Best DVD Media for Recording

The "name brands" found at retail stores are no longer of the best quality.

Taiyo Yuden Premium Line 8x DVD-R discs are the the best I've used. So far I've burned and archived around 1,300 TY discs on my Panasonic, Philips and Magnavox recorders. There have been no problems with these discs when they are handled correctly. TY discs may be found here:

http://www.supermediastore.com/taiyo...-100-pack.html

Taiyo Yuden, definitely . They have the best image after a burn across the board with all manufactures of dvd burner. The real hardcore 'freaks' have run tests to verify this, and TYs win. Some like to match the best dvd make with the make of the burner. A director I work with loves verbatim DL and I will never sway him from that. He burns dvds on his mac notebook.

Makes me wonder which dvds will last the longest, archived away. Tho if they should last at least 20yrs before we have to move them to the next great format.

The new inkjet printable from TY, the AquaGuard is the MATTE finish and WaterShield is the GLOSSY surface. The best just get better.

"Costs a fortune" is relative: people have real short memories about how expensive VHS tapes are compared to even premium DVD-Rs (the cheapest decent T120s still cost about $1.79 each). There is really nothing left in USA retail stores that could be called "quality media", except perhaps Verbatim, and thats only if you intend to burn them on a PC or a brand new Panasonic DVD recorder. If you have any other brand of recorder, especially more than a year old, skip "bargain" retail 16x media and get in the habit of ordering premium 8x media online. We are very very lucky to still have two brands available in 8x: TY and Verbatim DataLife. The TY usually runs about $36/100 delivered, sometimes less if on sale. The Verbatim DataLife is a bit harder to find and can run as high as $50/100 delivered.

These two 8x media are in a different league from the discs you see on sale at Staples or Best Buy every weekend for $15-25/100. They cost more, but you never EVER get a coaster, they burn well in any DVD recorder or burner no matter how old, and the quality of the burns varies from a little better to much better than what you can achieve with store-bought 16x bargain media. The Verbatim 8x uses metal azo dyes that are about as archival as you can get, the TY uses a more organic dye infused with exclusive stabilizing agents that make it nearly as archival. A few years ago, some hardware burned one better than the other, but today its a wash. Some people make a hobby of running burn quality tests on their PCs, those tests sometimes show a higher error rate with the TY but this is questionable due to accuracy issues with consumer-level testing materials and software. Certainly no one has yet complained of a TY disc "going bad", so I wouldn't hesitate to use TY or Verbatim interchangeably.

Retail 16x media is not so much "bad" as it is inflexible: it often relies too heavily on having the latest up-to-date burning hardware and firmware. Since updates are usually not possible with standalone recorders or laptop drives, you avoid potential problems by opting for 8x. And as drives age, they suck in dust and fingerprint oil which slowly compromises their ability to make good 16x burns: its mechanically easier for a drive to burn the 8x.

If you have a fairly new DVD recorder, I recommend Verbatim 16x. They are readily available at Office Max, Best Buys, etc., and often go on sale for as low as $19.99 for 100. I have used mostly Verbatim -Rs, also +R DLs. I have burnt probably close to 2,000 of them so far, with only one coaster. But, they don't work on some older recorders.

Everyone raves about Taiyo Yuden, and I won't dispute that they are the best, but they do cost more, I can't just go pick them up, so I haven't tried them.

I think only DVD-RAM disks cost around that much.

Low end BD-R goes for that much...which is why you won't see me using a Blu Ray burner on my PC anytime soon.

When I was at Fry's a few weeks ago a 5-pack of Panasonic RAM discs was $7.99. These are reusable thousands of times though, unlike a DVD-R disc.

Over here on the east coast B&H has a 5 pack DVD RAM for $8.50. They were expensive.

Jhon, just please don't get suckered by the 'archival' gold disks, they used to be the best for archival, but not anymore. So much for that 100 year promise, right. One videographer and I had an argument about those. He'll happily charge his customers extra for gold disks, because he has to pay more for them too (so they must be good, huh?) He also thinks miniDV will last longer on the shelf than my already 12 year old DVD burns.
Oh and watch out for cheaper TY fakes too...

I agree about Taiyo Yuden, and check for something when you go to a web site to buy them. With Taiyo Yuden you will see "Value" Line and "Premium" Line...obviously go with Premium. The only other brand I would also recommend is Verbatim as they have been pretty consistently good in the bunches that I have purchased over the years. Sometimes I will price check and whoever has a cheaper price between the two brands I will pick up those.

My three favorite places to buy media online:

http://www.meritline.com/
http://www.rima.com/
http://www.supermediastore.com/

Today only 600 Taiyo Yuden Premium Line 8x DVD-R discs for $149.00 with free shipping:

http://www.supermediastore.com/taiyo...-100-pack.html

It's the next day, and the "One Day Only. While Supplies Last." special is STILL going on. The reason for the 600 disk special is, they come in cases consisting of six 100 disk cakeboxes. They just slap a shipping label on the cardboard box and send it off.

I agree, this is likely the absolute best media you can get today, without spending many times as much. Even with TAX in California, it's 26.88 cents per disk, for this quality. Why would anyone buy "bargain" disks?

These Premium Line discs are a good buy. Yesterday I ordered another box of Premium Line discs.

These pictures show the TY Premium Line and Value Line shipping boxes.

Use a Sharpie Fine Point or similar alcohol based felt tip pen to label discs. Do not use a ball point pen or affix adhesive labels to DVDs.

I store my home-recorded DVDs in "wallets," that I refer to as albums:

http://www.shop4tech.com/z/CD_DVD_Wallets/1_97_284/

My current "albums," the Targus EDP025US Matrix Storage case, were priced around $32.00 for two (including shipping). Each of these Targus albums holds 320 discs.

The attached photo shows my archive of around 5,000 home-recorded DVDs.

How are the zippers on these cases? Every storage case I've looked at, the zipper strip (for want of a better term-the piece that the zipper is sewn to the case) doesn't come all the way to the end of the spine. Dust can easily get inside. I've been keeping burned discs in spindles, and while it's nice for stacking, as well as keeping dust out, it can be a pain searching for a disc you may want to watch.

Here is the Targus case zipper closure. Notice that there is enough slack to slip a finger inside with the zipper near the end of its travel.

^ Thank you. Well that's waaay better than the cases I've been looking at.

Here's an inside view of the Targus album turned to the page with the most recently finalized discs. Mija, our cat, doesn't let this album disturb her sleep atop "her" ironing board. The most recent Targus albums give off a leather-like odor, really. Mija doesn't care.

That comes out to just under 25¢ each. For those who wish to order less quantity, Supermediastore also has 200 Taiyo Yuden Premium Line 8x DVD-R discs for $50 with free shipping, which also comes out to 25¢ each.

http://www.supermediastore.com/taiyo...media-200.html

Thats funny, DigaDo: your handwriting and labeling "style" looks just like my own! I thought I was happy storing my burned discs in spindles, but your Targus cases are awfully tempting (Westly-C is right on: these look much better made than the usual zipper cases I've seen in stores).

I just ordered 1200 TY from the supermediastore promo: I don't really need them yet but the offer is too good to pass up. Anyone on the fence needs to jump on this one immediately: 25 cents apiece for TY 8x premium delivered is crazy lowball cheap, competitive with the weekend "junk media" sales at Staples and other big box stores. One nice aspect of supermediastore is they accept PayPal, so if you have "forgotten money" sitting in your account from past eBay transactions (as I did), you can pay for the discs that way and not "feel" the $ hit as much.

1200 disks at once! Wow, my hat's off to you.

The 600 disks that I really didn't need arrived yesterday. It's that simple, I placed the order Tuesday, and it arrived Wednesday. As I suspected, they just slapped a new maining label on the T-Y cardboard box and sent it out the door. I fully agree with you, and the only reason I bought these, "Anyone on the fence needs to jump on this one immediately: 25 cents apiece for TY 8x premium delivered is crazy lowball cheap, competitive with the weekend "junk media" sales at Staples and other big box stores." This is the reason. How well do they age in an unburnt sondition on a shelf? Do they only degrade once written to?

Yeah, I guess 1200 in one shot seems like a lot of blank discs for one person. There's a method to my madness, though: I will need these discs after the summer passes. I'm still way behind in my VHS tape dubbing project, and easily have at least 1200 more to go. Once the air conditioners go off in my neighborhood, it will be safe again to plug in a half dozen VCRs and DVD/HDD recorders and run them around the clock. Another point worth considering is the increasing number of underground murmurs that TY is leaning towards dropping its 8x media soon: while I'm skeptical of these rumors, there's no denying 8x is a small niche market with no future in retail or OEM. TY is not a charity, if they need to increase cash flow by diversifying more into 16x production then the 8x might be a casualty.

Since I already have 700 TY and 300 Verbatim blank 8x discs in my basement, this new shipment will bring the total reserve supply to 2200. But I figure I'll need at least 1500 to finish the VHS transfers, and the remaining discs will slowly get used up in day-to-day archiving off cable. I used to worry about blank media "aging" in storage, but it doesn't seem to be an issue (especially since they sit in their original crates in a dark cool basement). Some of my "old stock" TYs are nearly 15 months in storage, and burn perfectly fine. And I've got some cheap CD-R blanks dating back to 2002 that sit exposed in their spindle near a sunny window: these (amazingly) still burn OK when I use them for casual backups!

I just purchased 600 premium TY's at Supermedia's site using the coupon "Super10" which is their current "Back to School" special (very time limited). That brought the price down to 23 cents a disc and, like CitiBear says, this is crazy cheap for quality media. You can use the coupon code "Super20" if you want to purchase two sets of 600 (the latter coupon is $20 off of $200 purchase, the former is $10 off of $100).

I don't need these either right now, just another box to stash in the closet, but hey, I always worry when the 8x might go away and I'm a heavy user of DVRs that seem to love this media despite stipulating 4x discs.

The TY 8x Premiumline is disc-coded TYG02, the 8x Valueline is also disc-coded TYG02. Anyone know for sure what the difference between the two is?

The "Value Line" discs failed TYs strict quality control tests and are sold off to liquidators who resell them to media vendors: technically, they aren't officially sold or supported by TY. In practice these "rejects" are still better quality than most media you can find in a store, but you do run the risk of getting 16x instead of 8x and other issues (the packaging and distribution of the Value Line is very haphazard.) The popularity of the "Value Line" is an enduring mystery: the supposed savings over the flawless official "Premium" TY is so small I can't imagine why the hell anyone would bother. If you're patient, suppliers offer these great deals on the Premium TY several times a year (often pricing it cheaper than the Value Line). Unless you get a discount of 20% or more over the Premium, there's no advantage and some degree of risk with the Value Line.

TY sets out to manufacture "Premium Line" discs. I'm assuming that TY quality control samples each lot. When samples do not perform up to the quality/performance standards for "Premium Line" discs the entire lot is designated as "seconds" and packaged as "Value DVD" discs. These are then sold as "Value Line" discs.

See this post for a recent report of a visible irregularity found with a Value Line disc:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...3#post17017463