From the looks of it a lot of people have been busy getting the new Cendyne/Pioneer -05 drive recently. I bought mine a few months back during the original Staples discount promotion.
Last week I finally exhausted my supply of Apple and FujiFilm 2X DVD-R media, and ordered a 25-pack of the certified Ritek G04 DVD-Rs from www.hypermicro.com. Cost was about $50 ($2/disk) plus about $6 shipping.
I received them yesterday and proceeded to burn about 8 last evening. The very first disk had lots of scratches on the top (presumably due to shipping movement against the case), but scratches on the top of a DVD are irrelevant, since the dye layer is sandwiched in the middle, unlike a CD-R. However, I burned a project that was 4.34GB in size, using up nearly all of the 4.37GB capacity, and when verification failed, I examined the recorded side closely. I saw that there were clearly a couple of "splotches" near the outer edge of the dye layer. Under a magnifying lens, one could see that some bits of contamination had interfered with the smooth flow of the dye layer application. Those defects were apparently enough to overwhelm the error-correction abilities of the DVD-Video format. Moral: if you see defects on the recording side, toss the disk, or at least save it for a short project that doesn't encroach on the defective region.
The rest of the disks looked perfect, and burned perfectly at 4X. After slapping on my inkjet-printed labels, I am a Happy Camper!
BTW: a customer support guy at Hypermicro was very willing to give an RMA return for the bad disk, but for $2 it's probably not worth the hassle.
Oh, and another thought: as mentioned before, if you are using Nero, BE SURE you are using at least version 5.5.10.7. Earlier versions burned a DVD-Video file that was unplayable in 25% of the DVD players out there. The new version makes a DVD that, to date, has worked in EVERY player we've tried except a "Playstation."
Last week I finally exhausted my supply of Apple and FujiFilm 2X DVD-R media, and ordered a 25-pack of the certified Ritek G04 DVD-Rs from www.hypermicro.com. Cost was about $50 ($2/disk) plus about $6 shipping.
I received them yesterday and proceeded to burn about 8 last evening. The very first disk had lots of scratches on the top (presumably due to shipping movement against the case), but scratches on the top of a DVD are irrelevant, since the dye layer is sandwiched in the middle, unlike a CD-R. However, I burned a project that was 4.34GB in size, using up nearly all of the 4.37GB capacity, and when verification failed, I examined the recorded side closely. I saw that there were clearly a couple of "splotches" near the outer edge of the dye layer. Under a magnifying lens, one could see that some bits of contamination had interfered with the smooth flow of the dye layer application. Those defects were apparently enough to overwhelm the error-correction abilities of the DVD-Video format. Moral: if you see defects on the recording side, toss the disk, or at least save it for a short project that doesn't encroach on the defective region.
The rest of the disks looked perfect, and burned perfectly at 4X. After slapping on my inkjet-printed labels, I am a Happy Camper!
BTW: a customer support guy at Hypermicro was very willing to give an RMA return for the bad disk, but for $2 it's probably not worth the hassle.
Oh, and another thought: as mentioned before, if you are using Nero, BE SURE you are using at least version 5.5.10.7. Earlier versions burned a DVD-Video file that was unplayable in 25% of the DVD players out there. The new version makes a DVD that, to date, has worked in EVERY player we've tried except a "Playstation."