Verbatim Quality - Made in Taiwan vs. Made in India

[obsolete]

I recently purchased 50-pack Verbatim DVD-R for$11.99 at Microcenter with the orange and blue packaging. I know these are the good Verbatims from the crappy life series ones I seen at the store. My question was if this is a good deal and if i should keep them. The problem is that I never encounted ones made in India before because I usually came across with the ones made in Taiwan. I searched on the web and some people claim that they had better experience with the ones Made In Taiwan than the ones Made In India. I am not familiar with the quality between these two manufacturing locations in the previous past. Your suggestions and input greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[admin]

Yes, those are excellent MCC discs. Just verify the media ID as MCC03RG20 16x DVD-R. Keep them.
I'll add some more details in a few days, as to WHY those are okay.

[pmdiaz23]

Good question. I've also wondered about how they stack up between the MI-T, MI-I and MI-UAE. I own packs of UAE & India.
At my workstation I have an LG, Liteon and Plextor burners, these discs burn great. My MBP, actually has an issue with Verbs yet burns Sony MI-M and TDK's with no problems.

MBP drive info:
MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-867:

Firmware Revision: HA13
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipping Drive)
Cache: 2048 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -R DL, -RW, +R, +R DL, +RW
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, DVD-DAO

[admin]

Mitsubishi (or rather Verbatim) has stated and re-stated several times that all MCC and MKM media is created with Mitsubishi equipment and materials, and Mitsubishi staff on-site to oversee production. While MCC has rented or otherwise made financial arrangements to use space (and likely personnel and non-essential equipment) in the facility of another manufacturer -- be it Moser Baer (MBI), Prodisc, CMC Magnetic (CMC) or Falcon Technologies (FTI -- the MCC media is still an MCC owned, created and controlled product. MCC is the manufacturer.

Verbatim (an extension of Mitsubishi) is a very large worldwide brand, and they need a LOT of media for their worldwide markets. As such, one puny plant will simply not suffice. Therefore they have forged relationships with other companies. It was well-known back around 2004-2005 that MCC was taking companies like Prodisc, MBI and CMC "under their wing" to get them "up to speed" on how to function as a quality facility that meets the expectations of Mitsubishi (and their worldwide customers, of course). For a while there, we actually saw MBI and Prodisc media that was every bit as good as MCC discs! CMC was better, too, although still not up to MCC quality. Those were the 4x days of DVD-R.

Based on the amount of care, time and financial effort that MCC put into those secondary non-MCC-owned locations, it would be silly for one facility to simply be allowed to create crap. Verbatim has a reputation that it very much wants (or at least wanted pre-2010*) to protect.

The materials, processes and oversight used in India is not any different from what goes on at the locations in Taiwan. This has been not only implied by MKM and Verbatim USA, but explicitly stated by Verbatim Europe. Based on my observations in the past 5 or so years, the anti-India ramblings you find in user forums are due to secondary factors, be it drive-related or simply psychological.

There's this idea that India is inferior to American goods -- or goods from countries accepted by Americans, such as Taiwan -- when it's not at all true. India has its issues, yes, just like anywhere else. But it also has a thriving technology (IT), medical and customer service market. There's nothing innately inferior about Indian products.

And then most Indian media was first seen with the arrival of 16x DVD-R in the USA and Canada, and many of the subpar drives out there at the time (LG, especially!) worked poorly with MCC 16x media. Heck, those drives worked poorly with most media! Swapping to Taiwan discs made no difference. The few pieces of "proof" you find out there, on this topic of Taiwan being better than India, use PIF/PIE scanning methods that are simply too unreliable for this type of comparison. It's scientificesque methodology being implored by those individuals -- meaning that it resembles science, but it's not science. More often, you get an incomplete and biased snapshot of what truly went on, with details such as drive changing, burn speed or other environmental factors being omitted.

@pmdiaz23
Your issue with that Mac Book Pro (MBP) is because 8x "slim" style drives used in laptops are terrible. Most of them are LG or based off LG technology. I have several of these myself. Those drives tend to be terrible at reading or writing any disc, be it CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-ROM, etc. I've observed so many failed/problem slim/LG/laptop drives in the past several years that I don't even understand how these units continue to be sold even to OEMs. While OEMs often overlook what they consider to be "minor" flaws (and we could argue that their idea of "minor" doesn't match ours), even OEMs have a breaking point. That specific model you have is commonly found discussed on Apple forums because of problems burning or reading discs. Same for Panasonic drives, which are also LG based drives.

Matshita is shorthand form of Matsushita.
Matsushita owns Panasonic and some of the JVC brand, so you may find Panasonic branded drives. But not JVC, because the optical portion of the JVC brand now belongs to Taiyo Yuden.
Matsushita uses LG drives and/or LG tech for their drives.
Isn't this fun?


* This is a reference to that awful "Life Series" and "Value Series" crap that you're now finding in stores and online. It's not actually MCC media, but dodgy CMC discs under the Verbatim brand. They dilute their own brand and reputation by making this ultimately boneheaded move. I can understand why it was done, of course, but it's still not going to do them any long-term good in the eyes of customers. While it's true that competing media prices have fallen so low, it's simply because crappy discs are being used by their competitors. Verbatim will soon be as undesired as Memorex, another heavy CMC user, if they don't watch it. And it's hard to overcome a bad product reputation, as consumers are not that forgiving.

[pmdiaz23]

You have much knowledge my friend!

Your conclusion on the MBP Matshita drive is spot on with my experience. This is why I purchased a Liteon SATA drive and connect it via USB for all my burns!

I do own a LG bluray drive that has given me good results. It's an OEM I bough at Newegg for $110. I do testing with Nero DiscSpeed based on Transfer Rate and surface scan. Results are good, I use blurays to back up data and they seem to read fine.

Thanks for the wonderful write up!

[Reading Bug]

Admin, do you know of any new information regarding further possible changes in Verbatim product, other than their latest move (the shift to CMC for Value Series discs)?

I know there was concern earlier this year about MCC media becoming harder to find...

[kpmedia]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reading Bug

Admin, do you know of any new information regarding further possible changes in Verbatim product, other than their latest move (the shift to CMC for Value Series discs)?
I know there was concern earlier this year about MCC media becoming harder to find...

Everything seems to have calmed down in the past 2-3 months.

• Local stores like Best Buy and OfficeMax are mostly now only carrying the crap "Life Series" discs outsourced from CMC (CMC media ID blanks). Compared to the next two options, the prices are ridiculous. A spindle of these mediocre blanks costs the same or more, compared against buying from a reputable online source.
• Higher end computer stores like Fry's Electronics, Microcenter and Compusa/TigerDirect carry both the cheaper Life Series media, as well as the better AZO DataLife/DataLifePlus discs. Cost differences between the blanks is about $5-10 per spindle, regardless of size (25-count, 50-count or 100-count packs).
• Online Verbatim sellers like Amazon, Supermediastore and Meritline all appear to only be selling the better AZO DataLife / DataLife Plus blank DVD-R and DVD+R.

I'll be asking Verbatim some questions in the near future, when certain criteria have been met. We're really not in a place to ask them what we want just yet -- we need to be able to process that information timely, when we do. It may been another couple of months. It's highly unlikely that anything will have changed anyway, as media manufacturing tends to be fairly constant.

[Reading Bug]

Thanks KP. I'm looking forward to hearing more down the line.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by obsolete

II am not familiar with the quality between these two manufacturing locations in the previous past.

You should give this a good read: Research Paper on CD-DVD Optical Manufacturing Business Practices
URL link: http://www.digitalFAQ.com/forum/show...r-cd-2546.html

Specifically look for this quote:

Quote:

In DVD final production, CMC or Indian company MBI (Moser Baer India), who placed importance on cooperation with other companies, improved their performance. They introduced Mitsubishi’s or TDK’s integrated system and got orders from them, so they could produce better DVD media and achieved a relatively stable competitive environment.

And I also gave my commentary in the linked thread:

Quote:

This happened back in 2004-2005 or so, and Prodisc should have been listed, too. MCC/MKM began to utilize those other factories for creating media to their specs, using their equipment and materials, as I've said all along. (Some folks seem to disagree on certain forums, but this paper further proves they're full of crap. I'm right, they're wrong. The end.)

In other words, there should be no differences.