A cautionary tale about cheap DVD-R blanks.

I've had a Panny E100 since September '03. Early last year I did a lot of experimenting with different media brands, looking for a good combination of low price and reliability.

There were plenty of bad blanks out there: discs that would hang up in the middle of recording, or would seem to record OK but wouldn't finalize, or would seem to record and finalize, but would only play on certain of my machines or none at all. My assumption at the time was that if a disc recorded, finalized and subsequently played OK on all my players and computers, it was good to keep. Silly me.

One brand that seemed real good at the time were the 4x BeAll white top -Rs, available at very good prices from people like MeritLine. As I recall, several others on this forum reported good results with them, too.

Well, I just had occasion to try to play play something I burned on a BeAll white top last summer, and it was gone. Kaput. All four of my players and two computers refused to mount the disc and reported that it was an alien. Remember, this was a disc that burned and finalized without a hint of trouble and subsequently check-played successfully on all of these machines. In the past six months or so, the data has faded or rotted to the point where nothing can read it. I've started rooting through my video collection, and the preliminary results are that about a third of the BeAll 4x White tops I burned have gone bad. Random checks of other old discs, burned with a variety of blanks, have turned up no problems.

A couple of other observations:

* The problem appears to be only the printable white tops. I burned through a stack of BeAll silver tops about the same time, and those are all still good.

* All the discs that have gone bad were ones I burned on the E100. A number of the BeAll blanks that were burned on my computer (Pioneer 108 burner) were fine. This may be coincidence, but it supports a feeling I've had for a while that the computer drive makes more robust, reliable burns.

Needless to say, I've become obsessive about using only high-quality discs, which in the absence of any better guide, means ones labeled "Made in Japan."

I have to agree 100%.

As you know from the other thread, I have a Plextor 16x dual layer burner, but the emergency precipitating that purchase was that about 1/3 of my DVD collection was rotting, and bordering on unplayable on a lot of players.

Even my PC burner couldn't read/rip them to completion without halting on CRC errors. The Plextor burner is also a good reader, and with it I managed to salvage every disk, and re-burn them to a better quality using better media.

I also agree about the Made in Japan observation, MIJ generally equating to Taiyo Yuden or MCC/Verbatim. In other words, a goodly number of disks branded Sony/Fuji/TDK can be expected to be TY if the country of origin is Japan. Maxell is another brand testing well for me, also MIJ.

In my sampling, TY and MCC have tested about equal, followed very closely by Maxell. But suprisingly, I've observed some *very* good test numbers even with lowly 4x CMC Magnetics and Prodisc, keeping in mind however, that all other things being equal, burn quality can be expected to be more consistent at lower speeds. In other words, although I've had some CMC that burned with parity errors as low as TY, the CMCs were burned at 4x and the TY burned at 16x.

I wouldn't be so quick to claim that "disc fade" is real since it is too general a claim. The failure of any optical format is dependent on the integrity of the media at the point of manufacture and is not a general characteristic of the technology (as implied).

In the BeAll situation, there has been discussion on various boards indicating that BeAll 4X printables suffered from manufacturing defects, which included a somewhat quiet recall of certain batches from a specific manufacturing period. Sample banter about problematic BeAll media can be found here (http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=112938&highlight=BeAll)

Is disc fade real? NO, or else the world would be alive with billions of coasters.

Can manufacturers use defective materials during production? YES. The analysis should be limited to determining why certain BeAll and Vivistar discs experienced data failure. It is not however due to some lurking evil that will eventually destroy all of our media.

Jeff -

I wasn't saying that all discs will fade, just that it is clearly possible for a poorly-made disc to appear good initially, but then to deteriorate. I think most of us had believed that bad discs all were obviously bad from the get-go: failing to finalize or not being readable on certain machines after burning. The delayed failure mode I encountered with the BeAlls is, for me, a new and much more troublesome kind of defect since you can't check for it when you have the ability to do something about it. Your only defense is faith in a given brand name (or country of origin).

I'm not saying all discs will fade either, but 1/3 of mine did after 2 years.

I've got a bunch of (about 50) Ritek discs that I burned 2+ years ago. I recently tried them all to the extent of playing parts of them in a dvd player - just a few minutes from start, middle and end - and All of them played perfectly. Not a definitive test by any means but an indication.

They're the 4X matte finish. I burned some prodisc brand with the white tops at around the same time and about half of them no longer work at all, in anything, standalone or system. Nex

FWIW, the disks of mine that failed (about 50) *also* played fine in several players, a Pioneer, and two Panasonics, and would play randomly well in several others until....the picture would eventually freeze...skip...freeze....halt.

The good news, was that the testing software was an accurate indicator, and gave a grade, Excellent/Very Good/Good/Not Good/Bad. If a disk received a grade of Bad, it was a certainty to give playback problems in only some, but not all players. If it graded good, that also could be counted upon. The Plextools time-analysis test that rendered these grades took only seconds...but there are free tools available like the Nero CD scan.

Whole areas of the disk could be good, and chunks of it bad. Swapping them into a bunch of players is a very inefficient test, because unless you watch them all start to finish, you won't know.

Anyway...I didn't start this thread, but I will corroborate the premise of Spoffo, that it has been my experience that disk rot was real for me too.

Swapping them into a bunch of players is a very inefficient test, because unless you watch them all start to finish, you won't know.

Excellent point, Tom. That's why I'm considering the Plextor.

Originally posted by nexx9
I've got a bunch of (about 50) Ritek discs that I burned 2+ years ago. I recently tried them all to the extent of playing parts of them in a dvd player - just a few minutes from start, middle and end - and All of them played perfectly. Not a definitive test by any means but an indication.

They're the 4X matte finish. I burned some prodisc brand with the white tops at around the same time and about half of them no longer work at all, in anything, standalone or system. Nex

Yeah, I used to think the Riteks were great until I picked up a Denon 3910.

All the Ritek discs in my library would not play without freezing on the Denon, and further investigation showed they would fail on other players such as the Yamaha HD931(they play fine on my E80 & 85).

After much experimenting, I found that MCC/Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden discs get the job done.

If you think you're not having a problem with any of your older media because of successful random playback tests, try making a copy of one of the discs using Shrink or CloneDVD. You just may be unhappily surprised. :mad:

I've been using CD Check to check discs for errors. It seems to do a good
job of finding errors that will cause freezing, skipping, etc. during playback. The only problem is that it doesn't tell you where the error is (time-wise) and will stop checking a VOB file once it finds a single error in it.

I did try running DVD Shrink on a disc that had a error. Playback skips at a certain spot on the Panasonic that recorded it and freezes at the same spot when it is played on my computer with two different DVD programs. DVD Shrink however failed to find the error. I wish it could find the errors because the visual video display would let me quickly check the discs in other players.

I've also tried DVD Info, but find it too sensitive. I'm really only concerned about errors that will effect playback.

So I'm still looking for a good program to check DVDs for errors. I don't have the time to watch the recordings real-time, but would like to ensure that the discs are error free before I start getting rid of the original tapes.

Again, not to be trumpeting Plextor or anybody else...but you have to understand a distinguishing characteristic. The Plextor has special *hardware/firmware* for testing disk quality.

The problem with using Nero, CD Speed, DVD Shrink, DVD Decryptor etc. with a regular DVD drive..., is that the result they give is associated with the quality of the DVD drive used as the reader. In other words, if your PC reader is good, a bad disk reads as good. If your PC reader is bad, a good disk reads as bad. Thus, the PC reader becomes the benchmark, whether it's deserving of that role or not.

The only *sensitivity* DVD Info or DVD Decryptor has, is that you can specify the number of retries for a bad sector. Here's how that works:

If you want to rip a disk, you could specify 20 retries. If the read hardware encounters a problem reading a sector, it will try re-reading the area up to twenty times. If it succeeds in recovering the data before the 20th try, it moves on to the next block. If it fails, it halts on CRC read error. You can increase the number of retries to make more attempts, or you can tell it to skip data it can't read and move on to the next block, in which case the file is corrupted, and upon playback will have macro-blocking breakups.

But there is no inherent sensitivity to the software. It merely makes calls to the hardware driver.

A transfer rate test is usually a kind of OK test, as well. Granted, there are good readers and bad readers, but if you have a disc giving you problems on a DVD player, you could use that as a baseline "bad" disc and see how Nero CD/DVD Speed (or similar speed test) handles it on your PC...

After a few tests you start getting a good idea how to rank it.

The problem is none of these tests are infalliable-- the Plextor gives you a good overall picture AT THAT MOMENT IN TIME. No test can predict how well the dye will hold up, or the glue, or just general aging will affect the disc in a year or 10.

....I wouldnt throw out those precious VHS tapes.

I went down to the local BB and picked up a Plextor PX-716A. Shortly after getting it installed, I returned it for another because I felt the unit's poor performance was due to a defect.

The replacement unit performed the same, which really disappointed me.
Both units failed to read several DVD-R discs that I had made on my E-80 well over a year go. My Matsushita drive could read half of them, and my Memorex DLRWL16 (Pioneer Unit) read them all.

I also was quite annoyed after creating an image with Plextools Professional Software; The image was created successfuly according to the software, but I received an error when burning the image to a disc, which created a coaster. I NEVER had this happen in the past when burning from an image. :mad:

As of now, my initial feelings on the Memorex machine are reinforced. The machine is awesome. It even managed to copy DVD-Rs that I'd soaked in a solution of Woolite in order to remove paper labels. Yes, paper labels are an additional curse over time.

My advice is simple; keep an open mind and buy your unit at a store that has an amicable return policy.

Happy Salvaging!

Did you update the firmware (to 1.04) and use the latest software drivers and application updates?

Hrm, I've had no problems with E80 burned discs at all on my 716. The only thing that gives it problems are discs burned in my Sony DRU500a. I contacted Plextor and they basically said "Yeah, it does that.." (takes about 30-45 seconds to recognize the disk). :/

What sort of media are you using? The 716 can be VERY picky. If multuple drives are having problems, I would be concerned about the media, and the rapid deterioration of the discs. There's no reason a 1 year old burn should have ANY trouble on ANY drive. And what were you burning in PlexTools? I didn't know it could burn images...

The early generation 716s were pretty bad-- combination of bad firmware and some hardware glitches. Check the TLA # on the top of the box-- it's a code. The first 2 digits are hardware revision, the last 2 are firmware revision-- so TLA 0000 is hardware revision 0 (initial), firmware 0. Most Best Buys have at LEAST 0203, if not 0304. (0203 and up are considered good models).

Firmware 1.04 is really essential to a good Plextor 716 experience. :) Any model can be upgraded to 1.04, but it is thought that the TLA 0000 and/or 0001 models may have some hardware problems..

The Pioneer burners are awesome... it's just too bad they can't do quality scans. (I know, the DVDInfoPro software claims to do it but there's lots of controversy as to if it does a legitimate test or not)

What sort of media are you using? The 716 can be VERY picky. If multuple drives are having problems, I would be concerned about the media, and the rapid deterioration of the discs.

Reply: That's exactly the point; I'm going nuts trying to resurrect some problem DVD-Rs and the last thing I need is a "picky" burner.


The early generation 716s were pretty bad-- combination of bad firmware and some hardware glitches. Check the TLA # on the top of the box-- it's a code. The first 2 digits are hardware revision, the last 2 are firmware revision-- so TLA 0000 is hardware revision 0 (initial), firmware 0. Most Best Buys have at LEAST 0203, if not 0304. (0203 and up are considered good models).

Reply: TLA# on both units are 0203


The Pioneer burners are awesome... it's just too bad they can't do quality scans. (I know, the DVDInfoPro software claims to do it but there's lots of controversy as to if it does a legitimate test or not) [/B][/QUOTE]

Reply: Yes, the new Memorex (Pioneer) is really helping me out with all of this mess. As far as scanning goes, I agree with the other poster that it's superfluous if the dye deteriorates over time. And I really don't have time to do an accurate scan of each disc that I burn.

Thanks for your input,
Peter M

Well, it should be a fairly decent reader once it can recognize the discs. Is it just not seeing them at all, or being very slow, or...? It's a picky writer in my experience... it has media it likes and doesn't (even some cheap media)... it seems to hate Maxell media, which is bizarre since in my experience that's some of the best media on the market...

I will say there are no problems having a ton of optical drives in one system. There is no one killer drive that does EVERYTHING well. I have a Toshiba M1712 DVD-ROM that reads pretty much anything you put in it, and VERY fast (with hacked firmware-- I usually hate hacked firmware but in this case it really unleashes the beast). It even blows the Plextor away in reading speed and ability to read anything. I've heard LG DVD-ROM drives are even better. You may want to check some of those out if you continue having reading issues...

Did you upgrade the firmware to 1.04? There is an "updated" 1.04 firmware that came out in February, it may fix some problems.

Webscout. I wouldn't think of throwing out my VHS or 8MM tapes of family events. I'm also thinking of saving the finished DVD transfer to an external HDD as well.

From time to time this issue creeps up in this forum. What a crapshoot this whole DVD Burning is. I just hope the HiDef system will establish tough manufacturer compatibility standards for hardware as well as media.

Originally posted by Jay Davis
I just hope the HiDef system will establish tough manufacturer compatibility standards for hardware as well as media.

If the high failure rates claimed in this thread are any indication, then the entire range of optical media technology should be considered a write-off since data loss would seem inevitable. The new HiDef technolgy actually pushes the limits of optical media to require an integrity and performance level which appears impossible if we are to accept the claims made here about less complex media types.

I guess I should consider myself lucky. After archiving over 5000 discs in the last 4 years, periodic tests and checks have never turned up a single piece of media that has failed over time. This includes more marginal bargain-priced media as well. Heck, I can't even get a failure on my fake Maxells that I deliberately exposed to extreme conditions in an attempt to induce corrosion or shifts in the dye stability. I've tried to kill test discs...and failed.

JeffWild. After reading your depressing (and probably correct) statement I'm thinking of taking an extra Zoloft. I'm also thinking you made a pact with the devil.

Originally posted by JeffWld
If the high failure rates claimed in this thread are any indication, then the entire range of optical media technology should be considered a write-off since data loss would seem inevitable. The new HiDef technolgy actually pushes the limits of optical media to require an integrity and performance level which appears impossible if we are to accept the claims made here about less complex media types.

I guess I should consider myself lucky. After archiving over 5000 discs in the last 4 years, periodic tests and checks have never turned up a single piece of media that has failed over time. This includes more marginal bargain-priced media as well. Heck, I can't even get a failure on my fake Maxells that I deliberately exposed to extreme conditions in an attempt to induce corrosion or shifts in the dye stability. I've tried to kill test discs...and failed.

You know Jeff, I've never had a reason to doubt you. 5000 disks in 4 years sounds like you've been working full time on it too. I mean honestly, you can't be watching in a single task every disk because that's about 250 full time work weeks if those disks were all DVDs. So would I be wrong in asking if a goodly number of those were CDs?

The real point being, is that you stated that periodic tests and checks have never turned up a single piece of media that failed over time. And you haven't acknowledged exactly what kind of checks you made or over what period. Lacking that, could I assume that if you made checks on 1x burns from 2 years ago, that what you would do is pop them into your favorite DVD player, and chapter skip from the first to the last, and then return it to its sleeve? Because if you use that method, then I have 50 failed disks that will pass muster and play perfectly for you.

One of the problems that people don't get, is that bad disks often play fine in the better players. That doesn't make them good disks, because bad disks may NOT play in players that are poor readers. That's what it took for me to find out I had a problem. I had 50 disks that played fine in several players. When I added my newest player, an I-O Data LinkPlayer2, I had 50 disks that could do anything from play through to the end without problem, or could freeze at chapter 19 with my guests wondering, WTF?

The whole point of measuring for parity errors, is to find an objective measurement about which you can form an accurate opinion about a disk. For the test to be meaningful, a result of good should be playable and a result of bad should be expected to have problems. If the test doesn't give that measure of dependability, then it's a waste of time.

What I found, is that the test DOES accurately predict what I can expect. If it reports good, it plays good, on anything. If it reports bad, it may still play good on some players, but not all.

Below is a scan of a 1x burned disk from two years ago that failed the current test. For all I know Jeff, the disk might have been a bad burn from day 1. It will STILL play fine in some players, but not all.

But because I was not testing my disks in this way 2 years ago, I cannot say that it was rot over time. And because it plays fine in some players now, I cannot say the burn is any worse now than two years ago. But what I can say, is all the bad burns were made on the same equipment that is still making good burns today, on newer media.

http://vsdrives.com/graphics/plextor/Furious.png

For an interpretation of the above scan, note that POF (parity outer fail) equals 116. POFs are considered severe, since even 1 can cause a disk to be unplayable. The POFs in the above scan are represented in a tiny red area at the base of the graph at the 1.5gb mark.

The PIEs (parity inner error) are errors for 8 consecutive blocks that are normally correctable by the drives EEC circuit, but can render a disk unplayable if too high and there are fingerprints/scratches/smudges etc. The limit on these is 280.

The above disk is a very bad burn overall. How does it play? Beginning to end, it plays without problem in a Panasonic RP82 and a Pioneer DV563A. But don't try and rip it with my PC burner! It halts on file read error! Don't play it on the LinkPlayer either. It may get you halfway through the movie or not, but assuredly at some point,
....pause....skip....skip...play....freeze....halt.

Originally posted by Jay Davis
I wouldn't think of throwing out my VHS or 8MM tapes of family events. I'm also thinking of saving the finished DVD transfer to an external HDD as well.
From time to time this issue creeps up in this forum. What a crapshoot this whole DVD Burning is.

How true. Always get a kick outta folks pontificating about how the VCR is dead, just like 8-track, and you better get those tapes transferred to DVD....

Originally posted by Tom Roper
You know Jeff, I've never had a reason to doubt you. 5000 disks in 4 years sounds like you've been working full time on it too. I mean honestly, you can't be watching in a single task every disk because that's about 250 full time work weeks if those disks were all DVDs. So would I be wrong in asking if a goodly number of those were CDs?

The real point being, is that you stated that periodic tests and checks have never turned up a single piece of media that failed over time. And you haven't acknowledged exactly what kind of checks you made or over what period.

Tom:

1. My 5000 disc total is strictly DVD media and not CD. Both my professional work and personal/hobby work involve the archiving of large libraries of reference material that has been transferred to DVD-R from tape and film sources.

2. My method of checking comes in 3 different forms:

(a) Users who need access to archived material for review and research. Archived discs are pulled daily for playback based on a client's reaseach needs. This means that discs from any of the 4 year archive history could be in use on any given day, providing an opportunity to get a fairly good sense of how discs burned across different years behave over time.

(b) Many clients require copies of discs (or re-authored segments from multiple discs). This allows for the opportunity to check the readability of discs across a variety of installed PC-based burners (mainly NEC and Pioneer models) to make duplicates.

(c) As you stated, diagnostic tools to check disc integrity weren't really available in the earlier days. However, now they are available and I frequently use such software to check the quality of fresh burns (to determine hardware/media compatibility, batch integrity from media manufacturers, possible firmware issues etc). In addition, I will use these diagnostic tools to examine the status of reported errors on discs burned in previous years.

In summary, discs are being required to "perform" on a daily basis in one setting or another, which I believe represents a broad test bed. At this point, no red flags have gone up that have me doubting the archival stability of optical media. I am in close contact with other colleagues who use DVD media in similar settings so that we can share any information that might point to pending media-related disaster.

Ultimately we have to trust some medium for storage, which also includes trusting that the theoretical/projected stabilty of optical media is correct. Yes, down the road it's possible that we all may discover that there is some fatal design flaw in optical media that makes it a ticking time bomb. I hope not.

It somewhat reminds me of the early days of magnetic recording technology when many industry professionals simply didn't trust it. They were positive that magnetic tape information would "fade away" after a few years and couldn't possibly maintain the required magnetic properties over the long haul. Fortunately they were wrong.

My greater concern is not the integrity of the science of optical media, but the cost-cutting compromises that manufacturers of optical media take to cheapen the product.

Originally posted by Jay Davis
JeffWild. After reading your depressing (and probably correct) statement I'm thinking of taking an extra Zoloft. I'm also thinking you made a pact with the devil.

Jay:

Check your PM

Okay, I'm determined to give the Plextor Burner a fair shot, but I must say it's beginning to grow tiresome. :(

I picked up a third unit at another BB (I'd returned the first two mainly because they were making too many coasters). I felt a little more hopeful with this unit because it has a sticker on the box that reads: "New Firmware Upgrade," and the TLA# is 0304.

So far I'm getting no coasters, which is a good thing. But... yeah, here we go: Nine out of ten Verbatim discs that I'd burned on the previous Plextor all received an Excellent with Plextor's Professional TA test (One rated a "Very Good"). Needless to say, I was feeling pretty good about adding these discs to my library.

But now I'm not so sure? Now only two out of the ten discs rate "excellent" when testing with the new Plextor. And to add insult to injury, the other eight discs are a mix of good and bad ratings. These are the same ten discs that were fresh from a new spindle.

Is it possible these 8 Verbatim discs deteriorated over night? :confused:

Not likely, but how can I feel secure with tests that vary from burner to burner?

I'm really open for suggestions at this point. Londo, Vic, Tom, anyone...?

Originally posted by videonut

Is it possible these 8 Verbatim discs deteriorated over night? :confused:

I'm really open for suggestions at this point. Londo, Vic, Tom, anyone...?

I'm not Londo, Vic, or Tom, but I will say that it's not possible the Verbatim discs deteriorated overnight. What is probable is that the quality of Verbatim discs have become very inconsistent. I had great praise for their media in the earlier days. Now, I have noticed that the quality from batch to batch (or even within a single batch) is all over the map. Due to their decision to contract out some of their production (to CMC Magnetics), they have lost the tight quality control they used to have during the years of Japanese production.

The old question applies: do you want 'em good, or do you want 'em cheap? Consumers spoke, and the answer was "I want 'em cheap". Verbatim has to compete.

True, and isn't the TA test just one measurement? I don't think it's an overall assessment of the media as a whole (I could be wrong). It's just a measure of how well the pits/lands have been burned.

You really need to run the whole suite of tests-- PI/PO (run SUM1 and SUM8; you need both PIF and PIE), beta/jitter, AND TA.

Of course, the biggest test is -- do the discs WORK and play back correctly in your player(s)? I've seen discs with VERY low PIE scores play back horribly; and discs with high PIEs look great.

(If I am totally wrong here, please correct me!)

The 716A TLA 0304 should be a very good burner. It's possible-- if your other 2 drivers WERE defective -- that the discs burned 'incorrectly' in such a way that the other 2 drives thought all was fine but now your new drive is having issues. (I.e., if you use a ruler with improper markings, it will be consistently 'correct' but if you use a ruler with 'standard' markings, all your measurements are off-- what is the problem, the ruler or the measurements?)

And, as horrible as THIS is, the numbers ARE variable. You're talking about measuring the size and jitter of marks on a rapidly spinning disc that are less than the size of a pinhead. It IS a common occurance-- and frustration-- that running the same test multiple times gives slightly different results. It's an unfortunate byproduct of having so much control over the process...(the ability to now get all this info)

I agree that Verbatim is not the "easy recommend" anymore... what are the media IDs?

"So far I'm getting no coasters, which is a good thing. But... yeah, here we go: Nine out of ten Verbatim discs that I'd burned on the previous Plextor all received an Excellent with Plextor's Professional TA test (One rated a "Very Good"). Needless to say, I was feeling pretty good about adding these discs to my library.

But now I'm not so sure? Now only two out of the ten discs rate "excellent" when testing with the new Plextor. And to add insult to injury, the other eight discs are a mix of good and bad ratings. These are the same ten discs that were fresh from a new spindle." Videonut


That would be a great question to ask Plextor Tech Support. You should email them and see what they have to say about it.


nx211

Videonut, run the Sum1 test at the lowest accuracy. Set the scale to 10. If the PIF limit is below 4 you'll be good to go. The T/A test is always sampling from different areas of the disk, so the result can vary. Run the test again, but the more important tests are the Sum1/Sum8. The Sum8 better illustrates the distribution of parity errrors across the disk, but the best pass/fail indicator is the Sum1.

Post a scan of your sum8, if possible, and the media ID.

videonut : I read about your problems with the Verbatim 8x discs. I do not know if my problems with Verbatim 8X discs have any bearing, but....

I bought Verbatim (up to) 8x DVD-R made in Taiwan, Medai Code MCC 02RG20. They won't burn on an NEC-2500a (w/ latest NEC factory firmware) at 8x or 6x without hundreds of errors when tested with DVDInfoPro (I didn't try Nero DVDspeed yet). They do burn at 4x w/ no errors at all. Perhaps a problem with the write strategy of the NEC 2500a, perhaps a problem with this batch of Verbatim Discs. ( ? )

Worst of all, some will work on an E55, some won't. The discs that do not work fail to load ( the E55 doesn't "recognize" 'em )
So I returned the unopened spindles to BB. Whats left, will be burned on the PC at 4x, and I hope they will be readable in 6 motnhs or a year.

I have used 100s of 4x Verbatim DVD-R Digital Movie Discs in my two E55s, with zero problems. I've burned a 100 DVD+R Digital Movie Discs on the 2500a with zero problems at 4x.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by jmscott42
[B]True, and isn't the TA test just one measurement? I don't think it's an The 716A TLA 0304 should be a very good burner. It's possible-- if your other 2 drivers WERE defective -- that the discs burned 'incorrectly' in such a way that the other 2 drives thought all was fine but now your new drive is having issues. (I.e., if you use a ruler with improper markings, it will be consistently 'correct' but if you use a ruler with 'standard' markings, all your measurements are off-- what is the problem, the ruler or the measurements?)

Reply: Yes, I believe you've hit the nail on the head. The new machine seems to be working flawlessly. And I am seeing good results with the Sum 1 test that Tom suggested.

And rxtian brought out a good point: I've also noticed that recording faster than 4X with Ritek GO 5 and the Verbatim discs is asking for problems.
The Riteks will not play on my Denon player if they are burned faster than 2x. I've tested many discs to support this finding.

Thanks to everyone for the input!
Peter M

In working my way through the discs I made using BeAll white tops, I've found something interesting: a disc that may be in the middle of going bad. This is a movie I recorded on a BeAll back in July of last year. It played perfectly on several players in the month or so after it was burned.

I just checked it again. It still plays, but it is laced throughout with brief feezes, "sparkles" of small macroblocks and occasional bursts of macroblocks that cover 10-30% of the screen. Sorta like watching satellite in a heavy downpour. It plays like this on 3 different players, and none of my computers can read it any more. (Yes. it's physically very clean. No fingerprints, scratches, etc,.)

I'm going to hang on to this disc and keep checking it every so often. Maybe it was just a one-shot failure that happened to come out in this odd, in-between state. My guess, though, is that in another 6 months or a year, it will stop playing completely, at which time we'll have proof that defective discs can indeed degrade slowly over time.

That is assuming the DVD players ability to read borderline bad media doesn't degrade over time as well.

For anyone interested in a Plextor 716A (internal), there is a way to get one at Best Buy for $46.99 after 2 rebates. One is a Best Buy rebate, the other is a Plextor rebate. It seems legit to me; the rebates are going to 2 different addresses...

Since I'm blatantly stealing this info anyway, I may as well just say to read http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?start=0&catid=18&threadid=454525 for full instructions....

Firmware V1.05 has been released...FYI

Originally posted by jmscott42
For anyone interested in a Plextor 716A (internal), there is a way to get one at Best Buy for $46.99 after 2 rebates. One is a Best Buy rebate, the other is a Plextor rebate. It seems legit to me; the rebates are going to 2 different addresses...

Since I'm blatantly stealing this info anyway, I may as well just say to read http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?start=0&catid=18&threadid=454525 for full instructions.... Be careful on that dual rebate horsecr_p. My friend went for one of those at Best-Buy. Problem was each rebate application wanted the UPC code off the box -- you only get one of those. He tried to send a copy and a duplicate sales receipt along with an explanatory note etc. No luck, he only got one of the rebates -- the one that got the original UPC code. If you go for it read the rebate form carefully to see if you can actually comply.

One rebate asks for the original, and the other asks specifically for a copy... so it seems ok...

I, too, have had white-top Be-All's test fine when recorded, and now will not play on ANY machine.
I am busy trying to replace as many of the discs as possible.

This post really threw me back. I have a Sony GX300 recorder ( was an open box unit ) that I am planning on returning. I was then going to try to decide on getting a new model Pannie, Toshiba, or the Pioneer DVR-520. My thinking was that I would copy our VHS family videos onto DVD so they will be preserved forever. I know VHS tapes seem to lose some picture quality over the years, but I thought DVD's did not lose anything. According to some of these post, they could lose EVERYTHING
But now, one has to wonder if it is even worth while getting a DVD recorder verses keeping my VHS unit and just getting a new DVD player and save a hundreds of dollars. Maybe, the technology of DVD recording is still too new?:confused:

Never, never, EVER throw away original source material if it's priceless... (family stuff, etc)

If the VHS tape fades, or breaks, you can probably still rescue some of it.

If a tiny bit of a DVD starts causing problems, you've either lost the disc or will have an expensive data recovery bill coming up.

The advantage of DVD is the overall picture quality, the ability to jump around the disc, and ease of use... (pop it in, use the menu to jump around, and watch what you want in 10 seconds..) Theoretically, they'll last a long time, but it IS possible to lose things. The technology isn't perfect, and probably will never be.

Welcome to the digital age! ;)

Here is how I "test" my DVD-Rs burned on a Plextor 716A: As soon as it pops out I stick it in a cheap $30 DVD player connected to a cheap TV next to my computer. If it plays at the start I assume it is good all the way through and so far (about 50 burns) so good with each. They also play in my main player (Toshiba 4900), a Panasonic DVD97 in my bedroom, as well as my brother's Panasonic DVD27. So far I have only used Memorex (4x) and TDK (8x) blanks, though I have some Sony 8X I have yet to try. I use the same blanks in my Panasonic E80H with similar good results. They are so cheap now I figure it is a waste to buy those generic brands.

The only trouble is that certain batches of TDK and other so-called name brands may be manufactured by some of the makers of the generic brands.

Official Taiyo Yuden and Verbatim media are certainly not considered generic.

Also don't be fooled by results from inexpensive DVD players. These cheaper players are a lot more forgiving to poor media than the higher end models. My Denon 3910 chokes on a good portion of disks I'd created in the past, and that includes many TDK and Memorex disks.

It seems the only media in my collection that is standing the test of time are Apple (manufactured in Japan), TDK-RWs, Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden.
All of my Panasonic RAM discs are also holding up quite well.

The Vivistar are all fading fast, and some of my Maxell discs are becoming problematic.

Frustrating to say the least.

Originally posted by videonut:
Also don't be fooled by results from inexpensive DVD players. These cheaper players are a lot more forgiving to poor media than the higher-end models.

Interesting. Why is that? Wouldn't you expect the opposite to be true?

Originally posted by dsmith901
If it plays at the start I assume it is good all the way through and so far (about 50 burns) so good with each.

I would suggest playing the last chapter rather than the beginning of the disk. If there's a problem with playback, more often than not, it will be towards the end of the disk.

Originally posted by MarkhamPete
I would suggest playing the last chapter rather than the beginning of the disk. If there's a problem with playback, more often than not, it will be towards the end of the disk.

Exactly right. Disks are burned from the inside (hub) outward to the disk's outer diameter. Far greater chance of burning problems and reading problems as you move away the center of the disk.

You have to be very lucky to find the bad areas that way. You could skip to chapter 24, play 1 minute of it fine, remove the disk and never know that 45 seconds into chapter 23 is where the freeze-up would occur.

If disk fade is *not* real, then the above method could explain why it took me two years to discover that 1/3 of my recordings were bad.

A player that's a good reader will delay your discovery of disk problems.

Testing DVD disks for parity errors is the only reliable way. But e.g., I agree that problems are more likely toward the middle-outer part of the disk.

I use CD Check to check the integrity of finalized DVD-Rs. It takes about 10-15 minutes to scan the average DVD-R on my computer. I've found CD Check does best at finding errors that will cause freezing, pixelating, etc. during playback, without being over or under sensitive.

I have 15 year old VHS Tapes that still playback just fine.
I have 23 year old Beta Tapes that still playback just fine

Cyclic Redundancy Checks, Inner and Outer Parity Error tests, Sumthis and Sumthat tests............... Here's a great test -
The Test of Time.

Two to Twenty Five years from now, we will know much more about the truth of the Archival Life of DVDs, from Manufacturers/Brand Names who conveniently do not put a Media Code on their packaging.

Sure, I put all my Family Movies on DVD. I've kept a copy on Ram Discs also. I've kept a copy on a second internal 160gb hard drive on my PC also.

Do ya really think I will risk losing my precious movies and digital pics, by deleting them from a hard drive ,and relying on Media with hardly any track record ? Of course not.
I think there's going to be a lot of unhappy campers in the future, who trusted their CD and DVD Media, and deleted video and pic files.

I trust my Seagate hard drives.
I like Taiyo Yuden and Verabtim. Do I trust them ?
Ask me again in 5 to 10 years.

Originally posted by Captain Shirk
Interesting. Why is that? Wouldn't you expect the opposite to be true?

Reply: Sure, one would expect the opposite to be true, but empirical testing proves otherwise.

It reminds me of which gun is more reliable in combat: a standard military 45, or a military 45 that has been perfectly blueprinted for Olympic competition. If you shake a standard 45, you can hear its innards rattling around, which is definitely not the case with a custom 45. But you could drop a standard 45 in a mud puddle and it will more than likely shoot without any problems as long as the barrel is clear. This won't be the case with the custom 45 because of its tight tolerances.

So sometimes a device with sloppy tolerances will get the job done when a superior-quality device won't. Somewhat of a paradox to be sure, but that's the way it is.

Good analogy.

Bump

I see some new disc fade threads starting again, (they seem to every couple of months) so I thought I would bring this thread back up to the front page again. It has a lot of good information in it.

I'm still relatively new to the DVD Recording scene, I've had mine Sony GX300 for just over a year now, but I can finally contribute something on the subject of disc fade.

I have a friend who purchased a cake box of 100 Memorex 4x -Rs back around the second half of 2003, or possibly early 2004. He authored some video on his computer in March of 2004 and burned it to the Memorex -R 4x media with a Sony PC burner. He distributed about 20 of these to various people at that time and initially all played fine in his and their various players. Then, about a year and a half later, he started getting reports that the discs would no longer play back. He then had everyone check their discs and all of them, including his copy, no longer played.

I had him send me one of the unburned blanks and I did a test burn of some video on my PC with my Plextor 716 (A REQUIRED TOOL for testing the initial burn quality of any DVD recording - IMO). I then ran the Plextor PI/PO (Parity Inner Error/Parity Outer Fail) test on the disc. The test results were actually OK. The error rates were well below what DVD players are able to correct for, but not the best I've seen. The last half of the disc shows growing errors. I would call it "B" grade media. BUT clearly the TEST OF TIME is something no testing software can accomplish, and rotting to the point of failure after only a little more than one year is a total joke. Videotape never had this kind of problem.

This crap Memorex media was a 4x -R disc.
The disc ID is: CMC MAG.AF1

If you have burned to any of this terd media, better make copies of it now unless it's already too late.



nx211

I had forgotten about this thread, thanks for digging it back up. I agree with you that this is a total joke. Anyone who trusts valuable data to DVD media (except RAM) is going to get burned.

Hopefully this will become widespread enough to make it into the major test sites.

Anybody has good experience with the CostCo TDKs?

I just want to note that plextor is top notch and top of the line in my opinon for CD/DVD reading and recording. I *STILL* have my way outdated plextor 12x SCSI drive in my box and it runs flawlessly. I use the thing at least once every day to every other day.

I'm also pleased with my Plextor drive, but that in itself isn't enough to prevent disc fade. The problem has to do with the media itself. I've burned discs in the past that passed Plextor's software tests with flying colors, and then eventually failed.

So far my best results seem to be with Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden DVD-R discs.

I also have a fondness for Panasonic RAM discs: I have a great many that are now over five years old, and they are all playing well.

Bottom line, shopping by price, instead of brand, may really come back to haunt you when searching for DVDR media.

And also try to remember: just because a disc is being sold with a Memorex label, doesn't always mean it was manufactured by Memorex. It also can't hurt to try and stick with discs manufacured in Japan.

And of course -- HOLD ON TO THOSE ORIGINAL TAPES OF PRECIOUS MEMORIES! That yuppie couple you saw throwing the wedding VHS out the window ( Philips' DVD player commercial) is now divorced!

Several people have mentioned that DVD-RAM seems to be a better archive format. Any reason for this?

I believe the reliability of Ram DVDs has to do with the entire make up of the disc. I also have certain RAM discs that I've delegated for use with the PC, and they seem indestructible; dragging and dropping countless files, erasing, etc. They just keep on going like the Energizer bunny. I surely can't claim that with RWs.

More info about poor quality DVD media and disk fade http://www.best-dvd-burning-software-reviews.com/best-blank-dvd-media.asp

After reading through this thread I have a couple of questions.................

It seems most of the issues are with DVD- discs as opposed to the DVD+. Could this be a factor?? My recorders 3 -/+ capeable seem to work better with the + discs. The recognize and finalize faster, and no coasters so far.

Another common denominator seems to be the inkjet printable. These are the -Rs that I have had problems with. As good as the printable surface is attached I wonder if some they are some kind of heat shrink, and if so, could the heat used in application cause a problem with the dye??

.....Another common denominator seems to be the inkjet printable. These are the -Rs that I have had problems with.....

Yeah, me too. I've had problems with TDK 8x printable DVD-R's. They seemed to work okay in my Panasonic E95 (although I haven't used them in my Panny for a few months now), but they absolutely do NOT work in my Toshiba RD-XS34. I get a "disc access error" (whatever that means) every time I try to burn more than about halfway to the edge. Can't even finalize them.

I was gonna return 'em but I lost the damn receipt. :mad:

* The problem appears to be only the printable white tops. I burned through a stack of BeAll silver tops about the same time, and those are all still good.

Did you write on the disc top? I seem to remember reading somewhere that some inks can damage the media over time. Since then I've just been writing around the hub (its damn hard to write that small) just in case.

Fred

Nope. The disc tops were unwritten on at the time I was trying to dub to them or finalize. (I know your question was directed to "Spoffo", but I thought I'd reply since I'd had problems with these printable discs also.)

But I doubt that that would be a cause of problems, anyway.

Yikes!

I just re-checked the disk I reported on here in March (a BeAll white top that had played perfectly when I first burned it, but by March had developed a lot of errors, expressed as freezes, macroblocking and all the usual.)

I can't say for SURE whether or not it has continued to deteriorate, since I didn't quantify the playback problems in March, but it feels like it's worse. It still loads (on my stand-alones, not on my computers) but the dropouts and such are now virtually continuous - worse than any readable disk I've ever seen.

I'll check again in another 3-4 months. If there's any continued deterioration from its present condition, I can't imagine that it will still play at all.

PS: I've been buring a lot of the TDK 8x printables in the past few months, and haven't seen any problems or heard any from people I gave disks to.

I've bumped this thread because many new members are discovering the tenuous nature of archiving to DVDR. This thread holds a lot of useful information, especially regarding software for reading burn quality. This thread may be a little long, but it's worth the read.

I have been through the media roller coaster a few times and I have locked in on Verbatim / MCC manufactured. I have also had good luck with Maxell and TDK and I bought 100 Ritek 4x about 2 years ago that were excellent as well but I believe they have lost the recipe a couple of times.

I also agree with the Plextor as the best PC drive I have owned. I bought the original Sony DRU500A that was (is) great but when I purchased the Sony 710A (Liteon based) it was worthless until the latest FW and I will still not use it for anything really important.

BTW if you really like Verbatim like I do and have a Sam's Club card they have some pretty good prices once in a while. Costco carrys TDK but the prices are so so.

Hi, VideoRoy,

Yes, I have been obtaining great results with Verbatim MCC02RG20 discs. They also receive a slightly higher grade than the Taiyo Yuden (TY GO2) discs when running the Plextor Diagnostic tests. But so far, both brands are doing a really stand up job.

I also had good luck with the Ritek inkjet printables, but my Denon 3910 chokes on them during playback.

Thanks for the Heads Up regarding Sams Club and Verbatim.

CAUTION - CHEAP DISKS can be better than EXPENSIVE DISKS!

I own Taiyo Yudens (which are supposed to be amonst the best) however they don't burn properly in my Pioneer 633 (coasters galore! read my thread "non-compatible DVD-R's" for further info)... a Pioneer tech support manager advised me to purchase 'cheap' DVD-R media which is apparently more compatible with their units!! Go figure.

... a Pioneer tech support manager advised me to purchase 'cheap' DVD-R media which is apparently more compatible with their units!! Go figure.I would be very skeptical of taking that statement at face value. There are lots of Pioneer owners (myself among them) that have had no problem burning TY discs on the Pioneers, and there is a huge body of discussion in many Internet forums about the problems with cheap discs. If you buy cheap you may have problems not only on your initial burns, but your data may also slowly become unreadable in as little as a year.

Lots said about brands of discs; does there seem to be a pattern based on speed of recording? High speed vs real time? I have started identifying each disk as to what recorder it was recorded on and what speed.

I burn DVDs on my PC and my Pioneer 531H DVD recorder. The Pioneer is my fifth DVD recorder and current workhorse.

I've tried a variety of DVD media in the past. Verbatium 16x inkjet printables (100pk) from Sams Club are my current media of choice. I burn 16x rated DVD+Rs at 8X on the PC with Nec 3520 with modded firmware (bitset DVD+R to DVD-ROM). I burn 16x DVD-Rs on the Pioneer 531H with High speed dub (8X) . Up to about 450 DVD-Rs' on the Pioneer to date.

I frequently sample DVD burn disk quality with Neros CD-speed utility and am satisfied with the result.

Note: my Pioneer 531H does not like to do real time burns (1X) on 16X media. My only Verbatium 16x coasters have come from trying this. This is not a problem for me as I almost always (99% of the time) use the Pioneers high speed dub from HDD (6-8 minutes).

My oldest "burned" DVDs are about 4 years old and I have not noticed any disk "fade". Some of my early DVDs were burned poorly on unreliable media and show a lot of errors, BUT I'm convinced that the errors were there from day 1. I just didn't have the tools to properly check them then.

ymmv :)

Lots said about brands of discs; does there seem to be a pattern based on speed of recording? High speed vs real time? I have started identifying each disk as to what recorder it was recorded on and what speed.There are lots of anecdotal posts here that go back about 1-1.5 yrs ago when this was a previous hot topic. Although individually anecdotal, you put enough of them together and the concensus was burning slower was better -- but for different reasons at the time -- 8X media was just making it's appearance and didn't seem as good as the 4x media and the "new" 8X burners had not yet earned our confidence.

I can briefly relate my experience. When I started burning DVDs on my PC burners and experimented with different media, I had a finicky Panasonic RV22 player. This player would not reliably play anything I burned over 1X speed and that surprisingly included Maxell 4X DVD-R (jpn). The pattern was reliably reproducible, a disk burned at 2X had macroblocking (aka. pixelation) through the disk and anything burned at 4X was so bad it was unwatchable.

Granted, I eventually got sick of this and bought a newer Sony multiformat player that played perfectly all the disks the Panasonic had trouble with. But, the empirical evidence clearly indicated a slower burn produced a disk that was perfectly playable on a picky player which led one to conclude that a slower burn produced a more "accurately defined" pattern on the disk. (Note: A post from a relative new-comer caught my eye several months ago. He reported that he had the same model picky Panasonic player and used it as a tester to judge or compare different media brands.)

Now here is another factoid to keep in mind. I've since tested those 1X, 2X, 4X burns on Maxell 4X -R using the Nero CD-DVD Speed tool and see no appreciable difference in the PIE/PIF error rates. As you scratch your head remember that PC burners are the highest quality and most accurate devices and as such can read, without error, disks that ordinary players may consider marginal at best. So using a PC burner and testing software to judge a "good burn" can sometimes be misleading. A secondary test is highly desirable.

A final anecdote. My daughter, being a teenager, likes to play DVDs on her PC as background noise while she is doing homework (what ever happened to music, no wonder CD sales are down). The player in her Dell is the most picky player in the house -- it wouldn't play any DVD-R I burned at any speed using any of my 3 burners. This is true for all brands of media I have tried (including Maxell & Verbatim) -- except one. Her Dell plays Taiyo-Yuden disks burned at 4X perfectly -- just another anecdotal reason why I switched exclusively to T-Y 4X last year.

Quote from: drbrousters

Ritek Media
This is not meant as a bash, but as a warning. I had seen reports that Ritek Media was destined to fail in a few months, but hadn't experienced it. I continued to record to Ritek, converting 20 years worth of football games I'd saved on VHS. As I'd completed the recording, I'd give the tapes away.

Tonight, I decided to review a few of the early recordings in preparation for a trade. The recordings are a year or slightly less than a year old. They are failing. I have Maxell media that is intact, but the Ritek are in various stages of failure, particularly at the end of the recording.

I have lost a lifelong collection of recordings that are irreplaceable. I have myself to blame for not heeding the warnings posted here.

I would strongly recommend that anyone who has recorded to Ritek printable media convert to another brand before these fail. The ones I bought are listed as

100 Pack Ritek Ridata G04
Grade A 4X DVD-R 4.7GB
White Inkjet Printable
(Ridata Hub Branded)

These were purchased from Meritline.com in late January 2005.

I do not mean to impugn the reputation of either Meritline.com or Ritek. It may be that this was simply a bad batch or formula and the problems have been resolved.

I wouldn't take that chance, if I were you and your recordings are important. I intend to convert as many as possible over the next few weeks.



Drbousters started a new thread about Ritek media failure but I thought that his post would also make a good addition to this sad but true thread.



nx211


note to moderators:
If any other subject would ever merit another sticky in the DVD recorder section, certainly this subject of disc fade would qualify, wouldn't you agree?

note to moderators:
If any other subject would ever merit another sticky in the DVD recorder section, certainly this subject of disc fade would qualify, wouldn't you agree?

I'd second this motion. Perhaps a new thread with a slighly less panic inducing title where the various tests of media can be discussed. My first pack of discs was a 25 spool of Sony 8x -Rs (mainly because it was what I could get my hands on where I was). I've not seen much on data fade with them, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Here's a link to drbrouster's thread (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=651393) where I've posted about my experiences testing how Ritek vs. TY media degrade over time.

This thread that was started a year ago has been a wealth of info but also often very upsetting and depressing...In the last 6 months I have recorded a few hundred -R discs on my Panasonic ES-10. Dubs from my vhs tapes and stuff directly off TV.. tho I have never bought the hype that vhs tapes don't last and that DVDs last forever and have therefore been a little on the paranoid side of the media I use I have also been lulled into a false sense of security since of the 250 or so dvds that I have recorded I have had no coasters... But I am also afraid to go back now, (6 months later) and put them in my cheap Philips 642 dvd player to see if they play through without any problems. And I now realize that even if they played fine on my cheap player that doesn't mean that they would not have a lot of errors or that I would be able to be rip them to a hard drive when I get my new computer with a DVD writer.

OK it seems like even tho there are compatibility issues with media and recorders, burners and players and to be on the safe side it would be best to write them at half or less the maximum speed of the disc, but that the most important factor in disc fade or complete loss of data is the quality of the disc itself.
It seems to me that since dvds are currently so cheap that paying 10 cents or so more for so a quality disc as opposed to a name brand (but still iffy) one that is on sale should not be an issue.. I remember paying $15. each for Fuji HG T-120's back in 1980 and getting a box of 10 of them for $100. .(when they were on sale)..

The other important things I have learned from all these posts is to immediately back up your disc to your computers hard drive and to keep your original tape.

Anyway, since Taiyo Yuden and Verbatims that are MIJ seem to be thee best and are likely the ones that will last the longest and with the least amount of disc fade I think it would be very useful if videonut and anyone else who buys them on a regular basis let us know where they buy them... I think supermedia out her in Ca. has them for the lowest prices and also they make a point of posting on their site that the ones they sell are 100% authentic and MIJ...... Has that been the experience of others in this group? My paranoia might be showing again but I am not 100% sure of their authenticity.. and I would like to be ..
I'm not sure because:

1. At least one person who gave them feedback said that the media code of the batch he got from them was not a TY code.
2. TY's media code has been faked by other companies, even Supermedia says that you having TY's media code on the disc in itself is no guarantee of authenticity
3. I read a post by someone who bought one of supermediastores house brand Linkyo and it had TY's media code on it so it is possible for them to put their house brand in the same cake box that TY uses and pass it off as authentic since there brand and TY's they sell are unbranded..

So in addition to the media code I am interested in the tests for errors that any of you might have run on batches of TY by Supermediastore or any other mail order retailer of TY..

I am afraid I can't do that test since I only have a standalone recorder.

thanks
Brian

FYI, the 8X T-Y DVD-R silvertop media that I'm using (the same discs mentioned in my post in drbrouster's thread (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=651393)) was purchased from NCIX computers. This is a Canadian Internet outlet, but since they're right here in Vancouver I actually went there and purchased them directly. The price I paid was about Cdn$25.00 per 50-disc spindle before taxes. I'm fairly certain these are genuine T-Y discs because they have the "GG" code printed on the hub, and from posts in the Club CDFreaks forums it looks like this is an indication of authenticity for TYG02 discs.

What about those GOLD MAM-Mitsui discs? Has anyone tried those?

Sean Nelson wrote:
I'm fairly certain these are genuine T-Y discs because they have the "GG" code printed on the hub, and from posts in the Club CDFreaks forums it looks like this is an indication of authenticity for TYG02 discs.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Actually from what I have read it's "GD" not GG that are suppose to be the indication of authenticity. I haven't read anything about the GG code..The 2 50 count spindles I bought from supermediastore about 5 months ago also have a GG code printed on the hub.

Actually from what I have read it's "GD" not GG that are suppose to be the indication of authenticity. I haven't read anything about the GG code..The 2 50 count spindles I bought from supermediastore about 5 months ago also have a GG code printed on the hub.I'm not an expert on the various types of media, but this Club CDFreaks thread (http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=166929) (among others) claims the "GG" serial number is a sign of authenticity for TYG02 (8X) media. The "GD" code may be authentic for other flavours (ie, TYG03?) of TY discs.

I'm not an expert on the various types of media, but this Club CDFreaks thread (http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=166929) (among others) claims the "GG" serial number is a sign of authenticity for TYG02 (8X) media. The "GD" code may be authentic for other flavours (ie, TYG03?) of TY discs.

Yes, you are right the GG is the code for the authentic 8x and the GD is authentic for another write x.. the 4x.... the 16x is either GH or TG.

My suspicions about supermediastore seem to be unfounded..
From all reports they seem to be a very good source for authenitc TY media.
But as it has been pointed out in other threads the "value" line does often include a mixture of 4x, 8x and 16x and not quite as high a standard or quality as TY's other lines

wcpaeb

So where can you buy the high quality (not the Value) TY DVD-Rs?

John

So where can you buy the high quality (not the Value) TY DVD-Rs?

JohnFrom supermediastore.com.

T-Y stopped making 4X DVD-R some time ago. What is being sold as the 4X value line is anyone's guess as to "second quality" or overstock or whatever. It is still very good tier 1 media. When I stocked up on T-Y 4X, they were still making 4X and I paid $0.33/disk in bulk. All my disks are TYG01 with the GD code on the hub.

T-Y's mainstream disk is now 8X (TYG02, GG on the hub). You can buy those in bulk from supermediastore.com for $0.34/disk

Time for another reality check. :eek:


nx211

OK, did you have something particular in mind?

someone should watch the oldest TY disc they have and see if they notice any stuttering,etc.

Based on many sources (including this thread) I've taken a very paranoid approach to my discs and been testing the PIE counts on every one of them every 3 months. I've burned over 300 discs on my Pioneer, and so far I have about 50 of them that have reached the one year mark. What I've found so far is that disc "fade" is nonexistent, or if it does exist, it's much smaller than the normal variability of readings (by this I mean if you test the same disc 3 times in a row you get three different numbers, and any trend over the past year has been smaller than that type of variation).

My burns have been on TY (TYG02) and Maxell (RITEKG05 and MXL RG03) discs. My initial concern was for the Made In Taiwan RITEKG05 discs because of a lot of negative comments I've seen about them. A lot of people were calling these disks "cr*p" and saying that data loss in a few months was commonplace, but I've seen nothing like that at all. In fact some (but not all) batches of these disks have produced better initial burns than the TY discs. As a result of this testing I'm much less worried about disk fade. I'm going to continue testing every disk periodically, but not as often after they reach the one year mark.

I believe that many of the "disc fade" horror stories may be due to disks that did not burn well initially. I really feel that people who are concerned about data longevity should test the quality of all the disks they burn, at least initially, so that they can re-burn them right away (before deleting the source material) if the results are questionable. It's important to remember that even good media can produce bad results in some burners - each disk/burner combination is different.

Based on many sources (including this thread) I've taken a very paranoid approach to my discs and been testing the PIE counts on every one of them every 3 months...

Interesting findings, would have been nice if you had been testing some RW media during this time also. Will be interesting to see if there is any changes after 2 years. :)

What I've found so far is that disc "fade" is nonexistent, or if it does exist, it's much smaller than the normal variability of readings...
I believe that many of the "disc fade" horror stories may be due to disks that did not burn well initially.

Finally, the voice of reason (and solid test results) speaks in this sea of myth, rumor and nonsense that keeps coming up over and over - with so many people buying into it without a clue as to the reality.

I've already had my say in past posts about the "disc fade" hysteria and I continue to stand by my comments. I just put Disc number 10,000 into my library since late 2001, and ongoing checking of the entire range of discs supports Sean's findings. I've been even trying to kill some fake Maxell media burned in 2002 that is still playing perfectly with respectable scans after deliberately being subjected to extreme periods of cold, heat, dirt/dust and even humidity.

Using a quality burner, proven burning software, and steering clear of "hacked" firmware will produce burns with intergrity that should last well into the future.

Finally, the voice of reason (and solid test results) speaks in this sea of myth, rumor and nonsense that keeps coming up over and over - with so many people buying into it without a clue as to the reality.

I've already had my say in past posts about the "disc fade" hysteria and I continue to stand by my comments. I just put Disc number 10,000 into my library since late 2001, and ongoing checking of the entire range of discs supports Sean's findings. I've been even trying to kill some fake Maxell media burned in 2002 that is still playing perfectly with respectable scans after deliberately being subjected to extreme periods of cold, heat, dirt/dust and even humidity.

Using a quality burner, proven burning software, and steering clear of "hacked" firmware will produce burns with intergrity that should last well into the future.

I congratulate you on your good luck, JeffWld, but unfortunately this is not the case with some people.

I don't have any personal experience with disc fade with burn once media, thanks solely to this forum and the more trusted members preference/recommendations for TY media, but this has not been the case for some people that I know who have DVD burners.

One of the brands to fade to unplayability was MEMOREX media which was purchased from a major retailer a few years ago. I believe it was around the 2002/2003 time frame. He purchased a cake box of 100, which cost him around $165.00 at the time - (the year might be off and I will post again after I verify the exact time). He burned a video from a church function and distributed this video to many different people who owned various makes of DVD players - none of which initially reported problems with the disc. Then, about a year later, he started getting calls that those discs were no longer playable. He checked his own copy, and sure enough, his disc failed to play as well. That was a Memorex brand, white printable top and as soon as I can, I will post the media code for the disc and verify the time of purchase.

Another failed disc that I know of was a RITEK branded disc - the G05 series, the one that Sean just discussed. But this problem was not one of fade, but of simply failing to give an initial good burn. It was burned on a Sony DVD recorder and then scanned with a Plextor 716 with PI/PO errors off the chart. Needles to say, the disc was unplayable even on the DVD burner that burned it. And it was burned at real-time, no high-speed dub from a HDD. I have yet to get one of those discs from him and as soon as I do, I'll post its media code and time of purchase.


nx211

Interesting findings, would have been nice if you had been testing some RW media during this time also.I have done a bit of testing with a couple of RW discs, and they've behaved pretty much the same. One of them I burned once and then run occasional tests on over several months, the other I re-initialized and re-burned about 35 times so far with a test after each burn. Both of them are not showing any significant changes in error rates. They're both Maxell 2X DVD-RW discs, but I don't have the media ID handy at the moment. Because of the small sample size it's not as conclusive in my eyes as the tests I've been doing on the DVD-R's I've burned.

One of the brands to fade to unplayability was MEMOREX media which was purchased from a major retailer a few years ago.I've warned folks against Memorex media in several posts over the last few years - not because it faded on me but because it couldn't produce readable discs right out of the gate, both on my own home computer burner as well as with other batches on machines I used at work.

This is why I believe in the importance of testing discs at least once after you burn them. The difference between a playable disc and a coaster can be just a few extra unreadable bits in a critical area of the media where the file structure is stored. What I've seen is that the error rates can vary by as much as 10-20% just by re-testing the same disc over and over again. So a disk that's marginal may play fine today and be unreadable tomorrow just because of this variability, "fade" issues aside. I'm not trying to argue here that fade doesn't exist for some media, but rather pointing out that you're still at risk even before worrying about whether your disks will fade.

The Error Correcting Codes used on DVDs are a two-edged sword - they correct errors and make it possible to play discs that would otherwise be unreadable, but in doing so they also "hide" errors from you so that you can't tell they're there. The only way to "lift the veil" and see what's really going on is to use testing software with a PC burner that can report the errors it finds before they get corrected by ECC processing.

Another failed disc that I know of was a RITEK branded disc - the G05 series, the one that Sean just discussed. But this problem was not one of fade, but of simply failing to give an initial good burn.I've only had one RITEKG05 coaster, and that was because of some obvious gunk on the disc. But I have had some RITEKG05 disks give more errors after the initial burn than I'm comfortable with - when that happens I just discard the questionable disk and reburn it to a new one. That happens with perhaps 5% of the RITEKs I've used. I should emphasize that these disks were perfectly playable - I've just elected to reject discs when the error rates are above a certain level on the theory that if disc "fade" does occur, it will take longer for a disk with few errors to become unreadable.

I've also found that the Riteks are less consistent in the error rates I see after the initial burn than the TY discs - some are better and some are worse, while the TY discs have always been around the same. Nonetheless, for a given disk (TY or RITEK), the errors that resulted after the initial burn have stayed pretty consistent on each of the subsequent tests.

One problem I've had with all my TY discs is that for some reason they produce a very consistent error "spike" that's typically in the 100-150 PIE per 8 ECC blocks range for the very first two samples of the test when I burn them on my burner in my Pioneer 633 DVD recorder. For this reason I've pretty much switched to using the Maxell (RITEKG05 and MXL RG03) discs which, while less consistent in terms of their overal error rate, don't suffer from this problem. I've relegated the TY discs to my PC burner (Plextor 716A), which doesn't seem to cause that problem.

Never had a fade after at least 3000 discs burned since 2003. Not saying it cannot happen but I think a lot of these people bought extremely cheap off brands early on. And had horrible off brand DVDRs. This thread is in the twilight zone as to it's usefullness. Now I have had discs that will not record properly- that is different and due to the media.

Folks that are scared by "disc fade" myths need to read some of the private studies from OSTA, DOD, LOC, and several others. Also pay attention to the manufacturer white papers. The facts do not back up "disc fade" or any other supposed longevity issues in an overwhelming majority of test cases (probably something to the tune of 99% or more).

I've been burning DVDs since 2001, when the DVD-R(General) tech was made available to consumers for under $1,000 USD, and have consistently used good media from day one (PVC, MCC, MXL, TDK, TY, etc). The only times I run across a bad disc is when it was something I did not test AND used medium- to low-grade media, meaning it was probably bad the minute it popped out of the burner.

This is for dye-based media too (DVD-R and DVD+R), not phase-change media. Different subjects. Same for pressed media ("laser rot"), different subject.

More information on blank media, including longevity information, can be found here:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/index.htm
http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/advancedconcepts.htm
http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/burnquality.htm
http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/longevity.htm

No need to worry about DVD-eating boogeymen!

Sean_Nelson, I suggest YUDEN DVD+R and MCC DVD-R. Try those sometime.

Sean_Nelson, I suggest YUDEN DVD+R and MCC DVD-R. Try those sometime.Thanks for the recommendations. My Pioneer 633 will not burn +R media, so that's a non-starter. I did try some MCC Verbatims, but the only ones I could find were 16X with media ID MCC01RW11n9 - these did not give very good results in my Pioneer burner. The discs were all playable, but with error rates that were quite a bit higher than I'm comfortable with. I may well run into the same problem even with Maxell-branded discs the next time buy more since I see that it's becomming hard to find the 8X media now.

I really feel that people who are concerned about data longevity should test the quality of all the disks they burn, at least initially,
Is there any way to test DVDs other than via a computer? Mine is a 1998 Dell Pentium III which no longer reads DVDs after upgrade to Windows 2000. :(
Bob R.

I did try some MCC Verbatims, but the only ones I could find were 16X with media ID MCC01RW11n9 - these did not give very good results in my Pioneer burner. The discs were all playable, but with error rates that were quite a bit higher than I'm comfortable with. .

That's a DVD-RW code. DVD-R codes should be as follows:
MCC03RG20 1x-16x
MCC02RG20 8x
MCC01RG20 4x
MCC00RG20 2x

The MCC03RG20 have excellent reflectivity, meaning they will play pretty much anywhere.

As far as error rates go, when a consumer performs those tests at home, they're honestly more for entertainment value than anything else. There are too many variables to ever get consistent results (something I know you've already alluded to in other posts). It's definitely something worth doing, but I'd suggest not getting too wrapped up in that, as there are quite a few other factors that determine quality and longevity estimates. It's actually not uncommon for a good disc to give a bad result on those scanning tests. I'd hate for you to skip good media because of these sorts of PI/PO/PIE/PIF/jitter tests. Just keep things in perspective.

The beauty about MCC03RG20 is that it's one of the few 8x-16x generation media that is not rejected by older or more stubborn DVD recorders.

Maxell (made in Japan) is another good choice, so I'd stick with that. Not so much the Ritek media. So it sounds like you have some good discs, and hopefully it stays that way for you.

I wish you well. :)

Is there any way to test DVDs other than via a computer? Mine is a 1998 Dell Pentium III which no longer reads DVDs after upgrade to Windows 2000. :( Not that I'm aware of...

That's a DVD-RW code. DVD-R codes should be as follows:
MCC03RG20 1x-16x
MCC02RG20 8x
MCC01RG20 4x
MCC00RG20 2xWoops - you're right (of course), I copied the wrong cell out of my spreadsheet. The discs in question were a set of 10 "MCC 03RG20" discs that I had tried. I'm not saying that they're bad media, just that they didn't work that well for me in my Pioneer. Since burn quality is heavily dependent on the burner and it's firmware, that doesn't rule out that these disks could work very will on other (perhaps even most) machines.

The only brand I've actually railed against is Memorex, and that's because I had very bad experiences with several spindles bought at different times by myself and co-workers and burned in different burners both at home and at work. The majority of discs were actually unusable, as opposed to merely having high PIE rates. The breadth of problems I personally witnessed with the different batches in different burners convinced me that they were to be avoided at all costs. That was a few years ago now and may no longer be valid, but once burned twice shy.

As far as error rates go, when a consumer performs those tests at home, they're honestly more for entertainment value than anything else. There are too many variables to ever get consistent results (something I know you've already alluded to in other posts).Actually I think there's a lot of value in testing the discs. It's true that there's substantial variability from one test to another, but a test makes it very clear whether a disk is in the 10-20 PIE errors (per 8 ECC blocks) range or whether it's up in the 100's or PIE errors range. My experience is that a disk which averages, say, 10 PIE may vary on retesting by as much as about +/- 20% (ie, from about 8 to 12 PIE), so when I see a disk running at 100 PIE it's pretty obvious to me that the burn is clearly inferior.

The biggest variable in this isn't the test results, IMO, it's the fact that every disk and drive combination is unique. So just because a disk tests well in the Plextor drive in my PC doesn't mean that another drive will be able to read it as easily. (And it certainly doesn't mean that my results can be reproduced by anyone using a different burner and a different test drive altogether!). But I think it's fair to assume that a disk that tests with an average of 10 PIE errors on my Plextor is likely to give me less trouble and perhaps even last longer than one with an average of > 100 PIE errors.

Given this basic assumption, the testing allows me to weed out the poorest burns. It's the only tool I have, since even the "bad" burns almost always play perfectly well. It gives me a lot of confidence that my burns are sound, and if I ever do have problems with them then at least I won't be kicking myself for not having been more careful.

I have noticed that some of my older pressed not burned cd's and DVD's flake-off. My "Welcome to the Jungle" CD is no longer usable, and about half the disc is clear now.

I have seen DVD-D's, but there loss is intentional.

DVD+R: no problems
DVD+RW: get the flaky like with CD's
DVD+R DL: never used
DVD-R(For General Not Authoring): no problems
DVD-RW: no problems
DVD-R DL: never used
DVD-RAM: version 1.0, I do have some that won't play now, version 2.0 no problems.

meaning it was probably bad the minute it popped out of the burner.


Smurfy,

I'm a little confused by what seems to be some conflicting information here.

It makes sense that, testing a disc will reveal how good the burn is and simply playing a disc may not reveal the degree of significant errors that reside on a disc. I agree that a disc should be tested (play tested or error checked using a scan program) to ensure a good burn.

However, if disc "fade" or "degradation" is a myth as you say, then what does it matter how "good" a burn is as long as it is playable even if it has 100 PIE errors or whatever. As long as you've met a minimum playable threshold (i.e., play tested the disc right after a burn), then shouldn't the disc play for its entire useful life without degrading?

I've play tested discs all the way through, that played without obvious errors (macro blocking etc.) Some of these discs refused to play a few years later. If it wasn't "disc fade" why did they play at first and then refused to play later?

I don't think there's any question that PI/PO errors will only increase over time on a given disc. So technically that is disc fade. I think people here are instead saying that if a disc is burned sufficiently well (fewer than some threshold of PI/PO errors), and the media "brand" is also not garbage, the fact that some amount of fade will occur will still keep the disc well in the playable region. A bad initial burn (starting close to the edge of playability), and/or garbage brand discs (rapidly approaching the edge of playability), can result in the symptoms you describe, such that in a much shorter period of time, that edge will be crossed into unplayability.

I think you would do well to read everything on www.nomorecoasters.com as all of those are explained. I'm a bit pressed for time, so this is brief, I know:

Initial disc quality is important. I did not test my early Ritek, Optodisc and some other lower-grade media years ago, right out of the burner. Of course, that was largely because methods to test were not yet in the hands of consumers and hobbyists.

The quality and lifespan of the player/burner/recorder is important too, when it comes to a read error on a DVD.

What you say is also true, to a degree. The error count has a relationship to the disc read speed. So a realtime playback of a disc (slower than 1x burns, in most cases), will be perfectly fine, it's moving along like a snail. Then again, quite a few errors are so serious, even reducing playback/read speed will not help.

The first thing you have to realize is that there are dozens and dozens of variables when it comes to disc performance (read, write, storage).

When you consider all factors, "disc fade" is a bunch of baloney. It's an amateurish over-simplified analysis of a very complex situation. I'm not trying to insult anybody here (those that claim disc fade is real), but that's what it is.

DVD media is far more complex than it may appear. :mad:

deleted. Unnecessary.

However, if disc "fade" or "degradation" is a myth as you say, then what does it matter how "good" a burn is as long as it is playable even if it has 100 PIE errors or whatever.All discs do degrade over time, I think what LS is trying to say is that they don't do it in a matter of months. DVD-R discs use an organic dye which will inherently break down slowly over time. Whether that time is 20 years or 100 years is a matter of debate, but I think everyone agrees that over those kinds of time frames the media will definitely degrade. Good storage slows it down, but doesn't stop it.

So my supposition is that if you start with low error rates, the inevitable degradation will take longer to raise those errors to the threshold of unreadability. The higher the initial error rates, the less time until the degradation gets you. If the dyes really do break down for even good burns in as short as 20 years (probably not if they're stored well), then an initial burn with lots of errors that can just barely be fixed up by the ECC codes might require only a year's worth of degradation before parts of it become unreadable.

This is all speculation because it depends a fair bit on exactly how the organic dyes degrade. Do they merely darken so that they're less reflective? That might have less of an impact than if the "burned" areas spread out and make the simulated "pits" larger. So don't take any of this as gospel - but I think it does make at least common sense.

I think what LS is trying to say is that they don't do it in a matter of months.

Correct.

Nor even in a few years in most all cases (very, very, very few do, but not at all common, and most people who think they are in this minority are still wrong). Discs are made to last decades, sometimes up to a century. But 2-3-4-5 decades is a safe bet.

It's fairly sound technology.

I think what LS is trying to say is that they don't do it in a matter of months.


Correct.

Nor even in a few years in most all cases (very, very, very few do, but not at all common, and most people who think they are in this minority are still wrong). Discs are made to last decades, sometimes up to a century. But 2-3-4-5 decades is a safe bet.

It's fairly sound technology.

Smurf you say correct to the above, yet you still say fade is baloney. Which is it?

Do you just have a problem with the word "fade"?

Don't play semantics.

"Disc fade" is a silly term, it's made up. Most often, it is used to describe a "sudden" problem with "disappearing data", which is bullplop. All of the reports of "discs dying in a few months" (referring to dye-based media), are almost always ill-conceived.

Degradation happens, but not for many years.

We started off with a very defined issue at the start of this thread, so do not try to lump dye-based, phase change, short-term and long-term into one category. It's not that simple.

I don't know if you're honestly confused, or simply trying to be a jerk. If it's the former, then I'll be glad to continue answering your questions until it makes more sense to you.

That's why I participate on forums, to help others.

Wow. So there. It looks like the little man behind the curtain has spoken. Pyrotechnics included. Where's that little dog when you need it. Totto where are you?

smurf,

I'm still confused can you help me or are you going to continue to insult me. You are the one playing semantics. It's not about disappearing data as you say is a myth, its about data degradation which is a real phenomena backed up by several posters here. What is the mechanism of increased errors if it isn't something about the data layer PHYSICAL characteristics changing? Please explain. And nix the insults smurfy.

Here's one persons opinion:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=7482168&&#post7482168

Here the term fade was used because the color of the disc actually faded.

Here's an interesting thread that involves a lot of the players in this thread. For a memory refresher.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=7322251&&#post7322251

To add to the confusion. I think people need to realize that high end dvd players tend to not play burned dvds very well. They play commercial dvds find, but the ones burned on computers and dvd recorders are spotty at best. When I want to play burned dvds I use a cyberhome dvd player. My high end players just freeze up near the end of almost all my burned dvds.

My guest is some peolpe started out with low end dvd players which would play anything thrown at them. Later on when major brand prices dropped they bought higher end players which are less tolerant of disc errors.

Here's an interesting thread that involves a lot of the players in this thread. For a memory refresher.Yeah - gaffo's "leave the DVD in the car under the sun and see how long it lasts" tests were interesting. I suppose there might be some merit in testing various media types this way to see how well they hold up. It wouldn't so much be a test of how long they held up but rather a comparison of the stability of the various brands. But I can't help feeling that the ultraviolet light affects the results and has nothing to do with what a disc would face in typical storage conditions.

smurf, I'm still confused can you help me or are you going to continue to insult me. You are the one playing semantics. It's not about disappearing data as you say is a myth, its about data degradation which is a real phenomena backed up by several posters here. What is the mechanism of increased errors if it isn't something about the data layer PHYSICAL characteristics changing? Please explain. And nix the insults smurfy.
I'm not trying to insult anybody, but I refuse to be dragged into online pissing contests, so I was just making sure that was not happening. It's a waste of my time for such shenanigans. Some posters here like to cause drama instead of stick to the topic or the goal of the site (helping others). No insult intended towards you, vferrari. Thanks for the confirmation that you genuinely seek clarification, and are not trying to bicker.

I'll be glad to attempt explanation again...

This post was about ultra short-term degradation (months, couple of years), using made-up baloney terms like "disc fade". Due to the nature of the technology, such things will rarely (if ever) happen.

Now, long-term degradation is another story entirely. Everything withers away in time (such as the human body and even concrete). The timeframe where DVDs will start to degrade to a point of issues is a few decades away, not a couple months or years.

There is a big difference.

But I can't help feeling that the ultraviolet light affects the results and has nothing to do with what a disc would face in typical storage conditions.

Precisely. ;)

What is the mechanism of increased errors if it isn't something about the data layer PHYSICAL characteristics changing? Please explain.

I almost missed this one. And it's a biggie. There is literally a laundry list of variables that can cause people to think their data has "degraded" or "disappeared". Again, these are covered in detail on www.nomorecoasters.com

Here are a few:
- Most often, people assume the initial burn was good, yet they did not test it to arrive at that conclusion.
- Another issue is the disc is only as good as the drive. If you use a poor drive, there will undoubtedly be problems reading the disc. And what you "think" is a good drive may be bad. This is a big problem too, shopper egos.
- Storage. Discs can be warped or receive microscratches that distort the disc from being read properly. This is not a disc error, it's a user error (using faulty storage techniques).

Blaming the disc is the last possible thing one should do.
Not the first, as mostly commonly happens.

I'm not trying to insult anybody, but I refuse to be dragged into online pissing contests, so I was just making sure that was not happening. It's a waste of my time for such shenanigans. Some posters here like to cause drama instead of stick to the topic or the goal of the site (helping others). No insult intended towards you, vferrari. Thanks for the confirmation that you genuinely seek clarification, and are not trying to bicker.

I'll be glad to attempt explanation again...

This post was about ultra short-term degradation (months, couple of years), using made-up baloney terms like "disc fade". Due to the nature of the technology, such things will rarely (if ever) happen.

Now, long-term degradation is another story entirely. Everything withers away in time (such as the human body and even concrete). The timeframe where DVDs will start to degrade to a point of issues is a few decades away, not a couple months or years.

There is a big difference.

So you are saying that people who had a disc that played fine after a burn and then refused to play several months later are lying because its physically impossible for a properly burned disc to degrade over the course of just a couple of months or years. These observations documented by several people here are BS. Is that the long and short of it. It's apparently just too complicated to explain to these small minded people that what they are seeing is just impossible. Correct?

I only hold one position as it relates to the ravages of the common occurance of disc fade. Because DVD-Ram is the superior rewritable disc media it fades less.

:cool:

So you are saying that people who had a disc that played fine after a burn and then refused to play several months later are lying because its physically impossible for a properly burned disc to degrade over the course of just a couple of months or years. These observations documented by several people here are BS. Is that the long and short of it. It's apparently just too complicated to explain to these small minded people that what they are seeing is just impossible. Correct?

I agree. There have been countless reports of disc's going bad. Even the so called A+++ ones. What is the cause? If it is simply written off as production issues then production issues must be included in the calculation.

This appears to me to be a silly game of semantics because someone takes issue with the term disk-fade. Call it what ever you want, the fact of the matter is that many of us have disks that will no longer play. I've been burning for over 2 years. My first purchase was a spindle of Memorex DVD-R from a local B&M store. 2.5 years later, every single Memorex disk from those early days will not play in any of my players. Of course, when they were first burned they played just fine for months. So if that is not disk-fade or data-fade or whatever you want to call a degrading disk, I don't know what is.

Disk degradation is real, there are a whole bunch of people here who have experienced it first hand. But if you take the time to actually read some of the past discussions you will find most people closely associate it with using sub-par media (i.e. the tier 3 & 4 garbage cited in the nomorecoasters website). That is the reason why when someone asks for a recommendation to good quality media that will last, people here immediately jump in with Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden. I have 1.5 year old T-Y burns (I use nothing else, now) that look every bit as good as the day I burned them. I have confidence in that media that with proper storage it will indeed last for perhaps decades.

So don't mislead people with a blanket pronouncement that disk-fade is baloney. Disk degradation is a very real feature of bottom of the barrel, bargain basement media.

This appears to me to be a silly game of semantics because someone takes issue with the term disk-fade. Call it what ever you want, the fact of the matter is that many of us have disks that will no longer play. I've been burning for over 2 years. My first purchase was a spindle of Memorex DVD-R from a local B&M store. 2.5 years later, every single Memorex disk from those early days will not play in any of my players. Of course, when they were first burned they played just fine for months. So if that is not disk-fade or data-fade or whatever you want to call a degrading disk, I don't know what is.

Disk degradation is real, there are a whole bunch of people here who have experienced it first hand. But if you take the time to actually read some of the past discussions you will find most people closely associate it with using sub-par media (i.e. the tier 3 & 4 garbage cited in the nomorecoasters website). That is the reason why when someone asks for a recommendation to good quality media that will last, people here immediately jump in with Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden. I have 1.5 year old T-Y burns (I use nothing else, now) that look every bit as good as the day I burned them. I have confidence in that media that with proper storage it will indeed last for perhaps decades.

So don't mislead people with a blanket pronouncement that disk-fade is baloney. Disk degradation is a very real feature of bottom of the barrel, bargain basement media.

Yes. What ever it is called it is an issue. I hope you will be good with the high quality media.

I have a crazy experience as it relates to quality and longevity. I bought a stack of Princos 1x years ago before I was told how bad they were. They were my first purchace. Because of the bad reviews I used them for kid's stuff. These have been beaten up big time and played constantly. They have been run through disc cleaners. At times I considered a blow torch to get them cleaned. They all still work. Not a single coaster. Not a single disc gone bad to this day.

kelson -

According to smurfmeister - what your are seeing just can't happen, so you must be hallucinating or you just don't understand the complexities of disc burning with the countless variables such as media variation, burn rate, speed rating, dye formulation, laser strength, etc.. all conspiring to make you think there is disc degradation when that just plain can't happen in the gospel according to LS. Perhaps you should seek professional help. I plan to as well.

kelson -

According to smurfmeister - what your are seeing just can't happen, so you must be hallucinating or you just don't understand the complexities of disc burning with the countless variables such as media variation, burn rate, speed rating, dye formulation, laser strength, etc.. all conspiring to make you think there is disc degradation when that just plain can't happen in the gospel according to LS. Perhaps you should seek professional help. I plan to as well.

It is good to see that you finally get it. Good luck with the therapy. :eek:

Yes. What ever it is called it is an issue. I hope you will be good with the high quality media.

I have a crazy experience as it relates to quality and longevity. I bought a stack of Princos 1x years ago before I was told how bad they were. They were my first purchace. Because of the bad reviews I used them for kid's stuff. These have been beaten up big time and played constantly. They have been run through disc cleaners. At times I considered a blow torch to get them cleaned. They all still work. Not a single coaster. Not a single disc gone bad to this day.

I'm actually quoting myself here but now I remember why the Princos were rated so low. It was because they produced a greater number of disc errors than other discs on the market at the time. Back then the Riteks were rated the highest because of the disc error thing. This was back when the burning was being done in PC's as opposed to STB's.

I wound up using them in a panny e30 because it liked the 1x media.

Well I had to check because the material from circa 2002 is not that popular here anymore. I tested a Ritek (red/purple dye) circa 2001-2002 burn and it played through fine. By played through I mean I advanced through the chapters and did some FF and played it to the end of the disc with no problems (last chapter). I also checked a Princo (light pink dye) circa 2002 and the results were the same. I too have experienced bad discs over the years. But these two were fine. I'm beginning to think it is a crap shoot. Logic may not prevail. Bad luck may be nothing more than buying a bad batch.

An org. for Librarians published some good data for their people on use and care of recordable media: "Care and Handling of CDs and DVDs: A Guide for Librarians and Archivists" (http://www.clir.org/PUBS/reports/pub121/sec4.html):

They recognize the term "disc fade" people use in this thread as "disc degradation" and they list SIX factors that affect life expectancy:

-type
-manufacturing quality
-condition of the disc before recording
-quality of the disc recording
-handling and maintenance
-environmental conditions

Then they say:

"As noted previously, the three basic types of CD and DVD discs—ROM, R, and RW and RAM—each use a different data layer material (molded aluminum, organic dye, or phase-changing film, respectively). Deterioration of this material is the primary cause for disc degradation and, ultimately, "end of life" for the disc, assuming proper physical handling."

The linked article has many sections that may be of interest to some.

kelson -

According to smurfmeister - what your are seeing just can't happen, so you must be hallucinating or you just don't understand the complexities of disc burning with the countless variables such as media variation, burn rate, speed rating, dye formulation, laser strength, etc.. all conspiring to make you think there is disc degradation when that just plain can't happen in the gospel according to LS. Perhaps you should seek professional help. I plan to as well.Thank you Vic, for setting me straight. When I made those observations they were good synapse burns. I remembered them clearly. But, alas, that was then and this was now -- synapses don't last forever, they too fade. So obviously I am hallucinating, the disks really do play. It must be my players that are conspiring against me. But wait, this isn't right either. A properly burned synapse shouldn't fade for decades either -- right??? So, I should be remembering clearly that the disks didn't degrade? But why did I throw them out? Could I have put micro-scratches on my brain the last time I cleaned it?

I'm so confused.
I must need help.
I feel like I've been smurfed.
Make some room on the couch for me, Vic.
Where's HoustonGuy when you need him.

An org. for Librarians published some good data for their people on use and care of recordable media: "Care and Handling of CDs and DVDs: A Guide for Librarians and Archivists" (http://www.clir.org/PUBS/reports/pub121/sec4.html):I always appreciate the quality of the references you cite.

An org. for Librarians published some good data for their people on use and care of recordable media: "Care and Handling of CDs and DVDs: A Guide for Librarians and Archivists" (http://www.clir.org/PUBS/reports/pub121/sec4.html):

They recognize the term "disc fade" people use in this thread as "disc degradation" and they list SIX factors that affect life expectancy:

-type
-manufacturing quality
-condition of the disc before recording
-quality of the disc recording
-handling and maintenance
-environmental conditions

Then they say:

"As noted previously, the three basic types of CD and DVD discs—ROM, R, and RW and RAM—each use a different data layer material (molded aluminum, organic dye, or phase-changing film, respectively). Deterioration of this material is the primary cause for disc degradation and, ultimately, "end of life" for the disc, assuming proper physical handling."

The linked article has many sections that may be of interest to some.

This is great stuff. Thanks.

I was going to add before this was posted that the quality of the burn may also be in play - as was referenced in wabjxo's quote. I noticed that burns made on an ILO R5 with media that was used in other machines successfully had a tendency to go bad. The ILO had a notoriously bad power supply that would fry a DVD burner lens in less than six months in some cases - bad burns while it was dying but you'd never know initially.

The post by wabjxo lists 6 variables. That is a lot of moving parts and finite math will move the n factorial out to a level that is lottery material for the amount combinations possible. I think quite simply there is a lot going on and to reduce to one variable - for example the media may be short sighted.

I for one agree with the majority opinion I sense in this thread. But like I said there is a lot going on.

I think quite simply there is a lot going on and to reduce to one variable - for example the media may be short sighted.
Amen! Your comment is a great summary...and actually fits everyone's opinion stated so far.

Are you a left- or right-wing politician trying to talk "moderate" for a run in 2008!?

Amen! Your comment is a great summary...and actually fits everyone's opinion stated so far.

Are you a left- or right-wing politician trying to talk "moderate" for a run in 2008!?

Haha. Very funny. Actually I was considering a run but I'm voting for Borat. ;)

As far as the bad burns this should be able to be picked up though through analysis. I just never take the time. So the post burn error analysis does have merit to reduce it as a cause. Unless the burn is just marginal enough to look good. Who knows it is beyond me.

Too bad Borat can't run for Prez as he is foreign born.

To the point of the thread - my main disagreement with LS is that he states emphatically that degradation cannot happen over the short term (months or a few years) and there are too many variables and complexities associated with a disc burn to explain why not.

I say, precisely because of the many complexities and variables associated with a disc burn there is a good chance that a disc can degrade from playable to unplayable over the short term. Certainly, not highly likely, but it can and will happen probably more than occasionally, and certain common mode aspects such as media quality can result in a higher propensity for "short" term degradation with a given batch of discs. Sorry, for the sarcasm in previous posts, LS, but why are you being so obstinate and in denial about a readily observed phenomenon. I am not hung up on the semantics (fade or degradation) just that physical changes in the media over the short term can be the only explanation for a disc degradation from playable to unplayable. Please point out the flaw in my logic or come on over to the disc degradation/fade dark side.

(Perhaps there is a conflict of interest between admitting the possibility of disc "degradation" and asserting that "no more coasters" is achievable.)

For those who might not read the linked Librarian Org. article I posted above, they mention something no one else has mentioned in this thread or in others...a PRE-BURN shelf life of 5 to 10 years.

"Manufacturers claim that CD-R and DVD-R discs have a shelf life of 5 to 10 years before recording, but no expiration dates are indicated on CD-R, DVD-R, or DVD+R packaging, nor are there published reports of tests to verify these claims. Still, it would be prudent, in light of these claims, to purchase new discs as they are needed rather than to order large quantities and stockpile them for future use."

MOST people probably don't buy such large quantities that they wouldn't burn them before 5 years, but we never really know how long they've already been on the store shelf. I guess mfg date might be part of the readout from one of the computer apps. people talk about here?

When I started using my DVD recorder people on the CD-Freaks forum were trashing RITEK discs as dying within a few months after having been burnt. Fortunately (in hindsight) I didn't see those posts until after I had already bought and burned a bunch of these disks. That's one of the reasons I started testing my discs immediately after burning them and every 3 months thereafter. My experience is that so far, after 1 year, they're just as good as TY in terms of longevity (ie, neither they nor TY have any noticeable degradation in my tests).

I think that LS is reacting because he's seen a lot of these RITEK-style trashings that turn out to be without merit. They cause people like myself to get anxious and give DVD recording a bad name. It's really not a good thing if it's not true, and my test results lead me to believe the RITEK bashing wasn't true.

When you read posts on these boards about media going bad, too often there's no supporting evidence given that one can use to judge what's really at fault. For example, in most cases people never actually tested their media after burning it, so you have no idea if the burn was decent in the first place. And there are a lot of other variables as well, as LS pointed out.

Until someone can make a claim that a disc itself degraded a significant amount and rule out the other possibilities (ie, the initial burn was OK, the disk was stored properly, the drive used to read the disc is OK because it reads other disks burned at the same time, etc.), I'm afraid you guys just aren't going to convince him. Even with that, it'll have to be more than just one or two isolated incidents before he'll consider it a trend. That kind of skepticism doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me.

In the meantime, I'm going to continue running my tests in an effort to learn for myself what I should reasonably expect from these newfangled contraptions... ;)

I'm afraid you guys just aren't going to convince him. Even with that, it'll have to be more than just one or two isolated incidents before he'll consider it a trend. That kind of skepticism doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me.
Lordy, another one...left-wing or right?

This trend toward civility and reason must cease immediately! :D

(Perhaps there is a conflict of interest between admitting the possibility of disc "degradation" and asserting that "no more coasters" is achievable.)

Never thought about it that way, but that could actually be a possiblity.

Until someone can make a claim that a disc itself degraded a significant amount and rule out the other possibilities (ie, the initial burn was OK, the disk was stored properly, the drive used to read the disc is OK because it reads other disks burned at the same time, etc.), I'm afraid you guys just aren't going to convince him. Even with that, it'll have to be more than just one or two isolated incidents before he'll consider it a trend. That kind of skepticism doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me.

The preponderence of first-hand accounts related in this thread and other similar ones indicate that there are more than one or two isolated cases of actual degradation. But I agree with you that a lack of information and scientific rigor (QA test data on the discs right after the burn and periodically months later) in the related experiences makes it hard to prove with certainty that degradation exists. I know I have experienced it first hand and I blame poor quality media in my case.

When I first started buying CDs, CDVs, and LDs, back in the late 80's, I had several of each become unplayable in just a year, or two. Many more have gone bad since. Of course I realize these are totally different technologies, but my point is that these things aren't perfect. Using good media, and good equipment, most will last, but some may go bad sooner, rather than later. This should be expected.

A few years ago, my 1st backups of some movies were made with off brand 4X CMC media. I watched everyone one of them within a week of burning them and they played fine. Now I have checked about 10 of them and 2 wont play at all on the PC that burned them or my set top player. 2 others have stalls and skips. None of my burns made with TY media have failed to play. Call it fade, call it ageing, call it degrading, something happened and they were all stored in jewel cases in cool dry area. I call it cheap 3rd class media.

I've read a few threads on cdfreaks where they badmouth 16x TYs,they say the initial burns are great,but scans a while later show they're degrading,also they say they seem to be cheaply maufactured.Does anyone here with experience with the 16x agree?

Call it fade, call it ageing, call it degrading, something happened and they were all stored in jewel cases in cool dry area. I call it cheap 3rd class media.I've no doubt the media is cheap - everyone seems to agree that CMC meda has a bad reputation. But since you didn't actually test the burn quality of the discs after making them, you had no idea whether the burn was a decent one to start with. Watching the show tells you nothing - it's kind of like having your friend copy something down to paper and then read it back to you - just because he can read his handwriting doesn't mean you'll be able to (not a perfect analogy, but I hope you get the idea). So the fact that some discs went bad may just be because the burns were barely readable in the first place, and so it took very little "fade" before the data was gone for good.

We all know that discs degrade over timespans of decades, but the big question for anecdotal tales such as yours is just how much "fade" it actually took to make your discs unreadable. Since you can't tell us how good the initial burns were, we have no idea how much degradation needed to take place. And that means your exprience doesn't really help us that much, other than to serve as a reminder for everyone that they really ought to test their burns so they know what they've got. Even if you don't test every last burn like I do, you really ought to check at least a few burns of every package of media you buy. IMHO, anyway... ;)

I've read a few threads on cdfreaks where they badmouth 16x TYs,they say the initial burns are great,but scans a while later show they're degrading,also they say they seem to be cheaply maufactured.Does anyone here with experience with the 16x agree?The only 16X I tried were some Verbatims (MCC 03RG20) with my Pioneer 633. The Pioneer burned discs that were perfectly playable, but the error rates were higher than I was comfortable with so I ditched them. So I'm afraid I can't really tell you how much they might have degraded after that point.

Partly because of this, and partly because of other comments I've read, I've been avoiding 16X media and trying to stick to the 8X stuff I know works for me.

I've no doubt the media is cheap - everyone seems to agree that CMC meda has a bad reputation. But since you didn't actually test the burn quality of the discs after making them, you had no idea whether the burn was a decent one to start with. Watching the show tells you nothing - it's kind of like having your friend copy something down to paper and then read it back to you - just because he can read his handwriting doesn't mean you'll be able to (not a perfect analogy, but I hope you get the idea). So the fact that some discs went bad may just be because the burns were barely readable in the first place, and so it took very little "fade" before the data was gone for good.

We all know that discs degrade over timespans of decades, but the big question for anecdotal tales such as yours is just how much "fade" it actually took to make your discs unreadable. Since you can't tell us how good the initial burns were, we have no idea how much degradation needed to take place. And that means your exprience doesn't really help us that much, other than to serve as a reminder for everyone that they really ought to test their burns so they know what they've got. Even if you don't test every last burn like I do, you really ought to check at least a few burns of every package of media you buy. IMHO, anyway... ;)
I get your point but it does prove that some sort of degrading exists. Oh I quickly learned to test just about everything I burn that I care about. I also learned to stick with good media, my personal favorite is TYG02.
I do get darn good burns with 16X TY, just not as good as the 8X but as good or better then Sony or Verbs, which are both pretty good also. Add MIJ Maxell to the list and I would not use anything else.

Statements like "preponderence of first-hand accounts related in this thread and other similar ones indicate that there are more than one or two isolated cases of actual degradation" are categorically false, because they are based off faulty logic.

And that goes right along with the comment of "obstinate and in denial about a readily observed phenomenon" is simply because the observers are untrained, and the amount of unknown variables have more likely reasons than "dying discs" that so many want to jump at.

Same for a conclusion like "but it does prove that some sort of degrading exists" which is also baseless. When you've not followed the disc from burn to problem, and tried multiple ways to troubleshoot the problem (unavailable to most people), then you are simply unqualified to make any conclusion whatsoever.

Didn't anybody here learn a lesson from the story of Chicken Little? Getting hit on the head may hurt (bad disc experience), but it's an acorn (something else caused the disc to give issue), the sky is not falling (disc dying).

It's a real shame here that Sean Nelson is the only one that seems to actually understand media.

The easy answer is often the wrong answer.

. . .
Now, long-term degradation is another story entirely. Everything withers away in time (such as the human body and even concrete). The timeframe where DVDs will start to degrade to a point of issues is a few decades away, not a couple months or years.

There is a big difference.

I agree with you that pressed DVDs are pretty much resistant to short term data disintegration, but I disagree on your comment concerning concrete withering away. Roman concrete made with pozzolan does not wither away, it is near immortal. The Pantheon in Rome is almost 2,000 years old, and remains the structure with the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world. Hydraulic concrete blocks used by the Romans to build the man made harbor at Caesarea, Israel, still maintain their lonely vigil at the bottom of the sea, long after the demise of their Roman engineers, who managed to design a harbor that did not silt up (something modern engineers are still working on). Just a side note off the main topic.
As to DVDs degrading, I wonder how much of that problem comes from poor mastering of the DVD in the first place, not the actual physical toll on the DVD from exposure to low power laser beams and UV light.

Roman concrete made with pozzolan does not wither away, it is near immortal. The Pantheon in Rome is almost 2,000 years old, and remains the structure with the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world. Hydraulic concrete blocks used by the Romans to build the man made harbor at Caesarea, Israel, still maintain their lonely vigil at the bottom of the sea, long after the demise of their Roman engineers . . . In contrast, chinese concrete starts to crumble before it's fully cured . . .

Why is is so hard for some to accept that poorly made blank media, using substandard dyes and grade-c manufacturing techniques, can degrade and fail in relatively short periods of time. All media is not created equal, otherwise there would not be 4 tiers on the oft-cited digitalfaq.com (http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/index.htm). You can blow all the smoke you want trying to insult people by telling them they are incompetent observers, but the fact remains that many here have burned disks that once played fine and now play with errors or not at all. The lure of paying 5 cents a disk is just too much for many to resist.

I don't think anybody is going to deny there are probably a whole bunch of factors that contribute to the premature death of a disk, that would be silly. On the other hand it is equally silly to pretend that some don't die prematurely --- A lot of people learned to burn Taiyo Yuden the hard way.

gerry, nice tidbit about the Roman concrete -- enjoyed it.

Why is is so hard for some to accept that poorly made blank media, using substandard dyes and grade-c manufacturing techniques, can degrade and fail in relatively short periods of time.Absolutely, I have no doubt that degradation occurs and that a bad burn can fail quickly as a result. But what about a good burn? The issue I have is that if you don't know what the initial burn quality was, then when the disc fails you have no idea how much it had degraded. If we're going to listen to complaints about degradation, it would sure help to know whether we're talking about a little or a lot.

Why? Because if it's just a little degradation then if I make a burn and a quality test gives it the thumbs-up, then I don't have to worry too much about it. But if there really is a lot of degradation then it's a concern no matter how good the initial burn was.

I'm not denying that some media may degrade rapidly and fail quickly even after a good burn - I just haven't seen a post that makes that claim and eliminates bad burns as a potential cause. If that's really happening I'd really, really like to see someone document the evidence for it.

I've become skeptical of anecdotal reports after repeatedly reading posts that bash RITEKG05 media and then discovering for myself that (so far after 1 year) it's just fine, thanks. So now I'm looking for unambiguous reports that present as much hard evidence as possible. Perhaps it's too much to ask, but I still think it's the sensible thing to do...

PS - I liked the tidbits about the Roman conrete too! :)

PS - I liked the tidbits about the Roman conrete too! :)

Me too, but I would like to point out that the Eqyptians made even better concrete, some of which is very difficult to distinguish from the surrounding stone, even today. Years ago, there was a Prof. at a university in Florida who claimed he had rediscovered their formula. Try as I might, I haven't been able to find any more info on that.

Here's another link to an article (http://www.mscience.com/faq30.html) on CD/DVD degradation that summarizes the non-anectdotal, test-to-verify approach of Sean and others.

BUT...check out the "Freeware" link at the top (last link on top right) that leads to a page listing all kinds of CD/DVD freeware for identifying and testing CDs and DVDs...all in one place!

Statements like "preponderence of first-hand accounts related in this thread and other similar ones indicate that there are more than one or two isolated cases of actual degradation" are categorically false, because they are based off faulty logic.

And that goes right along with the comment of "obstinate and in denial about a readily observed phenomenon" is simply because the observers are untrained, and the amount of unknown variables have more likely reasons than "dying discs" that so many want to jump at.

Same for a conclusion like "but it does prove that some sort of degrading exists" which is also baseless. When you've not followed the disc from burn to problem, and tried multiple ways to troubleshoot the problem (unavailable to most people), then you are simply unqualified to make any conclusion whatsoever.

Didn't anybody here learn a lesson from the story of Chicken Little? Getting hit on the head may hurt (bad disc experience), but it's an acorn (something else caused the disc to give issue), the sky is not falling (disc dying).

It's a real shame here that Sean Nelson is the only one that seems to actually understand media.

The easy answer is often the wrong answer.
Are you saying that a DVD degrading from playing fine to a coaster in a year is impossible? Improbable? or just very rare?
Why are most of your disagreements always aimed at the poster being untrained or some sort of idiot?
Have you ever admitted to being wrong about anything?
Do you have a little sign on your desk that says "I thought I was wrong once, BUT, I was mistaken"

So what does all this mean then, we have to be master scientists of the DVDR media to properly burn discs? Is there no simple solution to just put a disc it, hit record and store like a VHS? The only thing I'm sure about from this discussion is that DVDR's are a crap shoot.

So what does all this mean then, we have to be master scientists of the DVDR media to properly burn discs? Is there no simple solution to just put a disc it, hit record and store like a VHS? The only thing I'm sure about from this discussion is that DVDR's are a crap shoot.If you use good media you're probably OK. The problem with digital media is that you can't tell just by playing it how good the recording is. DVDs of all stripes have errors, the error correcting codes fix them on the fly during playback. So when you play a DVD you have no idea if there are only a few errors or a lot of them. It's not like a VHS tape where you can actually see problems in the image if the tape has degraded.

I think it's good policy to use a computer to check the error levels for at least a few discs of every spindle you buy. Even good media can sometimes make bad burns with some combinations of burner and firmware. And in my limited experience with 16X media it seems to fare more poorly than the 8X in burners that aren't designed to work with it.

So yeah, it can be a bit of a crap shot. If you care about your burns, test them.

If you use good media you're probably OK. The problem with digital media is that you can't tell just by playing it how good the recording is. DVDs of all stripes have errors, the error correcting codes fix them on the fly during playback. So when you play a DVD you have no idea if there are only a few errors or a lot of them. It's not like a VHS tape where you can actually see problems in the image if the tape has degraded.

I think it's good policy to use a computer to check the error levels for at least a few discs of every spindle you buy. Even good media can sometimes make bad burns with some combinations of burner and firmware. And in my limited experience with 16X media it seems to fare more poorly than the 8X in burners that aren't designed to work with it.

So yeah, it can be a bit of a crap shot. If you care about your burns, test them.Sean, I agree in principal with everything you have written here, which is why I have always advocated using the best media possible to start with.

In general to all, this present discussion is just a rehash of what we extensively discussed a year and a half ago. Just go back to the begining of this thread and there were others like it in the same time period. We tested our media after burns back then, some using Nero CD-DVD Speed tool and some using the Plextor tools. What people found was that lower tier media, such as Memorex/Imation (CMC) consistently gave very high error rates and tier 1 media (i.e. Taiyo Yuden) consistently gave extremely low error rates. We tested using different burners and at different burn rates. Bobkart got his start in the forum, publishing test data from burning different media. As one might expect (or should expect) most of the serious error problems occured in the last GB -- or that last 25% of the disks at the outer edge. This is where manufacturing quality comes in -- to be able to spread the dye evenly across the surface to the disk edge. This is probably a big factor in determining what tier media falls into.

The postulates were simple: we all knew and accepted that DVDs would degrade over time (because we were experiencing it firsthand) so it made sense to use the best media possible with the lowest initial error rates so that the disks would last the longest. I think I could count on one hand the number of people who have posted any trouble with T-Y disks (and I would suspect most of them are related to the introduction of the "value line" -- a big mistake by T-Y IMHO).

Sean, in the last sentence of your reply to dollarbill you have agreed with the conclusion we reached over a year ago -- burning DVDs is a crap shoot. You are right dollarbill, we should not have to be concerned with degrading and testing and quality of burn. The fact that we are simply means this media technology, as currently implemented for the mass market, is simply not ready for primetime.

The best advice I can give to anyone is to start with the best tier 1 media possible to maximize your chances and minimize your grief. My favorite is Taiyo-Yuden. That's all I have burned for a year and I only burn the premium line (8X) and stay clear of their "value line". Since I have been burning T-Y I never have problems and therefore rarely test anymore. I recently ran a couple DVD Speed tests on some new burns and it is still the same first-class low error media I have been accustomed to. With all due respect to hoops and spyder, I advise reading the " Media deals this week" thread for entertainment value only.

Happy Turkey, everone . . .

I've become skeptical of anecdotal reports after repeatedly reading posts that bash RITEKG05 media and then discovering for myself that (so far after 1 year) it's just fine, thanks. So now I'm looking for unambiguous reports that present as much hard evidence as possible. Perhaps it's too much to ask, but I still think it's the sensible thing to do...I have not read on other forums about the bashing of Ritek but from my experience I would not consider it unfounded. I had a 50 spindle of Ritek 4X DVD-R (when they were still making 4X media). The error rates were not bad at all (but no where near as good as T-Y 4X) and these disks still play fine. When I next purchased Ritek they had long switched over to making 8X so I bought a spindle of them. These were absolutely horrible with >5X the error rates of the 4X media. It looked like they took a major step backwards. I switched to T-Y and have given most of those Ritek 8X away.

If Ritek is striving to be a quality manufacturer, they may have gotten their act together in the past year and you may be seeing the fruits of their QC. Personally, I don't know what their current quality is but I certainly won't touch them over T-Y. Once burned, twice shy?

Sean, I agree in principal with everything you have written here, which is why I have always advocated using the best media possible to start with.

In general to all, this present discussion is just a rehash of what we extensively discussed a year and a half ago. Just go back to the begining of this thread and there were others like it in the same time period. We tested our media after burns back then, some using Nero CD-DVD Speed tool and some using the Plextor tools. What people found was that lower tier media, such as Memorex/Imation (CMC) consistently gave very high error rates and tier 1 media (i.e. Taiyo Yuden) consistently gave extremely low error rates. We tested using different burners and at different burn rates. Bobkart got his start in the forum, publishing test data from burning different media. As one might expect (or should expect) most of the serious error problems occured in the last GB -- or that last 25% of the disks at the outer edge. This is where manufacturing quality comes in -- to be able to spread the dye evenly across the surface to the disk edge. This is probably a big factor in determining what tier media falls into.

The postulates were simple: we all knew and accepted that DVDs would degrade over time (because we were experiencing it firsthand) so it made sense to use the best media possible with the lowest initial error rates so that the disks would last the longest. I think I could count on one hand the number of people who have posted any trouble with T-Y disks (and I would suspect most of them are related to the introduction of the "value line" -- a big mistake by T-Y IMHO).

Sean, in the last sentence of your reply to dollarbill you have agreed with the conclusion we reached over a year ago -- burning DVDs is a crap shoot. You are right dollarbill, we should not have to be concerned with degrading and testing and quality of burn. The fact that we are simply means this media technology, as currently implemented for the mass market, is simply not ready for primetime.

The best advice I can give to anyone is to start with the best tier 1 media possible to maximize your chances and minimize your grief. My favorite is Taiyo-Yuden. That's all I have burned for a year and I only burn the premium line (8X) and stay clear of their "value line". Since I have been burning T-Y I never have problems and therefore rarely test anymore. I recently ran a couple DVD Speed tests on some new burns and it is still the same first-class low error media I have been accustomed to. With all due respect to hoops and spyder, I advise reading the " Media deals this week" thread for entertainment value only.

Happy Turkey, everone . . .
Well said :)

If Ritek is striving to be a quality manufacturer, they may have gotten their act together in the past year and you may be seeing the fruits of their QC. Personally, I don't know what their current quality is but I certainly won't touch them over T-Y. Once burned, twice shy?This is why I advocate testing of the batches you buy - the media / burner combination makes a difference. In my case, on my Pioneer 633, the RITEKG05's (8X DVD-R) burn better than the TYG02's. For some reason the TY's alway give an initial error "spike" for the first couple of samples that I'm not happy with, while the Ritek's do not. The TY's are more consistent than the Riteks, but they always have that initial error spike.

The attachment shows a fairly typical example of a TY burned on my Pioneer. They don't do this when burned on my PC Plextor drive, and they don't even do it when I burn them on the Pioneer using the "backup" mode. But since I want to minimize hassels I've gravitated towards the (Maxell branded) Riteks.

So buy good media, yes. But test it too.

So what does all this mean then, we have to be master scientists of the DVDR media to properly burn discs? Is there no simple solution to just put a disc it, hit record and store like a VHS? The only thing I'm sure about from this discussion is that DVDR's are a crap shoot.

This thread and countless others like it on the subject have dragged on far too long. If you believe in "disc fade", then don't rely on it as a long-term storage medium. If you've done some serious research and are confident in the longevity of optical media, then burn, store, and enjoy your collection.

This is why I advocate testing of the batches you buy - the media / burner combination makes a difference. In my case, on my Pioneer 633, the RITEKG05's (8X DVD-R) burn better than the TYG02's. For some reason the TY's alway give an initial error "spike" for the first couple of samples that I'm not happy with, while the Ritek's do not. The TY's are more consistent than the Riteks, but they always have that initial error spike.

The attachment shows a fairly typical example of a TY burned on my Pioneer. They don't do this when burned on my PC Plextor drive, and they don't even do it when I burn them on the Pioneer using the "backup" mode. But since I want to minimize hassels I've gravitated towards the (Maxell branded) Riteks.

So buy good media, yes. But test it too.Sean, what kind of TYG02's are you using? Are these TYG02 Value-Line, or are they TYG02 Premium Line. I personally don't like their value-line. When I burn them on either my Lite-on or my LG burners at either 4X or 8X I see a similar PIF spike at 1GB that goes to 30 or more and I see increasing error rates as it gets out to the edge of the disk. I also find that the TYG02 value-line disks have lower error rates when burned at their native 8X as opposed to 4X.

In contrast, the premium-line is really premium media. The value-line are clearly "seconds", I won't touch them any more.

Sean, what kind of TYG02's are you using?There were sold as premium disks by a local company I have a fair amount of faith in (NCIX), but other than that I have no direct way to tell for sure.

This is why I advocate testing of the batches you buy - the media / burner combination makes a difference. In my case, on my Pioneer 633, the RITEKG05's (8X DVD-R) burn better than the TYG02's. For some reason the TY's alway give an initial error "spike" for the first couple of samples that I'm not happy with, while the Ritek's do not. The TY's are more consistent than the Riteks, but they always have that initial error spike.

The attachment shows a fairly typical example of a TY burned on my Pioneer. They don't do this when burned on my PC Plextor drive, and they don't even do it when I burn them on the Pioneer using the "backup" mode. But since I want to minimize hassels I've gravitated towards the (Maxell branded) Riteks.

So buy good media, yes. But test it too.


Man, that spike is nothing short of bizarre. I wouldn't be comfortable with that either, at least not on a regular basis. For the sake of comparison, would you care to post a scan of what a normal Ritek/Maxell scan looks like that was burned on your Pioneer 633?


nx211

For the sake of comparison, would you care to post a scan of what a normal Ritek/Maxell scan looks like that was burned on your Pioneer 633?
Here's a scan from a fairly typical RITEKG05 burned on the Pioneer. There is more variability in the Riteks - some burn with average error rates only around half of this one, some with rates that are higher - even from the same spindle of discs. But none of them have that initial error spike.

Again, I want to emphasize that the TY media burns just fine on my PC burner, and it even burns fine on the Pioneer when I use the Pioneer's "disk backup" function. So there isn't anything wrong with the TY discs themselves, the "spike" issue seems to be due to some combination of the burner, media and burning mode. But it has occurred with all 3 spindles of TY discs I've bought over about 9 months.

This is why I think it's prudent to test your burns even if you buy good media.

Man, Alot of people taking it to the extreme in disc testing with these error rates, spikes etc...

I backup my stuff on either -RW or +RW discs and it's been like 4-5 years now and as far as I can tell everything has been error free when I test out different discs from different batches every few months or so.

All I do is the simple crc read error test in DVD decrypter, If it can read all the sectors fine it's good enough for me. So far so good.

In the future I will probably make another backup on Blu-Ray discs just to be on the safe side.

The problem with that approach is that once you do get a CRC error, it's likely to late to recover the data. Testing PI/PO errors lets you see the impending CRC error coming, and take appropriate action to backup the data before it's too late.

Also, I'm not sure how you can know that a BluRay disc will be any safer.

The problem with that approach is that once you do get a CRC error, it's likely to late to recover the data. Testing PI/PO errors lets you see the impending CRC error coming, and take appropriate action to backup the data before it's too late.

Also, I'm not sure how you can know that a BluRay disc will be any safer.


Well right now after 4-5 years these RW discs are still error free, I'm not going to worry about 1 bad unreadable sector on a disc yet until I start seeing a trend of it happening.

As for backing up on Blu-Ray. My thinking is I'll have a copy of one on RW and one on Blu-Ray. What are the possibilites that both will crap out when I spot something wrong with one?

Aren't rw's a poor choice for backups,write once media would be more reliable for the long term.
blu-ray's recording layer is totally different than dvd's craptacular failing dyes,hopefully it'll be more archival.

What are the possibilites that both will crap out when I spot something wrong with one?That is a valid approach assuming you test them "frequently enough". The longer it is between tests (years for example), the more likely the second format will have also had a similar problem.

Well right now after 4-5 years these RW discs are still error free, I'm not going to worry about 1 bad unreadable sector on a disc yet until I start seeing a trend of it happening. Just remember that your discs aren't really "error-free". They actually have errors, it's just that they at a low enough frequency such that they can be corrected through the use of the ECC information on the disc. If you don't check the PI/PO error rates, you'll never know how close your disk is to failing until it actually fails, and as Bobkart mentioned by then it may be too late.

1 bad unreadable sector on the disc isn't a big problem unless it happens to be one of those which describes the disc's file structure - if that happens then entire disc may be rendered unplayable.

Having two copies is an excellent idea. Only you can decide how important your material is and what effort you're willing to go to in order to protect it. But to make those kinds of decisions you really should understand what the risks are. And one of the really common misconceptions seems to be that if the disk can be played then it must be A-OK. If nothing else good comes from this thread, hopefully everyone will at least understand that this is a very dangerous assumption.

I can understand some becoming frustrated at the concept of having to test burned media from time to time, but one would be foolishly naive to simply right this and simular threads off as a "Sky-is-Falling" nuisance.

I have a great deal of important footage archived onto VHS (some 25 years old), which I'd converted to DVDR and DVD Ram. Out of approximately two thousand discs, I'd lost close to two-hundred to disc fade (many of the failures were Vivastar and the Be All brand). However, none of my RAM discs have failed as of yet (some are now more than 6 years old). The number of DVDR failures have now been greatly reduced since I switched soley to Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden discs.

Many others weren't as fortunate--or as pessimistic as I, and trashed their original source material. Remember the Philips commercial where the married yuppie couple tossed their wedding video out the window right after burning a DVDR? Well a lot of people bought into that propaganda.

This is the main reason why this thread should be bumped up every now and then. People should be made aware of just how tenuous archiving to DVDR/W can be, and what precautions can be taken.

I'm personally really glad that I never fully bought into the long term archival guarantee of DVDR and decided to keep all of my original VHS, Beta and 8mm recordings.

I just replaced my broken camcorder. Because of what I have read here and in other forums, I opted for the cheaper MiniDV (tape) instead of the more expensive HDD or DVD camcorder. I have kept all of my old tapes and will continue to keep them for backup. I still copy them to DVD for easy play and to give to people.

I have kept all of my old tapes and will continue to keep them for backup.The biggest long-term risk of tape media is format viability. Whether it's a good thing or not, the tape formats are being replaced by discs, and it won't be many years before you can no longer buy tape machines. This is especially true for camcorder tape formats - try finding a Hi-8 machine these days. What that means is if your camcorder breaks in a few years (or possibly even if it's batteries give up and you can't find new ones) you may be left with no way to get your videos back.

I certainly agree with the idea of keeping the tapes, but it's probably wise to also burn them all to DVDs as well, "just in case".

They don't do this when burned on my PC Plextor drive, and they don't even do it when I burn them on the Pioneer using the "backup" mode.
No silly questions? Try these ..
is anyone using an "older" pc with success? I have a Dell 1998 INSPIRON 7500 but when I upgraded to Windows 2000 my DVD READER died.
Has anyone had any luck with an external DVD ... I assume I don't really need a burner to test my DVD's just a DVD Reader would probably work???

I assume I don't really need a burner to test my DVD's just a DVD Reader would probably work???Most DVD drives automatically correct the errors and the software has no idea that there was anything wrong in the first place. Only certain drives have the ability to pass the uncorrected error counts back to the software so that it can report on the burn quality. As far as I know it's only certain write-capable drives that do this. My Plextor PX716-A is one of them, I know there are others as well but definitely not just any old drive will do.

I've read every message board, forum, article, and opinion I could find on disc fade, ad nausium, for about a year now.

I've read studies, and first-hand accounts. Here are the highlights...

I can tell you this.... Those previously referenced pages that claim quality burns on quality media is a good long-term storage solution is simply wishful thinking.

Also, don't make the mistake of assuming that CD-R adn DVD-R technology is similar. Yeah you might have a 12 year old CD-R that plays perfectly, but that does not mean your DVD-R will even last 6 months. CD-R is MUCH MUCH MUCH more reliable longterm.

ALL, and I mean ALL DVDs will show degredation. The technology is not mature enough to prove my opinion that they will all fail, but I tell you, THEY WILL ALL FAIL.

Yes, top quality media and good burns will last longer, and degrade slower, but don't trust your precious data on them blindly. There are cases where, for some reason, once some degredation occurs, it seems to occur rapidly. And for those cases where is degrades slowly, well, as long it continues to degrade slowly, it is still degrading, and will someday reach the point of no return.

Never use poorly manufactured media, you'll be lucky to get a year out of it. You might get much longer, but is it worth the risk to save a few bucks?

Your best bet is to have another backup source for the most important data. Thumb flash drives, external hard disc drives, even good ole VHS tape is more reliable in the long run.

The latest rush to market with 16X media has HURT quality. Especially Taiyo Yuden. Those near-perfect burn scans are fewer and farther between now with the 16X media than ever before. I've read several cases of degredation of top-of-the-line media in as little as 6 to 8 months, one case in just 2 months.

Most people have no idea about good and bad burns, and are all at risk.

To make things worse, some burners work best with certain media and not others. Looking at scans can help you find the media that works best with your driver/burner.

Many people believe they get the best scans burning at 1/2 speed, e.g. 8X on a 16X disc. The thoery that slower burns make better burns does NOT hold true. Burning a 16X disc at 1X is often a much lower quality burn than burning at 8X.

To make things even worse than that, some drives are much better READERS than others. Why is that bad? Some drives are known for being excellent readers, and when you perform a scan, you are very likely to see a very low error rate and think you have a hi quality burn. However that same disc on another drive might show a much lesser quality result. So not only can you often not trust your media or your burner, you often can't even trust the scan.

A lot of people don't know about their computer burners and the embedded firmware. Often these drives can kind of "get better" at making quality burns, but usually you have to update the firmware. Especially older drives that were bought when 4X or 8X was HOT, they could be poor at making 16X burns, but a firmware update could help.

As a summary... If you burn a 100 quality discs today. You will someday start seeing degredation. My opinion is that they all will become unreadable someday. If it's a quality burn, I would expect and hope that very few will be unreadable in 2 to 3 years, but you will likely have a couple. Every year your likelyhood of bad discs is increasing. Who knows, many discs might last a decade or more, however, I've read many articles and 2 to 5 years seems to be a rule of thumb. I'd never trust important data longer than that.

I hope time proves me wrong, but I have no reason to believe it will based on what I have read from others.

The sad truth is, the market is flooded with poor media, and the good media is becoming harder and harder to find. even good media is getting worse as speed ratings increase. Often times, you can have 2 identical packages of discs with the same packaging and one is from TY and the other is crap.



Hey DVDs are fun..... Don't trust them to store precious data however. Be safe..
Make backups often. Use another techology as a safety backup...

Hey DVDs are fun..... Don't trust them to store precious data however. Be safe..
Make backups often. Use another techology as a safety backup...
And hope that your backup choice doesn't become OBSOLETE or UNUSEABLE :(

I've read studies, and first-hand accounts. Here are the highlights...


So, you're saying the sky is indeed falling after all, correct?

Please point me to some of those studies and first-hand accounts. No offense, but I would like to read them for myself.

So, you're saying the sky is indeed falling after all, correct?

Please point me to some of those studies and first-hand accounts. No offense, but I would like to read them for myself.

If sky is falling is simply unpredictable and unavoidable disc fade, then yes it is falling...

You can start by simply reading hundreds and hundreds of pages of forums like this one here, videohelp.com, cdfreaks.com, do a bunch of google searches on things liek disc fade, dye break downs, disc oxidation, read up the handful of major disc manufacturers and their corresponding quality of output, dye movement/shift out towards the boundaries from the force of the spinning, look up data archival methods.

I don't even know to point you in the right direction to even begin.

I have no "scientific" proof... But after reading hundreds of posts by average Joe's like me that had nearly perfect scans go bad on them, and seeing this happen to all their discs, I am convinced.

Start Here:
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=182040

You see all these recent scans. Some are amazing, still perfect after years. Others were GEAT burns or TY media and are showing a LOT of degredation. Most are showing at least minimal to average amounts of degredation.

There are tons of info like this out there.

Now with all this visual proof of degredation, so you think the degredation will magically stop or reverse itself in the future? Doubt it... Do you think that almost every one of these discs will become unreadable in say.. The next 10 years??? I bet the majority of them do...

The point is......
Any given disc MIGHT last a decade or more. It MIGHT last 2 years or less. You just don't know, and any number of factors could hurt your longevity, and some you can't really control such as unrealistic scans from good readers, laser weakening, disc bonding failing, dye movement, oxidation or just bad luck.

Not something I would ever declare as ARCHIVAL quality.

Folks that are scared by "disc fade" myths need to read some of the private studies from OSTA, DOD, LOC, and several others. Also pay attention to the manufacturer white papers. The facts do not back up "disc fade" or any other supposed longevity issues in an overwhelming majority of test cases (probably something to the tune of 99% or more).

I've been burning DVDs since 2001, when the DVD-R(General) tech was made available to consumers for under $1,000 USD, and have consistently used good media from day one (PVC, MCC, MXL, TDK, TY, etc). The only times I run across a bad disc is when it was something I did not test AND used medium- to low-grade media, meaning it was probably bad the minute it popped out of the burner...

No need to worry about DVD-eating boogeymen!


Disc fade is real.

Members post about it from time to time. It seems that every couple of months this subject keeps popping up.

The latest adventures of the "DVD-eating boogeymen" can be found here, courtesy of Videonut:
http://avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=807448


nx211

That thread, though, talks about Ritek G04 media which is notorious for dying very, very quickly.

As usual the truth is somewhere in the middle.

I don't trust any of my DVDs to last more than 5-10 years. I'm coming up on 5-6 years for many of my early DVDs and so far so good. That said, a lot of people were screaming when CDRs came out that they too would be dead in 5 years. I continue to scan some of my first burns of CDRs from the 1997-1998 era (so they're approaching 10 years old, I remember buying that first pack for $30 for 3 discs) and some of them still scan better than many burns I do today! Unfortunately, some have died as well. Want to guess the difference? The dead discs were burned on cheap media to cut some corners. Thankfully I haven't lost anything important, but my 2X/4X TY CDRs still are working like champs.

There's something to be said for the days when CD burners cost $600 and discs $10. I really think the quality of the units was much better, resulting in much better burns. My original Ricoh 6200 CD burner (2X! Speed demon!!) still works, last time I checked. And the thing burned TY CDRs like nobody's business. I only retired it because it was so slow.

That said, discs will deteriorate. The problem in the thread you mentioned was with Ritek G04 discs-- they were some of the first *cheap* 4X discs that burned fairly well on a wide variety of burners. Many people back when they first came out were warning people not to trust them, and unfortunately, many people didn't listen to the warnings.

The moral of the story is to spend some money up front-- don't buy the cheapest burner, don't buy the cheapest media-- and test as often as you can. For critical stuff, I burn (at least) 2 copies, using 2 different burners, on 2 different kinds of media. I also have a stash of really good media that I only break out for super critical things. Yes, I'm really obsessive over this stuff, but I don't want my discs dying on me. I'm afraid we ARE coming up on a bit of a digital dark age where people who were brainwashed (By the music/movie industries) that bits is bits, discs are indestructable, and every disc is the same, are going to start losing a LOT of data due to poor choices due to lack of education.

(did I take enough different sides in this message?)

healthcare reform? :D

I love urban legends. Personal anecdotes kepp them going ( " I have no scientific evidence but golly I have read alot of people who say it is real ").

More UFO/Big Foot/Disk Fade stories!!! They are fun to read!

Back in February I was running short on DVD-RW discs and rather than buying more for temporary use I decided I'd pick up a small spindle of Maxell 16X discs to do some temporary burns (much cheaper than DVD-RW) on my Pioneer 633.

Although they were just temporary discs, I did my usual quality checking on them and found that these RITEKF1 discs burned very poorly in with the Pio 633. No matter, I needed them only temporarily anyway. But 3 months later I still hadn't finished with them and when I rechecked the burn quality it was way worse - bad enough that I actually re-copied them to a new set of 16X DVD-R discs (Verbatim MCC 03RG20) that burned much better.

I hung onto the RITEKF1 discs just to see what would happen them over the longer term, and now it's been 6 months and they're continuing to deteriorate, albeit at a slower rate than they did initially.

Here's an animation of three quality scans, the first right after the initial burn with the next two being 3 and 6 months later:

http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r64/SMN-8711/DVD-Recorders/RITEKF1_2007-02-06.gif


In the first 3 months, the total PIE error count increased by a whopping 216%. In the next three months, the rate increased by about a further 25%. Although this is only one disc, I actually burned a couple of dozen RITEKF1 discs that have all showed the same pattern of degradation. So there really is some sort of fairly serious and systematic "fade" going on with these discs (although whether "fade" is a good term for it or not is perhaps debateable).

Note that even now, when the disc shows PIE error rates above the maximum 280 specified by the DVD standard, the errors are still correctable and in fact the disc plays perfectly well. But if the deterioration continues then at some point the data will become unrecoverable. With this kind of deterioration it's very easy to imagine a bad burn that initially had error rates at around 1000 or more which increase over the first few months to a point where the disc can no longer be played. This would match the "disc fade" scenarios that a lot of folks have complained about.

I usually throw out discs whose initial burns are as bad as this one was, so I don't know if this is typical of poorly burned discs. But I can tell you that none of my other discs, including a few hundred RITEKG05's (which lot of folks have complained about), have shown any significant degradation from their initial burn quality in over 18 months (so far). From this I'm led to suspect that well-burned discs are less susceptible to this kind of degradation.

If nothing else, this will hopefully reinforce the idea that just playing your discs after burning them is really no guarantee of anything. As I've mentioned before, a playable disc may still be "just barely readable", and any degradation, particularly the kind seen here, could easily render the data irretrievable. The only way to be sure is to check the burn quality using your PC.

Edit - noted that it's been an 18-month track record for my good burns so far

Sean, very cool animation...and very "enlightening"! Good post! :)

I would not be surprised if the chinese-made disks you buy today are inferior quality to the ones you could buy last year.

I recently read an article in the newspaper by a professor from the Wharton Business School about the issues of chinese manufacturing that are now biting importers in the butt. Bottom line is that the owners of all these "cheap" chinese factories will start a production run meeting all the specs. of the contractor, then overtime they will gradually and unilaterally change them by substituting cheaper materials or shaving corners off the design to fatten their margins. They know what the customers quality tests are (if there are any) and so they make sure they meet them while continuing to cheapen the product. This has been going on since the beginning and is now getting some big publicity because they went too far on some products of high visibility: melamine in pet foods, cardboard in meat products, construction girders that weigh 10% less than spec., LEAD PAINT ON SMALL CHILDRENS TOYS for god's sake.

His points were: first, this is not likely to change; there is no culture of quality in china and there are no signs that one is emerging; they are out to make as much money as possible in as short a time possible because they don't believe the current economic climate in china is going to last. Second, the chinese manufacturers know the US importers have no choice but to continue to contract with them -- they have us by the shorts and they know it. A shift to chinese manufacturing nearly always was accompanied by the closing of a US plant, so the American manufacturers have nothing to fall back on. They have to deal with the fall-out, the legal ramifications and now employ people to do continuous product inspections they never had to do before. So much for cost-saving by outsourcing. If they switch to another chinese manufacturer thay will have startup downtime with no product to sell and face the same problems all over. So, for the chinese factory it's "so-sorry"; fix the problem they got caught on and it's back in business as usual cutting some other corner until the next time. Short-term profits resulting in long-term calamity for US business.

This is really scary when you consider that china is now the biggest foreign supplier of imported food to the US, without the same standards as the USDA, and that the USDA doesn't have the manpower to inspect more than a fraction of what comes in here.

This is really scary when you consider that china is now the biggest foreign supplier of imported food to the US, without the same standards as the USDA, and that the USDA doesn't have the manpower to inspect more than a fraction of what comes in here.
About 1%...give or take a tenth or so! :mad:

About 1%...give or take a tenth or so! :mad:Oh gosh, I hope you are wrong about that. If you have a reference to back that up, please don't show it to me.

OK, I won't show it ALL to you, but here's some excerpts from the AP story:

"Normally, the FDA inspects just 1 percent of the cargo it oversees."

The story was on 1 million of pounds of fish that had "landed" in the U.S., and ALL of it was under an "import alert." Under that alert, ALL imports of that product must be held for lab inspection, but AT LEAST "1 in 4" shipments got thru to our dinner tables (1 in 4 of just those shipments the AP checked!).

Here's another excerpt you'll like:

"The agency has about 450 budgeted positions for screening approximately 20 million shipments annually of such things as fish, fruit and medical devices. At a congressional hearing last month, FDA employees doubted whether they have the resources to do the job."

...then overtime they will gradually and unilaterally change them by substituting cheaper materials or shaving corners off the design to fatten their margins.I heard from someone once that the difference between the Detroit and the Japanese automakers was that the Japanese understood where they could "cut corners" without affecting quality, while Detroit just cut corners everywhere. With China, it almost seems like they're targeting the worst places to cut corners.

A shift to chinese manufacturing nearly always was accompanied by the closing of a US plant, so the American manufacturers have nothing to fall back on.This is a short term problem, but it may not be a long term one. The Chinese quality scandals have already spawned a movement demanding changes to product labelling standards so that consumers can tell where the ingredients in processed food come from. If the consumers start abandoning ship the manufacturers are sure the heck going to as well. If this is really a cultural issue that can't be fixed quickly then China's going to kill their golden goose. You'd think Confucius would have something to say about that...

The story was on 1 million of pounds of fish that had "landed" in the U.S., and ALL of it was under an "import alert."Ultimately the problem lies with manufacturers and importers who are chasing the cheapest suppliers. If the government agencies who inspect this stuff charge the importers for the inspections then that will (a) go a long way to changing the economics of buying from questionable sources, and (b) potentially relieve the inspection agencies of cost constraints that prevent them from inspecting as much product as they feel they should. (Of course there may be GATT issues to doing this, and the end result will be to raise the cost of imported goods and potentially create a self-perpetuating inspection bureaucracy).


Unfortunately, no matter how bad the crisis becomes, it's unlikely that the government will inspect and certify blank DVD media for us... :D

i been recording -rs for 3 yrs on standalone recorders. the few -rs that i know are 3 yrs old i often test. so far so good. i hope it stays that way (fingers crossed!) i make sure to store them in light proof, black storage cases.

Sean, nice job as usual! But do you have any animations of Bigfoot running amuck? We should try to keep STAR56 happy ;)

And in reply to lordsmurf's fuzzy logic: When I hold one of my failed Vivastar DVD-R discs up to the light and clearly see through the plastic that once contained a coating of dye, I still should not blame the media itself? And, I should add that the failed discs in question were burned on either a Plextor or Pioneer burner and stored properly in a temperature-controlled room. Hey, I guess some of us don't require an anvil to fall on our head.

I heard from someone once that the difference between the Detroit and the Japanese automakers was that the Japanese understood where they could "cut corners" without affecting quality, while Detroit just cut corners everywhere. With China, it almost seems like they're targeting the worst places to cut corners.

This is a short term problem, but it may not be a long term one. The Chinese quality scandals have already spawned a movement demanding changes to product labelling standards so that consumers can tell where the ingredients in processed food come from. If the consumers start abandoning ship the manufacturers are sure the heck going to as well. If this is really a cultural issue that can't be fixed quickly then China's going to kill their golden goose. You'd think Confucius would have something to say about that...

Ultimately the problem lies with manufacturers and importers who are chasing the cheapest suppliers. If the government agencies who inspect this stuff charge the importers for the inspections then that will (a) go a long way to changing the economics of buying from questionable sources, and (b) potentially relieve the inspection agencies of cost constraints that prevent them from inspecting as much product as they feel they should. (Of course there may be GATT issues to doing this, and the end result will be to raise the cost of imported goods and potentially create a self-perpetuating inspection bureaucracy).


Unfortunately, no matter how bad the crisis becomes, it's unlikely that the government will inspect and certify blank DVD media for us... :D

Perhaps if they start manufacturing edible DVDs :D

When I hold one of my failed Vivastar DVD-R discs up to the light and clearly see through the plastic...I don't think that being able to see through a disc is an indication that it's suspect. It's fairly common to be able to see through DVDs if they don't have an opaque coating on the label side. For example, my silver 8X TYG02 DVD-R discs test out very well despite the fact that I can see through them if I hold them up to the light.

Remember, the dye is burned black where the laser strikes it, but remains (mostly) transparent everywhere else. To (greatly) oversimplify things, one would expect that 50% of the dye area (those areas that contain "0" bits) would be unburned and therefore transparent. So the only obstacle to the transparency of the disc is actually the reflective layer, not the dye layer.

(Note - burned and unburned areas don't really correspond to 0 and 1 bits, it's significantly more complex. But the fact remains that there must be substantial areas of unburned dye in order for the data to be organized into tracks and run-length-encoded groups of bits).

dumb question but how is it my music CDs from the 80s (not burned but bought in stores) are fine to this day but everyone has so much trouble burning their own. Also, Can you record a tv show onto a cd or must it be dvd media and what is the difference?

dumb question but how is it my music CDs from the 80s (not burned but bought in stores) are fine to this day but everyone has so much trouble burning their own.Only some folks are having trouble burning, others (generally those who buy good media) are not having any problems.

The big difference between "pre-recorded" discs (CD or DVD) vs. burned discs is that the pre-recorded discs hold the data in an aluminized layer of embossed plastic that really doesn't degrade over time, whereas the data on CD-R or DVD-R media is burned as dark dots in an organc dye which degrades over time. With good, well-burned media and decent storage conditions, the organic dye is supposed to last for at least a few decades, but cheap media and/or poor burns mean that the data can be suspect right from the start, without even considering what happens over time.


Also, Can you record a tv show onto a cd or must it be dvd media and what is the difference?The big difference between the two types of discs is capacity - even though they're the same physical size a DVD holds over 7 times a much as a CD (about 12X as much for dual-layer DVDs).

There's an Asian standard called "Video-CD" that allows almost an hour of lower-resolution video to be recorded on a CD. Most DVD (but not all) players will also play these discs. With a PC you can record DVD-quality video on a CD, but you won't be able to fit very much onto a disc and most DVD players won't play it. No DVD recorders that I know of will record video onto a CD.

dumb question but how is it my music CDs from the 80s (not burned but bought in stores) are fine to this day but everyone has so much trouble burning their own. Also, Can you record a tv show onto a cd or must it be dvd media and what is the difference?

I bought my first CD in 1989. I have at least 6, that I know of, that will no longer play, and if I checked everything (I have over 400), doubtless there would be more that won't play.

I have to disagree with Sean. Pressed, commercially manufactured CDs are a very thin layer of aluminum deposited on a plastic disc, and covered with lacquer. Aluminum does oxidize, rather easily. If you have any aluminum lawn furniture, perhaps you have noticed the whitish aluminum oxide that its surface aquires. The aluminum in a CD is so thin, that almost any oxidation makes it unreadable. There is air entrained in the lacquer, and even in tiny holes in the plastic disc. This can be enough to oxidize the aluminum layer. All things considered, we are lucky that they last as well as they do. If you want a CD that will last a lifetime, or more, you will have to buy gold CDs. Check out www.mofi.com. There are also other manufacturers of gold CDs.

There is air entrained in the lacquer, and even in tiny holes in the plastic disc. This can be enough to oxidize the aluminum layer.These are very real problems that can occur, yet the biggest difference is still the issue that organic dyes used in recordable media will degrade even if they don't come into contact with air or humidity. Therefore well-manufacturered pressed media can potentially have a much longer lifespan than the best recordable discs. But it's certainly very true that the same problems that can shorten the lifespan of recordable media can also affect pressed discs.

If you want a CD that will last a lifetime, or more, you will have to buy gold CDs. Check out www.mofi.com. There are also other manufacturers of gold CDs.These should be pretty bulletproof as long as they're handled properly. I couldn't didn't see any reference to it, but if these also have the special hardcoat that reduces scratches then they'd be pretty durable indeed.

You can also buy recordable media that uses a gold reflective layer. That removes oxidation as a potential problem but they're still subject to the issue of the organic dyes degrading over the decades.

These are very real problems that can occur, yet the biggest difference is still the issue that organic dyes used in recordable media will degrade even if they don't come into contact with air or humidity. Therefore well-manufacturered pressed media can potentially have a much longer lifespan than the best recordable discs. But it's certainly very true that the same problems that can shorten the lifespan of recordable media can also affect pressed discs.

I agree, that is correct.


These should be pretty bulletproof as long as they're handled properly. I couldn't didn't see any reference to it, but if these also have the special hardcoat that reduces scratches then they'd be pretty durable indeed.

Hmm... I thought I read they had the hard coat some time in the past...



You can also buy recordable media that uses a gold reflective layer. That removes oxidation as a potential problem but they're still subject to the issue of the organic dyes degrading over the decades.

MoFi sells gold DVD-Rs, designed to last for, well, longer than you or I will. Click on "Accessories," and scroll down a bit. You will find them listed in various quantities. Cheapest is 50@ $195. Wish I could afford some. They use a special "annular dye" that doesn't break down. They have a detailed explanation of what goes into them, and how they are made to last.

MoFi sells gold DVD-Rs, designed to last for, well, longer than you or I will.That's a very interesting product, thanks for the link. It's very tempting to buy a couple of the discs just to see how they test out.

As a data point, I thought my experience might be useful. I bought my first DVD recorder, and E85 just as it came out or shortly thereafter. I bought a bunch, (250 or so) Ritek disks and started recording with fervor. After those were used up, I switched to T-Ys and have been using them exclusively since.

A few months ago, after some reports of Ritek disks fading, I decided to replace all my Ritek disks with T-Ys. So, in the interest of time and so on, bought a stand-alone DVD duplicator and started making copies.

Of the 250 to 300 disks I copied, five of the Ritek disks were unreadable, in the duplicator, in the machine that made them, and in every other DVD player I tried. Simply looking at the disk surface of the failed ones showed discolored patches and streaks in the dye (the disks were flawless in terms of fingerprints or dust).

this was an eye-opening experience,and shows you that the longevity claims of the manufacturers are very inflated.

That's a very interesting product, thanks for the link. It's very tempting to buy a couple of the discs just to see how they test out.

If you do, please let us know the results!

I was just reading this www.mofi.com
it is intresting that at the bottom of the page (DVD-r) it says "Lifetime Guarantee
After creating a DVD-R that would last a lifetime, MFSL backs it up with a limited lifetime guarantee."
The price of $4 each, as opposed to $.50 makes it hard to justify my burn aditude. Were I say burn everything, no matter how small, to a disk and sort it out later. $4 a disk makes you combine stuff on disk, and not waste one minute of space.
With a lifetime guarantee, it makes paying $4 a disk look better. I wonder if they will replace the disks for real, and how they detirmane the disk is bad. Because you know it's not just "we'll take your word"
Thanks Mike

But will they replace the lost data? Of course not. That's what's really at risk. If all a bad disc meant was having to burn the data to a new disc, I wouldn't mind a disc going bad. No guarantee can get your data back though.

At $4.00 a disc they can afford to replace those that come back.

Heck at $4.00 a disc I might offer the same warranty on CMC media. And play the odds. My guess is when considering the actual cost of production it would be an extremely successful business model.

Lots of discs have lifetime warranties.. Sony does, last time I checked (and last spindle I bought a few months ago)... it means nothing, as explained.

At $4/disc, and Verbatims at $11.99/spindle of 50 right now, you could sell Verbatims at $4 each, make a $3.75ish profit on each, and replace (and this at retail, not wholesale, prices!) each disc like 16 times before you'd have to worry about your bottom line. ;)

Heck at $4.00 a disc I might offer the same warranty on CMC media. And play the odds.I dunno. If you could get the CMC media at $0.10/disc, you'd need to have have around 3% or so to be usable in order to make a profit. Do you think you can find a batch that's actually that good? ;)

I dunno. If you could get the CMC media at $0.10/disc, you'd need to have have around 3% or so to be usable in order to make a profit. Do you think you can find a batch that's actually that good? ;)

You're right. I might have calculated incorrectly. My tests now show a 96% failure rate or a 4% success rate. Not as lucrative as I had imagined. :eek:

Stop the presses!!

At $4 per disc, you are a lot more likely to actually ask for a free replacement disc, than at $.25 per disc. If I had a few bad burns, I would do it in a minute. Obviously, they would want the defective disc returned. I doubt that they would refuse to replace any, unless there was obvious evidence that they had been damaged by the user.

But, I agree, lifetime replacement isn't necessarily indicative of a high quality product. But, MoFi has a good reputation, and, if you read the design specs, certainly their gold discs are more likely to endure than the best Taiyo Yuden has to offer. MoFi has tested them, as well as can be, without actually testing them over a 100 years. If I could afford it, I would use them for just about anything that took a lot of work to produce, or was irreplaceable, or likely to be impossible to find again.

I don't think MoFi has their own DVD factory. I'm sure they contract out the manufacture of the discs, providing the design specs, and testing the results. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they has Taiyo making them, due to their reputation. Perhaps if anyone here buys some, and gets the media code, we'll know.

Is there anybody who uses these disks? How about tests, anybody seen any test results? I'm tempted to get a few just to try them out. The thing is I'm super busy now, it will have to wait.
Thanks MIke

A cautionary tale about cheap DVD-R blanks.
This may be coincidence, but it supports a feeling I've had for a while that the computer drive makes more robust, reliable burns.


I've also been suspicious that this is the case as well. For one thing, I'm uneasy about the fact that DVD recorders don't have an option to verify the compilation that has been burned. And I've had a few discs that I burned in the DVD recorder that I later could not copy in my computer. As a result, for important videos I will sometimes burn them with the recorder onto DVD+RW and then use the computer to copy them to permanent media and perform the verification.

Is there anybody who uses these disks? How about tests, anybody seen any test results? I'm tempted to get a few just to try them out. The thing is I'm super busy now, it will have to wait.
Thanks MIke
Here's a page of test data for Mitsui's (MAM-A) gold DVD media. (http://www.mam-a.com//products/dvd/Gold%20DVD/DVDR%20Gold.htm)

There are several other interesting pages in the same website, like in the "Technical Papers" section.

AFAIK YMMV TIFWIW!

Here's a page of test data for Mitsui's (MAM-A) gold DVD media. (http://www.mam-a.com//products/dvd/Gold%20DVD/DVDR%20Gold.htm)

There are several other interesting pages in the same website, like in the "Technical Papers" section.

AFAIK YMMV TIFWIW!

Yep, lots of interesting info there. Thanks for the link! Do you happen to know if they are the manufacturers of the Mobile Fidelity gold DVD-Rs?

Yep, lots of interesting info there. Thanks for the link! Do you happen to know if they are the manufacturers of the Mobile Fidelity gold DVD-Rs?
It appears (here) Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab "makes" (or commissions?) those (they're called "Ultradisc)? (http://www.highfidelitydiscs.nl/customer/product.php?productid=88026&XCARTSESSID=4...)

Here's a page with their pricing. (http://www.mofi.com/productcart/pc/viewCategories.asp?idCategory=11)

Well, I've posted about MoFi here before, including info on their Ultradiscs, and the pricing. I also said that I was sure MoFi contracted out the manufacture. The MAM-A discs sound very much like the MoFi discs, and probably are the same. I just wondered if you knew, conclusively? I note that the MAM-A discs are about $50 less, per stack of 50.

Here's a page of test data for Mitsui's (MAM-A) gold DVD media. (http://www.mam-a.com//products/dvd/Gold%20DVD/DVDR%20Gold.htm)

There are several other interesting pages in the same website, like in the "Technical Papers" section.

AFAIK YMMV TIFWIW!


Thanks
Mike

...for important videos I will sometimes burn them with the recorder onto DVD+RW and then use the computer to copy them to permanent media and perform the verification.Just remember that the ability to copy a disc successfully doesn't mean that it's a good burn. It's quite possible that the burn is just barely readable and any amount of degradation will render it unreadable. See [this post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=11248531&postcount=187)] earlier in the thread for an example of how much a DVD can degrade in as little as a few months.

The only way to be sure about your burns is to use your computer to check the burn quality using software such as Nero with a DVD drive capable of reporting raw error rates.

Yes, I have been obtaining great results with Verbatim MCC02RG20 discs.

The Verbatim's on sale at Buy.com right now are MCC 03RG20