Wow crazy results on TDK quality.

I've put out about 500 TDK discs -- NTSC and PAL -- over the past five years and only heard back from about a dozen customers who said they had a problem. In about nine of those cases I gave them a replacement disk (also TDK) and it worked fine. The balance I gave a refund.

I tell my customers that the disk is guaranteed one way or the other. I ask them to email to our business office if there are any problems. My customers are dive shops who want to use the disk to promo their next big trip, or divers who want to show family/friends, so I know people play it at least once when they get home.

I'm not sold on TDK so much as that is what was readily available in my area. I've tried Staples.com in our area with little success (pushing a lot of Memorex) but I found a good vendor on Amazon for the Verbatim DVD and BD (which will be a new offering for me this year).

I did pick Verbatims made in Taiwan; I read some reviews that said Verbatim disks made in other places did not work out as well. I'm not sure if that is true; maybe that's also the case for my prior stock of TDK disks?

Thanks for the advice Mike. Might save me a headache at some point : )

Various threads in recent years about various disks. I personally hate disks that can be smudged with a wet thumb, so I've stuck with only waterproof glossy disks. Originally used TY Watershield disks over the past few years but recently changed to Falcon. If you're interested, check here.

Waterproof disks are typically around $0.70 when ordered online in cakeboxes. Well worth the extra cost, in my opinion. Gorgeous printed results.

What is the media ID on the TDK discs at Costco?

John

Here in Michigan, the Costco printable DVD cakeboxes were Sony. MID SONY16D1. I probably burned 600 of them over the years, and had 2 kickbacks from customers. Lately I have been using TY from Supermediastore.com, with maybe 50 of them burned, so far they have been perfect.

Verbatim has a glossy water-resistant product called AquaAce. Does anybody have any experience with them or seen a review?

Peter,
club.myce.com seems to be one of the few places you can find discussions on AquaAce and most of them are a bit old.
I've used Verbatim water-resistant discs which are not marketed here in Europe under the AquaAce brand, so I don't know if they're exactly equal. Not much difference to me compared to TY Watershields, though the printed surface comes out even a bit better in Verbs, but that may just be that my Canon printer likes them more. Falcon's not easily available to me here.

Ta!

No one seems to sell Falcon in Oz either. I might get some Verbs and give them a try.

Machine ID = CMC MAG. AM3

The only reviews I have found online on this MID are pretty old - 2006 through 2010. None of them are super complimentary, and some are poor, but some are good. I am burning my first one as I type this. Seems to be running pretty slow. Analysis to follow.

I burned my first 2 DVDs today - both successful. Nero Disk Speed 11 reported the whole burn to be good (3.6GB). Playing fine on my BR player, still have to try it on my clunky old DVD player. Burn speed was 14.9X. Disk is labeled at 16X

dxdy

Do you use DiscSpeed to do Disc Quality tests? You must have a LiteOn or similar burner for this test to be available.

Yes, I use DiscSpeed for the quality test. From Imgburn:

Drive 2 - Info: TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-224BB SB00 (D:) (ATAPI)

TSST = Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology

What values of PIE max and PIF max do you get?

I usually get something like 25 and 3 respectively, depending on the brand. I make another DVD if PIF max is greater than 5.

@PeterDuke

Apparently my burner does not have the features to support PIE PIF reporting. Not being a Liteon, I guess I am lucky Nero test runs at all!

I have played the burned disks on my very very old DVD player, which has proven to be pretty fussy in the past, and they played fine - even with an 8.3Mb bitrate.

Fred

I understand that DiscSpeed works with all burners (and readers?) except for the quality test. To get that, the burner must have a certain brand chipset, but I forget which. Although I had a Pioneer burner, I bought a LiteOn as well just to get the PIE/PIF report. They are cheap enough to buy peace of mind.

The theory is that low values of PIF in particular permit more subsequent degradation before the disc becomes unreadable, whereas high values indicate that the disc is more likely to fail in the near future. I have never seen any scientific evidence to support that theory, however.

Also note that read errors are a function of the disc and the reader in combination, so a disc may be readable on one reader but not another. Somebody recently gave me some CD-Rs on which I recorded some practice music for some friends, but some CDs won't play reliably on some players although they test normal with DiskSpeed. DiskSpeed reports that the manufacturer of the CDs is Plasmon.

I have two NEC 4550 DVD burners in my PC. These NEC boxes are able to work with the Nero software also.

There are several protocols of error correction in the DVD spec, which is why even when errors show up on the Nero graph the computer is able to recover the data completely. But in general a lower reported error rate is of course better than a higher rate.

Another site mentioned that an alternate estimate of disk quality is the read speed graph. If the drive needs to slow down frequently and significantly in order to pull out the data accurately, that's not a good thing.

I bought a couple spindles of these TDKs for internal use, friends and family trials, etc.

Out of the first 40 or so disks I have burned, 3 were coasters, and 3 have taken twice as long to burn as the others.

I will continue to use TY media for customers.

I became wary of TDK after they were taken over by Imation. What is the brand advised by DiscSpeed?

Also, don't forget that burner lasers have a limited life, gradually getting weaker. How old is your burner? Maybe it is time to get a new one or two: e.g. Pioneer (say) for burning, LiteOn for testing.

I can vouch for the fact that lasers wear out; I have two NEC burners in my PC case and the top one gradually became fussier (couldn't read disk) after maybe 500-1K burns. Also when doing a quantity DVD burn (one following another for several hours) the failing burner would occasionally produce "doughnuts" on the disk, where the laser would burn stronger for a minute, then weaker, then stronger. All but the worst of these disks were still playable so I guess the player electronics could automatically compensate, but I would usually reject them just because they looked odd.

Anyway the net result is that I have a couple of spare burners now. Nice thing about obsolescence is that state-of-the-art stuff five years ago is now maybe $30 on eBay.

@Peter Duke and Riredale: Good points.

This burner is about a year old, and has probably not burned more than 300 disks, few of them completely full. I am getting ready to burn a bunch of TYs, and will watch how they burn.

I stand corrected on my original statement that it was TDK at Costco in the past. It was Sony. I've burned maybe 600 Sony disks with very few issues. The disks with issues were probably user error. TDK, well I have 2 cake boxes of 100-count, spent about $23 each. I also have 200 Verbatim, spend 2x the price.

I'm planning to use the Verbatim first and dip into the TDK if I run out of "the good stuff." I do miss the Sony branded disks. I never had a problem with them.

Costco had TDK discs for years, then had Sony discs for a year or so, then has recently gone back to TDK discs.

I've been using the Taiyo Yuden from supermediastore for years without any problems.