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CD-R / DVD-R Media
RitualOfTheTrout - Jan 20, 2004
  RitualOfTheTrout Jan 20, 2004
So what are the best brands of media to get? I know Memorex is supposed to be bad.. but what about other brands?

I see Staples has 25 DVD-R by TDK for 24 bucks.. is TDK any good?

 racketboy Jan 20, 2004
Fuji CDRs made in Japan are the best

I've heard good things about Fuji's DVDs as well.

 Dud Jan 24, 2004
I use Ritek but I heard Fuji was better. I probably heard that from racketboy

 Scared0o0Rabbit Jan 24, 2004
I mostly use fuji dvd-r's the price is good, and the quality is great.

 dnguyen800 Jan 24, 2004
Fujifilm CDRs used to be good when they used CDRs made from a japanese company called Taiyo Yuden. Now they use CDRs from a Taiwanese company and the quality is definitely not as good as before. There's a program that can test the quality of CDRs and the new Fujifilm ones had several errors.

I'm not sure if it's the same deal with Fujifilm DVD-R though. Has anyone heard of Radius DVD-Rs? Here's what Surpluscomputers.com says about it:

"RADIUS, a leading worldwide brand of digital media - DVD and DVD associated products, is one of the pioneering companies that defined the optical media industry to make it what it is today. In terms of professional DVD production, RADIUS sets the highest standard for quality, productivity and creativity for their digital media products. RADIUS 's headquarters is located in Tokyo, Japan. Radius is also one of the top selling brands in Japan because of the extremely high quality to price ratio. This media is manufactured to the strictest Japanese requirements for DVD media."

They're selling a 25 pack for $17, sounds good to me.

 ExCyber Jan 24, 2004
Radius doesn't really have the kind of history in the optical media market implied by that description. They might be doing a great job, but they are most certainly not one of the original heavy hitters of optical media R&D; they were founded only about 8 years ago as an electronics manufacturer (IIRC they were the OEM for KDS brand LCD monitors). They've only been doing media for 1-2 years.

As for Fujifilm, I'm wondering if maybe different areas are getting different OEM batches; the last couple spindles of Fujifilm CD-R I bought (about a month ago) were Taiyo Yuden...

 racketboy Jan 24, 2004
with Fujis it depends on where the country of origin on the label is

 gameboy900 Jan 25, 2004
As for DVD-R's I got two spindles of 15 TDK's that were labeled as 2X discs. Nero kept insiting that they could be burnt at 4X speed though (haven't tried it yet). Went to check what the disc said and apparently the ones I got are Raitek G04 which supposedly are good discs and 4X to boot. So basically I got good discs relabeld as slower discs by TDK. And as for their quality they play flawlessly in my EXTERMLY picky Sony standalone DVD player (one of the original first generation Sony DVD players available in North America and based off of the spec standard 7000 model).

 dnguyen800 Jan 26, 2004
How do you check the brand of the DVD-R? I have some unlabled DVD-Rs that I would like to check.

 gameboy900 Jan 27, 2004
Use this... program to check what DVD-R blanks you have. It doesn't work on DVD+R.

 racketboy Jan 27, 2004
anybody know of the program that is used to check the quality of discs?

like being able to tell if a certain disc has errors or is degrading.

I'd like to check out some of my old CDs.

I've had some that are 4 years or so old and have gone bad.

 ExCyber Jan 27, 2004
This program... seems to be the most popular test for readability. A deeper analysis would take some absurdly expensive equipment that is normally only used by manufacturers for QA.

 racketboy Jan 30, 2004
OK, OfficeMax will be having a decent deal on Imation DVDs starting Sunday.

Anybody know anything about theirs?

I'm gonna pick up some CD-Rs too (50-pack free AR).

Not a big fan, but they're free.

 thailees Jan 30, 2004
whats wrong with memorix?

 ExCyber Jan 30, 2004
Memorex tends to have inconsistent quality in my experience, like most no-name and store brands.

 NR Pickle Jan 31, 2004
Is memorex just bad for dvdr?

That is the only brand of cd-r I've ever bought and I've never had a single problem. The passenger seat in my truck is generally full of cdr burns, so I've definately burned a lot.

Am I just lucky?

 gameboy900 Feb 1, 2004
You're lucky. I once bought a 10 pack of memorex high speed cd-rw's. Each in a jewel case and such. Out of the pack I managed to burn a good copy of my data onto THREE of them. The rest either failed the burn completely or the subsequent verification nero makes showed unreadable parts. After that fiasco I erased each disc and returned them to the store. Got them replaced with some (higher priced) TDK's that have not given me any problems in the last year and a half or so.

 RitualOfTheTrout Aug 6, 2004
Iv just gone through a 25 spindle of memorex DVD-Rs with no problems. I hear they degrade faster though.. but I guess I will soon find out how true this is.

Anyhow Bestbuy has verbatim DVD-Rs for 40 bucks for a 50 pack spindle I just ordered some of those since they are on sale and come highly recomended.

 Pearl Jammzz Aug 7, 2004
memorex cdrs suck IMO. They always fall apart and such on me. I have burned prob. 200+ of these things and have found them to be easier to scratch/peel/etc. than other brands. They seem to burn just fine, but they do degrade fast. Usually it's the top stuff peelin off. kinda shitty :-\. I jsu tstick to verbatim's now...