW, don't listen to
that bullcrap of a thousand burns for RW discs. I and several others
on the DVD forums only get about 10 burns when using them in
standalone DVD recorders. The likely will last longer in a burner like
the NEC but the DVDRs standalones used in media center applications
must literally fry them half to death.
No flames please - these are my recommendations which I stand behind
from a lot of personal experience and even more expert opinions on the
major forums like CDFreaks, VideoHelp and others.
