A little history. Four of five years ago when I bought my first DVD recorder, a Panasonic E85, I bought a few hundred Ritek disks. Well, not too long after, these went from lauded to panned buy this group. I bought a bunch of the new disks that were being recommended at the time, Tayio-Yuden 8x premium. I also got one of these (http://www.supermediastore.com/microboards-quic-disc-dvd-dvd-1-4x-24x-recorder-1-to-1-duplicator.html) and made copied of all my non T-Y disks to T-Y media.

So, two months ago, in the course of doing my job, I happened to be in a meeting with the person who is responsible for all the data archiving where I work. I asked him about it, and he was not too happy with his experiences. Apparently they are using a brand of archival quality DVD (he never told me the actual brand) that he says costs fifteen dollars a disk!:eek: His group has been transferring data to DVDs for several years and he is now seeing disk failures. His group is now creating five copies of each disk they make, and he has had to get a small army of people to statistically select disks for integrity checking, and it looks not to good. He thinks it is necessary, but not really feasable to recheck every disk that they have made.

Well, that got me thinking, so I dusted off the duplicator and started making copies of all the disks I have made, starting the the most valuable (not easily replaceable, or too costly to replace) and the oldest and moving forward. I have made just under 400 copies and so far, I have found three disks that the duplicator has failed to copy. These are unplayable on any machine I have, so they are really failures.

Three out of 400 is a pretty low percentage, (0.75%) but not all of them have been old, some are fairly new. Also, I am pretty sure at least at one time I bought some T-Y value-line disks. Is it at least possible that these never burned correctly in the first place. The duplicator has a test feature, which I am planning on using in the future. So far, none of the failed disks are irreplaceable, but if they were, I would be very unhappy.

this is much less difficult than the VHS to DVD project, basically putting disks in the machine and pressing a button. The labeling is the most time-consuming bit.

I am just reporting that I am seeing failures.

More or less what I expected to hear. The maddeningly inconsistent reports of media integrity and durability kept me from jumping into the VHS-to-DVD transfer fray until things settled down a bit in 2005. Even then, too may variables in the media to guarantee anything. I will be satisfied if my DVD-Rs survive long enough to transfer to the "next great thing", preferably some high-capacity solid state storage device thats stable. While DVD-R is theoretically archival, in practice it relies on dyes that can disintegrate if poorly mfr'd, poorly burned and/or the environment acts on the disc.

Still, whatcha gonna do? VHS is done and over, and in any case once we digitize it onto DVD-R the next migration should be faster and easier (high speed copy the digital files). Pricey so-called "super archival" discs have been controversial for ages now: the gold doesn't guarantee any additional durability, because the dyes can still degrade and if not made right they won't burn so great to begin with. Its far cheaper (and possibly safer) to make multiple copies on different top-quality "consumer" media: my "safety" archives are TY 8x and Verbatim DataLife 8x, my "user" discs are Sony or Verbatim 16x.

The most lethal combination for those using standalone DVD recorders (as opposed to PCs) is media that your recorder doesn't like, which results in a poor initial burn, which is more likely to drift as the disc ages.The better the initial burn, the more "cushion" you have against slight degradation. Most of us are not going to test each individual burn, it would take forever, and consumer level tools aren't all that accurate anyway. A poor burn can seem fine to us "laymen" based on casual playback checks, but is prone to quicker decay in storage, especially if the media is lower-level "bargain" stuff. To guard against this, use TY 8x Premium or Verbatim DataLife 8x for your most important irreplaceable recordings. No matter how new the recorder, or how wonderfully it seems to burn store-bought TDK, Sony, Memorex or even Verbatim 16x, all recorders make better burns on 8x DVD-R than 16x. The 16x needs to burn lightning-quick in a PC for best results, when it gets bogged down in the typical HDD>DVD Magnavox running at 4-6x or Pioneer/Panasonic at 7-8x, or direct-to-DVD at 1x, the burn quality can be marginal. You're better off using the 8x media the standalones were optimized for.

Hey Church~ I've been thinking of getting a dedicated DVD duper, too.

What made you choose that Microboards duplicator over, say, the house-brand Linkyo "CopyPal" that sells for about $100 less than the Micro's current "sale" price.

Just wondering if there's a difference in features, reliability of burns, or something.....

Hey Church~ I've been thinking of getting a dedicated DVD duper, too.

What made you choose that Microboards duplicator over, say, the house-brand Linkyo "CopyPal" that sells for about $100 less than the Micro's current "sale" price.

Just wondering if there's a difference in features, reliability of burns, or something.....
Um, embarrassing to say.:o We had this at my church, but never used it because they got one that does multiple disks at a time. After over a year of collecting dust, the person who is in charge of the DVDs said he was going to toss it, or sell it on ebay, so if I wanted it, I could take it.

That's how I got it. I don' t know if the others are better, or just cheaper, but the put-in-the-disks-and-press-one-button operation is pretty slick. Maybe they all work that way. The Microboards unit has worked pretty well for me, and the price was right.:D

Better than just letting it continue to collect dust or selling it for zip on AmaBay!

I'm thinking that one of these gizmos might be a great way to prolong the life of the burner in my Panny HDD DVDR. After I get something all sliced, diced, and menu'd up on the HDD, I burn my main copy, and then usually an extra copy for a family member or as a backup to hedge against the uncertain life-span of DVD-Rs (I usually use a different brand of media for each).

So rather than make the Panny spin up another copy, why not get a simple standalone 1-to-1 duplicator to do it?

Better than just letting it continue to collect dust or selling it for zip on AmaBay!

I'm thinking that one of these gizmos might be a great way to prolong the life of the burner in my Panny HDD DVDR. After I get something all sliced, diced, and menu'd up on the HDD, I burn my main copy, and then usually an extra copy for a family member or as a backup to hedge against the uncertain life-span of DVD-Rs (I usually use a different brand of media for each).

So rather than make the Panny spin up another copy, why not get a simple standalone 1-to-1 duplicator to do it?
That was my reasoning exactly. Also, I have friends who like to borrow my recordings, and sometimes they come back in dubious shape. I decided to only loan out the backup copies of my disks, and this was the easiest way of making backup copies. No reencoding necessary.

I had been thinking the same thing. HeartlandAmerica at times sells several several different brands, ZipSpin seems to their most common brand.
When I was researching copiers it seemed memory was a important thing to look for, the more the better for buffering. Buffer under run protection was also mentioned frequently but most seemed to have that feature.
Some mentioned a better power supply and cooling for long life, that made sense too. At the last minute I chickened out on ordering one and now that I'm using my computer more for DVD copying I'd probably go the PC route, but these devices do have their place.

I got one called "Copystars" online for about $180 and use it quite a bit. I think they are all about the same quality. It has a lot of features that I don't use, all I do is put the original in the top drive and the blank in the bottom. Don't even get to push a button.

Well, now I'm kicking myself for not taking this route a couple years ago--I could have saved a lot of wear and tear on my E85's burner.

To return to Church's original post, nowadays I pretty much record everything to TY Premium 8x and similar-grade 8x Verbatims.

Supermediastore is offering a brand I haven't encountered before: "FTI FalconMedia Pro." Anybody tried these? Know anything about them? Quality? They cost a few bucks less than TY and Verb, but not rock bottom. The price isn't a big deal for me, but I wouldn't mind having a *third* source of quality media.

BTW, like Church, I refuse to lend out originals--learned my lesson many years ago, when I generously lent some of my one-off cassette tapes and never got them back. However, these days, my lending of homemade DVD copies is pretty much limited to my family, just as a legal CYA.

But a dedicated duplicator would allow me to dump those non-critical giveaway copies on cheaper big box store 16x media.

Supermediastore offers several lines of duplicators, but I have never used one. They come in lots of sizes, have HDDs, and seem reasonably priced, to me...

I am well past 500 dups and I still only have three failures. I am putting my poor machine to a real stress test, I wonder how long it will last.

It has come to my attention that the people doing the data archiving I referenced in my original post thinks that there are easily demonstrable combination of media/drive that make superior burns. This would suggest that a DVD duplicator with one drive (say, Pioneer) might work better than one with another drive (say, Panasonic). It's beyond my resources to buy a sample of each and test them though.

Sigh... Nothing is ever simple!

It has come to my attention that the people doing the data archiving I referenced in my original post thinks that there are easily demonstrable combination of media/drive that make superior burns. This would suggest that a DVD duplicator with one drive (say, Pioneer) might work better than one with another drive (say, Panasonic). It's beyond my resources to buy a sample of each and test them though.


There've even been discussions in this forum about the relative merits of different brands of disc drives. I'm on the verge of pulling the trigger on a duplicator from SMS; I'm just debating whether I want the rock-bottom, no frills model or a more expensive one with Pioneer drives.

Like you said, nothing is ever simple.....

Its hopeless to try and nail down the "best" combination of burner and media: both are moving targets. While its true TY has not altered their 8x formula in years, you still never know, and burner performance can change dramatically as they age (often after as little as 100 burns). For every proponent of Pioneer burners theres another who prefers Samsung and a third who thinks nothing can beat the old Benqs. This matters only if you're hellbent on using "high-speed, dubious quality" retail 16x media: there are definite differences in how each burner model handles current 16x discs, and whether they allow easy booktyping of DVD+R. But if you're focused on predictable, careful, archival storage, any current burner will make excellent backups on TY or Verbatim 8x. (Some very old PC burners had trouble with TY, which I consider a non-issue: any burner that can't burn TY was poorly engineered to begin with and useless for archiving).

DVD duplicators have two sections: a playback source drive and one or more client burners. The burners are not as critical as the playback source drive: if you have marginal-quality original discs (scratched, decayed, pooly-burned) you'll want a drive with better-than-average error correction and reading ability. Current Samsungs are popular for this, with the Pioneers somewhat less capable as readers. Lots of info can be found on the cdfreaks website.

Church AV guy, a few questions...

Do you know where your duplicator came from?

Does it have a HDD, if so, how big?

Can you store different discs in the HDD, and call them up for duplication later?

Is it possible to do any editing in the HDD?

If anyone else has a duplicator, especially one from Supermediastore, and can also answer these questions, I'd be interested.


OOPS! I should have posted this in the duplicator thread. Please post any answers there... :D

Not to say the media isn't the issue (sorry, going back to the original question), but frequently the storage conditions will have a greater effect in terms of failure rates than the discs.

How were the discs stored? Climate controlled? In a jewel case? Exposure to sun light?

They were stored in jewel cases with no exposure to sunlight. Nothing climate controlled beyond being in the house.