Verbatim 95102 still available? If not, now what?

All of the burners in every model of Philips/Mag recorders are 8x or lower, so using 16x media doesn't really gain you any real advantage for these units, yet according to posts in Wajo's sticky thread, 8x media requires less power from the laser assembly, presumably extending laser life.

I can't really add to the +R/-R debate, except to say:


huh?

Wasn't Funai behind +R? Since they also make the Magnavoxes, there shouldn't be any obstacle for either format.

Technically, Philips was one of the founding members of the DVD+RW Alliance, altho Funai is joined at their hip with the Philips brand, Magnavox.

Lots of that info here.

Disc speed stuff here.

Alright, I'll bite. I risk a chance of sending this thread spiraling out of control, but I haven't seen convincing posts/links refuting the information presented here regarding +R/-R advantages for use on the Philips/Mag recorders.

Oh, crap!

I can see I've got to spruce up that 11% statement, which now reads:

"add 8% or 11% for a grossly estimated HSD/RTR time available."

I'm not sure how to make it even more "gross," but I'll find a way!

(Seriously, that was just my attempt to give SOME guidance not based on actual tests for exact percentages).

DataLife Plus is the best Verb makes, it is NOT the same as the landfill "Life" series. The broad agreement is that TYs are the best option.




I use TY -R 8x, in my Pio 640, and I have found that they burn every bit as fast as the Verb 16x AZO I used for years. That was a surprise to me.



The real differences between +Rs and -Rs are negligible. The only real reasons to choose one over another are:

1. If you will be giving away DVDs to people with old players, use -R. They are more universally compatible in older players.

2. Some players are designed to use one format better than the other. I use -Rs, because my Pio will FF -Rs much faster than it will +Rs.



CB is right, almost everyone here would agree with that. If you have had a 99% success rate with Memowrecks, you must be the luckiest person on the planet. Will you buy me a lottery ticket?

www.supermediastore.com

great selection of TY, Verbatim, +/-, 8x, 16x...

Verbatim DataLifePlus, esp the "pro" line of 8x media, has always been much scarcer in 100-paks than 50-paks. If they are disappearing from the few distributors that carried them, its probably just falling overall demand and Verbatim is reducing its SKU items to just the 50-paks. Curiously, with TY its the opposite: its almost impossible to buy TY in anything but their chintzy 100-pak cakeboxes (I always have to transfer my new TY stash to smaller 50-pak pods).

BTW, there seems to be some confusion on the parts of some AVS members regarding other AVS member's positions on different media types. Since I have been referenced several times lately, in some cases from older posts, I'm gonna clarify my own opinion here since this is a media-related thread:

First off, number one point with a bullet: the Magnavox line of DVD/HDD recorders are FREAKISH one-off designs with burners unlike any other recorder ever sold. Because of this, certain longstanding issues and principles used with other recorders or PC burners DO NOT apply to the Magnavox to the same degree, or at all. The Magnavox is its own thing, it stands by itself for better and worse. If you don't own one, you won't know of these differences, if you do own one, don't assume because the Magnavox performs a certain way that runs counter to typical experience of other members that you're "right" and everyone else is "wrong." Also bear in mind that most Magnavox buyers are not obsessed with posting to a forum thread every time they turn the thing on (so our sample pool is somewhat skewed).

Its a little annoying to constantly hear that I and others who are posting general media tips must be demented luddites because we don't slavishly follow the results of various "lab tests" cited repeatedly by a few of you. Thats not only insulting, its total BS: "lab tests" of media have been shown to have marginal relation to real-world results over and over again, ESPECIALLY when standalone DVD recorders are involved. Consumer DVD recorders are the most half-assed, stupidly engineered voodoo products ever dumped on the mass market. That they work at all is amazing, those of us who love them really love them for what they can do for us, but they are bastard products that make no attempt to even mildly adhere to the larger PC-based recordable media standards. They are fun to use, overpriced crap.

One would never know from all the noise made by Magnavox owners, but most of the long-term members here persist in using older DVD/HDD recorders made by Toshiba, Panasonic, Pioneer, JVC and Sony. There is nothing wrong with these machines and they have many features unavailable on current models like the Magnavox series. Most of the newcomers to AVS have bought DVD/VHS combo recorders, some made by Funai but many by the usual Japanese brand names. The biggest issue facing users of non-Funai recorders is media compatibility: with the exception of recent Funai models, all DVD recorders are stupidly programmed with the old outdated 8x burning instructions. When you load 16x, the burner goes nuts trying to figure out how to burn it, eventually defaulting to generic max power mode that is not ideal for any specific media. This wears the laser out faster and results in some borderline burns. It is for this reason most of us old-timers recommend 8x "professional" media like TY or Verbatim DataLifePlus.

The Funai-based recorders are newer. The Magnavox DVD/HDD models in particular are MUCH better able to handle 16x media: it "knows" it can't actually burn at 16x and has proper instruction for burning 16x at a slower 7x speed. This is the source of much confusion, because Magnavox owners can get away with using really dodgy PC-optimized 16x media like Memorex that would fail in two seconds loaded into an older Toshiba or Sony recorder, or a three year old laptop or Apple iMac. Point scored for the Magnavox: this is a very nice feature. But it doesn't change a thing for anyone not using a Magnavox, and even the Magnavox will be better-served using the more-appropriate 8x media because it requires less laser power.

And after all that, we still have the silly +R vs -R debate, which should have been put to rest years ago. You could have a thousand angels with a thousand lab tests proving the "superiority" of +R dance on the head of a pin, and it will not change results in the real world one iota. There are no absolutes in the +R vs -R question: all answers are relative to what brand of media, which quality level within that brand, what speed rating, whether its write-once or RW, and ... oh, yeah what hardware you're using it in.

+R was created by a consortium (including Philips) partially to get around -R royalty payments and partially to offer functions not possible on -R discs. Being created a few years later than -R, it could make some adjustments to the recordable DVD concept that look "superior" on paper. For the brief time that there was a format war, you did have to choose -R or +R, because no hardware would accept both. But this ended in 2006: there is no more format war, you can use whatever you want. The only restrictions depend on your hardware: older players and PC drives often prefer -R, although you can sometimes make them play +R by changing the booktype (on a PC, most recorders do not have this setting). And Panasonic recorders/players to this day sometimes have trouble with +R: straight playback is fine but speed-search, slow-mo and chapter jumping may be buggy on some models. Conversely, older Philips recorders can only burn +R discs. In these cases, your hand is forced by the hardware.

Otherwise, for all practical purposes in DVD recorder use, neither - / + is technically superior. The "lab tests" showing +R to be more archival are based on lab fantasies: not real life. You are not using a lab-quality burner in a lab-quality PC running lab-quality software. Your home is not a lab: under normal storage conditions neither has an advantage. The theoretical "superiority" of +R means squat if the specific batch you bought won't burn right to begin with in your recorder. (The home-spun "error tests" people run on their own discs have been proven repeatedly to be highly suspect: a rough approximation at best, totally misleading at worst. Consumer PC drives are not optimized for truly accurate error testing, esp if you're using Nero to do it.)

We're in a rotten period right now where optical media is dying as a format: mfrs are scrambling to lower prices and retain profitability, which means all bets are off. Every few months, depending on brand, sometimes the -R is reported to burn more reliably in recorders and sometimes the +R. So it would be foolish to insist you "must" use one or the other exclusively. Brand reputations we took for granted for years have been turned on their head: until recently, TY was the go-to for -R and Verbatim was tops in +R. Over the past year, TY -R has had an explosion of failure reports while its +R (that was totally ignored) has gotten stellar reviews. At the same time, Verbatim AZO +R is suddenly failing in even the Magnavox, which can normally burn a coffee can lid if it had to, while the Verbatim AZO -R is working much more reliably. This can change again at any minute, and you have to go with the flow.

If you don't have a DVD recorder with HDD, and must make emergency edits directly on the DVD, +R offers a bit more flexibility (not much, but some). But neither +R nor -R is particularly suited for "direct to DVD" recording: for this you need RW media, and in RW media there ARE distinct advantages to +RW over -RW (better editing flexibility, no need to finalize for compatibility with all hardware, and ability to record certain types of copy-restricted broadcasts). The only advantage of -RW is broader compatibility with older playback hardware.

Thank you CitiBear, that was a thoughtful, level-headed and common sense reply.

There is one other difference between +R and -R that I read about, and once I get my hands on both types, I will test it out and post my results.

This is not true. Blank discs have “fall-back strategies” The fallback is written into the disc “if using 4x burner use this strategy” and the DVD recorder firmware reads this and complies by calibrating laser power, speed and other variables. I have burned hundreds of 16x discs with no issues, many have burned thousands of 16x discs with a disc failure rate of 1 in a 1,000 and their standalones are still going strong. Others have burned thousands of real-time burns with very few disc failures. This is clearly documented.

You may argue that using a 8x disc in a 6x burner may be more ideal than using a 16x disc in a 6x burner. That may be true for some but in my “real world” it doesn’t make a bit of difference because my discs are burning just fine and my oldest discs are still working perfectly. That’s my “real world” You on the other hand are always complaining about getting bad initial burns or archival failures yet you use 8x media. Talk about real world usage.


Well my home-spun error tests are only a small part of my over-all results, Physical inspection, real-time playback and proper storage habits (meaning individual cases with no stacking weight) is also part of my archiving. So I say again – all my 16x verb azo discs work – you on the other hand are continually complaining about bad burns and long term archival errors.

I wish Premium Tys still came in those chintzy cakeboxes Some bean counter at Ty(JVC) must of figured the 50 cents(or whatever they cost) for the chintzy cakebox was just too much to bear Now even the premium Tys don't come with a cakebox but they are just shrink wrapped like the value line(my most recent SMS order was this way)
My god, you can purchase crap Memorex and they come in a nice spindle but JVC can't even afford to spend 50 cents on a crappy cakebox and instead treat their discs like garbage and only shrink wraps them! I wonder how long before some bean counter decides to cut corners on the actual DVDs

I can only speak for my RDR-HX780 and what it says in the manual that came in the sealed box. And how quietly it burns 16x discs that seem to work just fine.

Word for word from Page 119 of manual

Usable disc versions (as of April 2008)
- 8x speed or slower DVD+RWs
- 6x speed or slower DVD-RWs (Ver.1.1. Ver.1.2 with CPRM*2)
- 16x speed or slower DVD+Rs
- 16x speed or slower DVD-Rs (Ver.2.0, Ver.2.1 with CPRM*2)
- 8x speed or slower DVD+R DL (Double Layer) Discs
-8x speed or slower DVD-R DL (Dual Layer) Discs (Ver.3.0 with CPRM*2)

So what is a 16x speed DVD-R (Ver.2.0, Ver.2.1) and when did the spec come out?
According to this document http://www.dvdfllc.co.jp/pdf/supple/rg_3.pdf

File system specs for Ver.2.1 = Sept 2002 (all x-speeds)
- Supplemental information added February 2007 (all x-speeds)

Physical specs for Ver.2.1 = April 2005 (all x-speeds)
with a Control Data Zone update in April 2006 (all x-speeds)
-16x speed revision 6.0 = September 2004
-8x speed revision 3.01 = April 2005
According to this document 8x media was slightly revised after 16x media's last revision.

According to my RDR-HX780 manual (as of April 2008) any Ver.2.0, Ver.2.1 16x DVD-R should work fine and fallback on burn speed since my firmware is newer than the last 16x disc revision and should have no problem reading the fallback strategy.

If you look at the latest TY 16x -R or the Verbatim azo 16x -R - both companies state that their newest discs comply with the above and will fallback to slower speeds.

TY
http://ds.yuden.co.jp/Detail/ut/M/M/...VD-R%20DL.html
DVD-R
Conforming to the Specification of "DVD-R for General" Version 2.1
and the Optional Specification of "16x-SPEED DVD-R" Revision 6.0
Common
"DVD±R" design assure of writing to 16x
New dye for writing high speed is developed
Developed new dye is writing high speed, and resulted high density
write / read ( for 1x to 16x write)

I don't have the web link for the verbs right now but I just read my packaging and it indeed states Version 2.1 discs.

So please if you guys are going to make statements that my stand-alone firmware is older than the current Verbatim 16x discs or the current TY 16x discs and say that my deck has no strategy to calibrate itself falling back on the speed using these discs and will go nuts and burn its laser up, please back it up with some verifiable info.

I just looked at the SMS web site, and you can still order T-Y premium 8X disks in the cake box. I usually get my T-Y disks from Rima.com, and they also advertise them as coming in cake boxes.

As Church AV Guy said, they are still available, at a current $2 premium. For the savings of $2, I just chose to reuse/recycle my empty cake boxes.

Taiyo Yuden Silver Lacquer 8X DVD-R Media (Premium Line) 100 Pack in Plastic Wrap $27.99

Taiyo Yuden Silver Lacquer 8X DVD-R Media (Premium Line) 100 Pack in Cake Box $29.99

I think you may have this part backwards. +R/RW media does not support CPRM, only -R/RW media and RAM does. So the advantage goes to -R/RW for being able to record copy-once content. But since the Magnavox with its +VR format is a non-CPRM compliant recorder, it doesn't matter at all.

When you say: "the Magnavox line of DVD/HDD recorders are FREAKISH one-off designs with burners unlike any other recorder ever sold", what do you really mean? Is it the burner hardware you consider to be freakish or is it the way (+VR format) the disks are burned? I know people who want to PC edit tend to experience problems with their editing software when opening the Magnavox generated disks. I have no direct experience with +VR format but would tend to suspect that as a culprit.

From Rima.com:

This page lists "JVC Taiyo Yuden DVD-R 4.7GB 8X Silver Lacquer, 100-Pack" as quantity 1-5 $25.99, quantity 6-11 $25.00. The picture shows the disks in a cake box, and every time I have placed an order for these, they have been in a cake box. However, there is no free shipping like SMS has for orders of over $50, so that raises the total cost of course.

Thanks for the links, if purchasing 200 it looks like it's just $3 more total($1.5 each) so I think I'll go that route. I normally just order off their email specials so I didn't realize their was so little difference in the price. Guess it's not Ty then but rather how SMS orders them
$27.99 shipped is still a good price for 8x media that I never really have problems with.

Jeez, jjeff - didn't you just order a big load of DVD-R's not too long ago?

Is Digado using multiple accounts here?

I'm still in full swing on my VHS to DVD conversion project I've only got ~200 left to convert but I was down to less than a spindle of Tys left.
It's really been a chore, 4 machines still working running pretty much all evening and weekends. I still have several spindles of Sony flat tops left for day to day burning but for my conversion project I'm only using Tys.

I strange quirk I've been running into lately. Occasionally my copies were of commercial DVDs or VHS tapes. Back in the day they recorded just fine to blank tapes but now when I try and backup some of those tapes I'm getting CP errors which pause my recording until the CP'd title is through I don't know why my VCRs originally recorded them, I mean I did occasionally get MV problems. Mostly dark flashing on the recording but this CP is more in the background and not noticeable until I try and record it to DVD

No, I'm just DigaDo at AVS.

At MyCe I've been DigaDo from 2007 to December 2009 and from January 2011 to the present day. I was VoxHumana during 2010 but that's a long story.

At TCM and BenzWorld I'm TalkieTime. For a brief time at another forum I was Mr. Bucket, pronounced "bouquet."

I still have more than 600 AZO blanks on hand for use in my CopyPal.

The flagpoles are stowed in the boot for non-state occasions.