OT: Blank DVD quality ratings ie:Kodak Gold

DWhitevidman wrote on 11/6/2007, 6:11 PM
Although I read a couple years ago about the potential short life expectancy of DVD and CDs, but I didn't put much stock in it. Therefore I didn't look for and wasn't overly concerned with the quality of disks as I was buying name brands.

I don't have a horror story yet due to failing media, but as a budding amatuer I've shot , produced and have distributed 100 of dvds with High School band concerts, choir, variety shows and have produced four wedding videos. All burned on name brands but run of the mill discs.

It was brought to my attention recently during some dialogue with the president of KMP Media, Steve Mizelle, who under license from Kodak, markets the Kodak brands of DVDs and CDs, that the mass majority of discs being purchased today, do ultimately have numerous drawbacks and limitaions regarding life expectancy.

My question is where can I learn about the various top brands of the "archival" type products currently being offered. I've found two in addition to the Kodak Gold product and don't want to be uninformed about who's saying what about comparable products. Thanks

Comments

john-beale wrote on 11/6/2007, 6:39 PM
Based on anecdotal reports from this and other forums from duplicators that run a lot of products (1000s of DVDs per month), Taiyo Yuden is generally considered the best. It's what I use and I'm happy with it. Media ID TYG02 (8x disc) produces consistently better quality than TYG03 (16x) regardless of the actual burn speed, at least on my drives. Some people swear by Verbatim media.

There are relatively few DVD makers advertising "archival" quality, I know MAM-A does for their gold based media. I don't know anyone using these in large volume. Quite apart from the price, these also have lower initial compatibility because gold has lower reflectance of red laser light than silver or aluminum. Even if they last 100 years, the customer may not like it if it doesn't play in their player right now.
PeterWright wrote on 11/6/2007, 6:57 PM
Because they're so cheap these days, I use a Hard Drive to keep a backup of each DVD.
DGates wrote on 11/6/2007, 7:30 PM
This link was brought up on this forum before. It's shows who actually makes the various disks, and a run-down of the subsequent quality.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm

riredale wrote on 11/6/2007, 7:37 PM
So a search on this board--this question comes up from time to time.

My own opinion is that good-quality stock such as Taiyo Yuden will last for many decades. Cheap junk will start to fail in a few years.

I have burned CDs dating back to when a 2x CD burner was state-of-the-art. Most of them are just fine. I had about a dozen CDs (under the Great Quality brand) that began to delaminate within a couple of years.
DGates wrote on 11/6/2007, 8:06 PM
Is General Quality Fry's brand?
farss wrote on 11/6/2007, 10:27 PM
I've probably burned a 100 or so MAM disks, consider them as archive copies. There's MAMA and MAME I think, both the same just one's out of their Eurpopean plant and the other from the USA.

The ones that were for our own archives we use to duplicate from, way too expensive for general use and as noted may not play terribly well in some players.

Bob.
DWhitevidman wrote on 11/7/2007, 9:37 AM
Thanks to all for the replies and experiences. I tried searching for this subject in different varieties, but usually have little luck finding a match.

Armed with this additional information, I'll continue my search and I'm a bit surprised there isn't more dialogue on this subject.
john-beale wrote on 11/7/2007, 1:02 PM
There is a shortage of reliable published data and research, in my opinion.

Here is a presentation from Fred Byers of NIST (a national lab) back in 2004.
http://www.osta.org/technology/pdf/whitepapers/NIST-6-14-04.pdf
if look at the charts on p. 14 & 15, there is clearly a difference between DVD-R media as far as degradation over time, but we knew that already. NIST doesn't tell you which media brands they tested, for political reasons I suppose.

OSTA http://www.osta.org/odat/ is a consortium of media manufacturers that has supposedly been working on standardized testing for what may be labelled "archival" DVD media. They've been doing that for some years now, though I haven't seen any results yet.