Verbatim, Polaroid and MBI blank DVD issues
 

There's a bit of traffic here about Verbatims' being A list stuff, however,
Not all Verbatims are that good. We had two spindles of Inkjet medium we got at the same time, One Verbatim, one Polaroid...we have had issues in every burner we own, our Pioneer deck style burner hates them...its for live use where you kind of really want it to work, our duplicators consistantly misfire...I find that both spindles misfire regularly...now all of our decks and drives can't be bad so we head out to get some TDK's at the store...these seem to work...Then I read up on the MID's, had read about them a long while back...it seems the TDK's were from the Class 2 RitekF16 ID, where as both the Polaroid and the Verbatims have a MBI 01RG40 ID, not on the list,...which may explain perhaps why they both have similarly poor perfromance....they were both bought from a dealer (11/2010) who has been great for our tapestock needs. We have some Taiyo's coming, but we were bummed as both the Verbatims and Polaroids are pretty much trash... On the spindle when you look at them, they are inconsistent so they probably don't spin evenly, when flexed they seem to delaminate... when they do burn, they seem to go bad...When they go bad in the duplicator, they fail the verify and seem to go bad later on the disc out near 3GB....

But thanks for the guide...from that it looks like Taiyo is the only brand to trust since you can't know if its MCC inside...

I always say if its worth recording, its worth a good recording!!

Did you compare against this list: http://www.digitalFAQ.com/forum/show...dvds-2268.html

You won't have issues with the Amazon Verbatim discs:
DVD-R: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...SIN=B0009YJXMI
DVD+R: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...SIN=B0009YJXMS

Verbatim is a brand, and therefore we generally don't suggest it by that name alone -- at least not anymore. The actual underlying good disc that gave Verbatim a good reputation is manufactured by Mitsubishi (a.k.a. MCC or MKM). So we'll usually recommend Verbatim/MCC media, because for at least a year now the Verbatim brand has also been using some cheaper junky media by other manufacturers -- including Ritek, CMC and MBI. Verbatim is a brand that's wholly owned by Mitsubishi, so it's rather sad to the them diluting their own brand name with cheap crap from outsourced production. Blame the recession, combined with idiotic pricing structures currently found in the market (i.e., the 15-20 cent discs that sell better than truly good discs in the 25-30 cent range).

RitekF16 has proven itself to be very good media, although non-archival by our current ratings standards.

A lot of this is covered in the blank DVD guide: http://www.digitalFAQ.com/reviews/dvd-media.htm

Thanks for sharing your experience and posting it. :)

We have some Taiyo Yuden's from Supermedia store that come up TYG02 but manufacturer unknown in Nero...is that normal?

Yes, that's normal. Nero is a terrible program:

• It doesn't burn discs properly (DVD-Video 32K BUP/IFO gap does not exist as it is supposed to do),
• It's bloatware that is often believed to be the cause of excessive coasters, and
• It lacks basic features to work with media (locate ID, booktype, etc).

It's a perfect example of trying to do everything, and failing miserably at each task. A decade ago, Nero was a simple and effective burning program. In the 1990s, it burned CDs beautifully, and was passably decent at burning data DVDs in the early years of recordable DVD media. As time went on, through the 2000s, Ahead/Nero tried to cram in video editing, video authoring (VCD or DVD), video encoding, audio mixing, DVD transcoding, artwork creation, etc etc etc -- and it's all very crappy quality and performance compared to simpler dedicated tools.

If you simply need to burn DVDs, look no further than the freeware tool ImgBurn.

If you want to fully replace Nero with the "simpler dedicated tools", then simply read this post: Need to replace Nero or Roxio ? - List of Free CD/DVD Burning Software. Most of the replacement tools are freeware, and a few are $50 or less well-respected, high-quality paywares.

Just to confirm:
Taiyo Yuden is good media.
And Supermediastore is a good store to buy blank discs. They're not fakes, if that's what you're asking. SMS is very anti-fake when it comes to blank DVD media. We've had a good relationship for many years, and that's one of the things that has kept them listed as a #1 rated blank DVD supplier. They not only will not pass off fake media as legitimate, but over and over through the years, they've put out documentation that helps show buyers the differences between legit and counterfeit/fake TY media.