OT: Recommended Brand of BD-RE Discs

mbush wrote on 7/8/2014, 7:04 PM
I purchased a 50 disc quantity of Ridata BD-RE discs and I have had several failures to compete the burn process or verify due to what appears to be sector read errors. I am having this problem on two different Win 7 computers which both use the LG WH14NS40 drive. I am not saying that the Ridata brand is of poor quality, I just would like to rule out the possibility of the media being the problem.
Does anyone have a brand that they trust and would recommend for my next purchase?

Many thanks in advance,
Marvin

Comments

videoITguy wrote on 7/8/2014, 7:39 PM
Your problem in this case could be the particular batch of BD-RE by Ridata, not Ridata in general.

But there are several gotchas in your scenario - 1) Never trust BD_RE to be as well supported in burners as the native BD-R . There is quite a physical difference and BD-RE is going to be problematic for you until you stumble on the right combination of media and your burner brand/firmware version installed.
2) You indicate that you are likely using the same brand/firmware version of burner in cross-testing. NEVER ever do that - as per best practice always establish your cross-test between different assemblies of brand and vintage.
3) It is most likely that it is your firmware of the burner that is bad, rather than the media - the only way to establish what your firmware can do - try numerous brands of media.
John_Cline wrote on 7/8/2014, 9:45 PM
While you're not going to say Ridata is poor quality media, I sure will! I have had abysmal luck with Ridata Blu-ray media, some discs will simply fail to write and some that did write successfully have later become unreadable. In fact, several batches of Ridata BD-R Blu-ray discs have all become unreadable after a couple of years. I did a project a couple of years ago in which I sold a few hundred copies, they were burned on several different brand burners and in the last few months, I have had to replace nearly all of the Ridata discs. It has been a costly PR nightmare. I also sold quite a few at the time on Verbatim media (Part# 97339) and none of those have failed. I have never had to replace any Verbatim Blu-ray media. I have also had great luck with Taiyo Yuden BD-R (Part#. J-BDR-25WPP-25SB6L)

I have been using the same batch of ten Verbatim BD-RE discs (Part# 95358) for several years to write test images before I commit to writing a batch of BD-R. I've probably got 50-100 erase/write passes on a couple of these discs and they still work fine.
PeterDuke wrote on 7/8/2014, 9:46 PM
In particular, try Verbatim. I have had poor results from Ritek CDs and DVDs.
videoITguy wrote on 7/8/2014, 10:00 PM
When I first purchased Ridata BD-R and BD-RE - the firmware for burners had not caught upto to the particular media, once firmware was upgraded - I had no problems.
Admittedly my test runs for Ridata stock was in the low 100 or so pieces - so that might account for too small a sample.
I have also had success with OptiQuantum, Phillips, CmC, and many others. I have never been forced to buy TDK or Verbatim although I have certainly used both under many circumstances.
ottor wrote on 7/8/2014, 10:04 PM
+1 for Verbatim, it's the only brand I've used for the last 10 years.
Geoff_Wood wrote on 7/8/2014, 11:38 PM
+2 for TY - Taiyo Yuden - (usually = JVC).

But that being said, I've never had much luck with any erasable optocal media, epsecially wrt playability of a range of different players (talking experience mostly with CD and DVD here).

I find it better to both save $ on the media with 'non-E', and save on the aggravation.

geoff
videoITguy wrote on 7/9/2014, 9:26 AM
Here are some suggestions regarding the use of RE type discs - be they CD, DVD, or Bluray.

1) You absolutely need this type of disc when authoring. You use them from inside the production chain as rehearsal viewing of the disc authoring you are doing. NOTE - not for distribution or archiving.
2) Find the compatible RE disc combination of media and hardware that works for your facility. May take some effort to do so.
3) Once you settle on the type of RE - record and erase only in the same burner.
4) DONT recycle an RE disc for more than 8 or so consecutive times as you risk introducing artifacts into your test analysis of rehearsal discs.
5) Set-top players are going to be the most problematic for RE testing as the burners themselves will be somewhat forgiving.
6) Complete your disc production process with non RE discs for distribution and archiving.