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  #1  
08-31-2010, 08:14 PM
pmdiaz23 pmdiaz23 is offline
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This is my 1st post so please excuse me if this has been brought up already.

I just bought a 100 pk spindle at Costco of Sony DVD+R and got a DVD-R spindle both for 30 bucks. I was hesitant cause the package on both say Made in Malaysia but I took a shot, this is what I found:

under MAC OS "System Profiler" the disks show up like this:

Media:
Type: DVD+R
ID: SONY D21
Blank: Yes
Erasable: No
Overwritable: Yes
Appendable: Yes
Write Speeds: 2.4x, 4x, 8x

Media:
Type: DVD-R
ID: SONY16D1
Blank: Yes
Erasable: No
Overwritable: Yes
Appendable: Yes
Write Speeds: 2x, 4x, 8x

Notice the DVD+R's read SONY D21, I thought DVD's with that ID were MIT?

I've been burning discs for a long time but just recently stumbled upon this site in search of coaster development. This finding makes me question the ID found on these discs.
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  #2  
08-31-2010, 08:33 PM
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Sony outsourced it's own media ID to Daxon for many years (most of 8x-16x generation), and the media was produced to Sony's specifications. Daxon had plants in both Taiwan and Malaysia.

Daxon also sold media under their own Daxon brand -- much of which tended to be sub-par in quality, regardless of location. Most of it came from Malaysia, however.

Anything that came out of the Malaysia plant tended to be crap compared to the Sony/Daxon Taiwan discs. No reason was ever discovered as to why this was the case.

Daxon was yet another company forced out of business by the worldwide recession, with the company folding all operations back in January 2010.

New Sony discs have been reported as re-branded Ritek discs. You have old stock discs, of course, since those are using the SonyD21 (D=Daxon, I believe) codes.

Daxon was the only maker, according to verifiable information I'd seen in past years, of discs that appeared under the Sony brand retail packages. However, many discs bearing the SonyD21 ID, sold under generic no-name brands like GQ (Fry's Electronics crappy in-house brand) were made by LeadData. I'm of the opinion that those were faked MIDs. Some rude ***** claiming to be a LeadData employee wrote us an email about 2-3 years ago insisting our information was wrong. This person never supplied any evidence -- only venom and vitriol that was ignored. Her email was also from a freebie domain, and the IP did not trace to Taiwan. Therefore it was probably just some pretender. Maybe not even a female.

I would suggest that any video/data stored on Sony media made in Malaysia is not safe! It would be very wise of you to copy those discs to new backups, on known-better media, such as TY or Verbatim. Also consider dumping a ISO version to a hard drive, for added backup.

Most of the truly bad discs I've seen this year were Sony D21 MIM discs. While the person/client assumed the data had "disappeared," the evidence points toward the burn never having been any good. So there's a chance you have undetected bad discs. (Or blanks that will be crap/coasters upon being burned.)

Only use these for throw-away content or duplications (something that can be re-burned from a better master).

Verbatim is not only a better disc, but also a better buy: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.ht...reative=390957
Currently $21.99 per spindle, no tax, free shipping on $25+ order.

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  #3  
08-31-2010, 09:03 PM
pmdiaz23 pmdiaz23 is offline
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Thanks for the quick and elaborate response.
The reason I bought these discs were for exactly that, for 2nd use. I do back-ups to SAFE RAID drives and VERBATIM discs.

I understood your response perfectly and I totally appreciate it. Without you sharing this info I'd still have plenty of questions. One thing that disturbs me is; if Sony, a company we are supposed to trust is using IDs that don't represent accurate info, then how do we know others aren't doing the same?

I know the TY and verbatims are the ones to go for, but a deal like this is hard to pass, specially for scrap use.
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  #4  
08-31-2010, 09:58 PM
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You might find this interesting/amusing: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/show...a-vs-2407.html
I dug deep in the email archive, and thankfully found that I kept one of the emails, which had some earlier back-and-forth conversation on it.

Quote:
One thing that disturbs me is; if Sony, a company we are supposed to trust is using IDs that don't represent accurate info, then how do we know others aren't doing the same?
Manufacturers/sellers/brands totally hate that we know anything about media IDs. Unlike other products, it's harder to just BS us with a smile and some literature by the marketing department. We can put a disc in a drive, and see what it really is.

This is one product where they cannot simply sell garbage at high profits without being called out on it.

And then if you refer to the linked thread (email series) above, I go deeper into the issue of "using IDs". Sony provided the masters, specs, etc -- and it's therefore a Sony product, even if some other grunt workforce does the labor to make the discs.

Apple is a good example. They don't really have any manufacturing facility. Those iPads are made by other companies to Apple specs. At the end of the day, you'd be insane to call it a product of that mostly-unknown Taiwanese company (Foxconn) and not Apple.

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  #5  
09-12-2010, 04:46 PM
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So I did some burns and tested them with a trial version of Opti Drive Control and Nero CDSpeed. The test came back positive. My question is, if stored and handle properly, are these discs safe for the long run?
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  #6  
09-14-2010, 09:24 AM
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Yes.

If the discs tested well in the...
  • transfer rate test (TRT) a.k.a. speed read a.k.a. "benchmark" (in Nero DiscSpeed),
  • and a scan disc
  • and to a lesser degree, the various PIE/PIF/PI/PO tests
... then the discs will be fine if stored properly.

But I would still be sure that another copy of the discs exist somewhere, as a redundant copy, for truly archival methodology. Don't put 100% of your trust in a single disc, and have no other copies created.

(This advice is obviously for folks who create their own content, back up their computers, etc -- not those who are copying store-bought DVDs of movies and TV shows, as the original serves as the "extra copy" here.)

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  #7  
09-14-2010, 12:30 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by admin View Post
New Sony discs have been reported as re-branded Ritek discs.
Admin, I'm not too familiar with the specifics of Sony discs. Does this affect the high ranking (#3) that Taiwan-made Sonys have on the blank media guide?

Can I trust the common Sony disc, like these, which are still found in stores such as Target?
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  #8  
09-14-2010, 01:19 PM
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Simply defer to the media guide: http://www.digitalFAQ.com/reviews/dvd-media.htm
In other words:
  • Sony/Daxon made in Malaysia are best avoided.
  • Sony/Daxon made in Taiwan are excellent discs.
  • Sony/other (non-Daxon) are deferred to the list.
  • For Sony/Ritek media, it's mediocre media. Good for duplication (something easily replaced), but that's about it. I would NOT rely on it for masters or archives, especially not for your only copy of something. This means it's not a good choice for TV/camera recordings straight to DVD. This goes for all Ritek media, not just Sony branded Ritek discs.
Nothing has really changed here. Sony is just a "brand" now -- it does not currently appear to be using it's own media ID/formula as it had been doing with Daxon. We'll see if that changes as time goes by. I've not heard anything, but I've also not had time to really look and research it. I do have a contact at Sony (I think), so I'll try to see where that can take me. It's been a while since we last communicated.

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  #9  
09-14-2010, 05:54 PM
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Thanks Admin, but I'm still a little confused. You say the "Sony D21 MIM" discs are the bad ones you've seen, yet "SONYD21" is still first-class media. What is the difference besides the MIM moniker? And what does MIM even mean?

Thanks!
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  #10  
09-14-2010, 06:02 PM
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MI = "made in"
MIM = made in Malaysia
MIT = made in Taiwan
MIS = made in Singapore
MII = made in India
MIJ = made in Japan
MIUAE = made in United Arab Emirates (UAE)
MIC = made in China
MIHK = made in Hong Kong

Those are the most common ones.

These are not official terms/abbreviations in any way, but rather terms/abbreviations that have been invented in user forums over the past decade. Many pros have adopted them as time went by, although we realize not a lot of folks know this abbreviation jargon, and so we really don't use it all that much. (Or we explain it when we do.)

If you look at the media list, you'll notice Sony is listed twice:
  1. Taiwan (Daxon production) and Japan (Taiyo Yuden production) are listed as the first class discs.
  2. But the Daxon/Malaysia is much further down the list, as there is a much higher coaster rate from these media, for relatively unknown reasons. (We can only guess that standards were not monitored as well at that facility.)
At this late date, Daxon is gone. All you'll find is old-stock media, nothing new is being made from Daxon.

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  #11  
09-14-2010, 06:12 PM
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Admin,

Thank you very much! You're advice is very helpful. I hate to over-ask or bug anyone with elementary question but I do have 2 more questions:

1. Is there a Quality test app similar to Nero or Opti D.C. for Mac?

and

2. Do you know if running Nero or O.D.C. under Parallels or other Virtual PC software is accurate?

I use Parallels under Snow and have a PX712a and I/O Magic USBDVDR16x and test my media this way. My results vary a little with the Plextor drive giving me higher PIF failures, but both results are acceptable. I'm just wondering if doing this from a USB drive is reliable...
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  #12  
09-14-2010, 06:20 PM
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1. Not that I am aware of, no. Mac is built for certain tasks, and does well at them. This is not one of those tasks. There are MANY video tasks that Mac cannot do, and you've found one. (And I'm not even remotely anti-Mac.)

2. Due to the added emulation layers, I would not rely on the results, no. The only setup I would trust, on Mac hardware, is by using a dual-boot system. Use BootCamp, and then install Windows natively to the hardware. That should be reliable, as there is direct interfacing to the hardware.

I'm not fond of Plextor for advanced scanning. PIE/PIF is really outside the boundaries of what can be done with almost all consumer drives. It's a test done mostly for curiosity and enjoyment. The other tests are far more important to basic quality questions.

I'm sure the drive works fine for burning, reading, and non-PIE/PIF testing.

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  #13  
09-14-2010, 06:53 PM
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Thanks again!
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09-14-2010, 07:11 PM
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Thanks for clearing that up, Admin. I suppose it remains to be seen who will handle future MIT Sonys down the line. If you could, please indeed try to gain some insight from your Sony contact.

Being Sony, I'd like to think they will maintain their standards despite Daxon's demise. Surely some of that Blu-ray revenue could be tossed back to the blank media division.

Thanks!
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  #15  
09-14-2010, 07:50 PM
pmdiaz23 pmdiaz23 is offline
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Reading Bug,

I just bought 200 discs from Costco a few weeks ago... Sony MIM SONY16D! & SONY D21... While I don't trust this media because of what I've read here and elsewhere, I have yet to burn a coaster. I'm about 20 discs in with the DVD-R pack. To me, Memorex is the WORST. Note, I'm using the discs for unimportant tasks. I also own (SONYD21) MIT and VERBATIM MIS (MCC004), these are my archiving discs.
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09-19-2010, 09:21 AM
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Sadly, the trend seems to be for low-cost lately, as proven by Verbatim's boneheaded move to dilute their own brand with cheap crap from CMC, under that new "Value Series" and "Life Series" that has overtaken retail stores like locusts. As would be expected, user forums are filling up with complaints on these media.

Sony is a cost-cutter like everybody else, even when that means a loss in quality. So I'd be wary of assuming they'll switch to another top-grade blank media manufacturer. If anything, the continued use of crappy MIM Daxon discs should prove their willingness to have blank discs with known issues out in the market. They seemed pretty indifferent about it, in that respect.

Buy those Sony MIT and MCC Verbatim's while they're available!

Stock up now! You've been warned!

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  #17  
09-19-2010, 10:08 AM
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I hope I'm not breaking any rules by posting this. I just bought another pack of DVD+R Verbatim AZO from newegg for $17, free shipping. They are now back-stocked!

Here is the DVD-R for the same price. Don't forget to apply the discount code:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817507005
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  #18  
09-21-2010, 11:07 AM
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I stocked up on Sony MIT and MIJ a while ago, and I'm about to run out of the MIT ones. I still have 100 MIJ 16x (2x 50packs)
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09-21-2010, 12:20 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pmdiaz23 View Post
I hope I'm not breaking any rules by posting this.
Not at all.

Quote:
I just bought another pack of DVD+R Verbatim AZO from newegg for $17, free shipping.
Good price!

Quote:
They are now back-stocked!
This is one reason I don't like buying from Newegg. Other reasons include sales tax in my location, as well as failed rebates and bait-and-switch (having one model of an item substituted for another, and then being told it's "the same" when it is not).

Quote:
Don't forget to apply the discount code:
You didn't tell us what it is!

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  #20  
09-21-2010, 03:27 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by admin View Post
You didn't tell us what it is!
15% off with promo code EMCYXZV28, ends 9/23
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