What seems like a simple question is actually quite complicated. So I'm going to break this down into a two-part answer.
PART 1.
Since you've named your burner, I'll address the issue of "what media works best in the Pioneer 106".
This is an older 4x drive, but was easily one of the best drives of its time. This means two things: (1) it works well with good quality media of any age, (2) but it works very poorly with newer versions of mediocre/poor quality media.
As drives age, firmware support disappears, and newer media is not added to its "burn strategy" table. It must revert to a "default" burn strategy. Better drives are attuned to better media (we can discuss this factoid later, if required). So your better media are going to burn well after the firmware support date, because the default burning strategy of the drive will still closely resemble what is required by said better media.
In the case of this older Pioneer, the typical "good media" advice still applies. You should use one of the following discs: (1) Verbatim DVD-R, or DVD+R, (2) Taiyo Yuden DVD+R, (3) Sony DVD+R "made in Taiwan". There is enough anecdotal evidence, based on this exact drive, that suggests newer Sony DVD-R or Taiyo Yuden DVD-R does not give as good a result as its DVD+R counterpart, so I've therefore not suggested it. You're more than welcome to try, however.
PART 2.
I can tell you about the Pioneer 106, because it's a drive that I'm familiar with personally, and a drive that has been well-used by associates. There is also a good bit of data online, people who post about their experiences with the drive and the media, both in various reviews and forums.
In general, finding somebody with knowledge is the key to determining, as you've put it, "what DVD media will work best for a particular burner". Now the problem here lies in knowing WHO has good information, and WHERE they exist, be it online or offline. You've got to be careful with information, as it's only as reliable as its source.
Unfortunately, in the "age of information" that is the Internet, everybody suddenly wants to chime in and write down their 2 cents, even if it's not worth a penny. You run across a lot of keyboard-warrior "experts" who know as little as you do, or sometimes even less. To make matters more complicated, a lot of these folks, both knowledgeable and clueless, tend to accumulate in the same places online. Why? Well, because on a niche topic like "what is the best brand of DVD", there's not a lot of places to go.
A few places include:
- Reviews. The best ones tend to be found at Amazon or NewEgg, when it comes to tech. But remember that a review is often a statement about the knowledge of the person doing the review, rather than the product itself. For example, if a person does jumping jacks next to his desk while burning a disc, and the discs fail to burn, it's very common for the review to be "these discs suck". An intelligent person, who has even a small knowledge of optical media, knows that shaking a disc will yield more errors, or make an outright unusable platter. There are so many unknowns when it comes to reviews.
- Blogs. With the quality of most blogs being as bad as they are, including tech blogs, I would honestly not rely on them. These are usually nothing more than the rants of people with too much free time. Most blog entries just point to other sites anyway.
- Forums. The quality of information found in forums is mostly reliant on the person making the post. In general, ignore individuals that are unable to type complete and coherent sentences, unable to use proper spelling and grammar, or seem to be rude and excessively argumentative (especially if he or she is the instigator). Forums with information include videohelp.com, cdfreaks.com, afterdawn.com, avsforum.com, the imgburn forums, and quite a few others. Some places tend to have populist opinions on certain aspects (be it right or wrong!) such as excessive reliance on "scans", dye color, foil metal, unbranded/branded, or country/plant of origin. Be mindful of these things, do not get sucked into populist ideas, as it blinds you to the bigger picture (example: scanning is NOT the sole way to determine disc quality).
- Non-Tech Niche Sites. Certain topical sites, such as that of DVD collectors (dvdtalk.com, for example) or audio enthusiasts, often have site information, forums, blogs, reviews and other content, which many times relays experiences of the site staff or its readers/members/users. Some of these non-tech niche sites often contain better information that tech sites, because these are people who truly care about a quality product, because its their hobby. A person who has burned 5,000 discs is simply going to be a better source than a person that burned 50 over the same time frame.
Many of us that work in the digital media field communicate on a regular basis, and there are trade magazines that often discuss advanced topics. Many of us have read white papers on the topic, and have interacts with folks at various labs, archival organizations, or disc manufacturing companies. We don't overly rely on layman's data, but we do monitor it, to see if their experiences are mirroring our own.
At digitalFAQ.com, we try to accumulate as much data as possible, from a wide variety of sources (some of which are NOT easily available to Joe Consumer), and provide a list of media that will yield the best general results. Your drive isn't really too special, general advice applies: use Verbatim, Taiyo Yuden, or Sony for the best experience.
Personally, I suggest you use VERBATIM DVD-R or DVD+R, and never worry about bad discs again.
I hope this has helped.
