Hmmm... I wonder if the CEO of Millenniata is of any relation to Gordon Shumway? (Google him, if you're not familiar with that name.)
Anyway...
I can be easy to aggravate sometimes, and these articles quickly find my pressure points. The articles come from the Fox News school of presenting information (FUD,
a.k.a. fear/uncertainty/doubt), and are propaganda more than anything else. As a former PR writer
and news reporter (in print), I can pretty much guarantee these were regurgitated press releases from Millenniata -- not the quality writings of skilled journalists taking time to investigate what's what.
That the second article has an unverifiable/unreferenced quote from LOC pretty much robs it of any credibility right away. It may as well just read, "Our government says 'boogey, boogey, boogey!!!'"
I don't have a lot of time today, but I do want to touch on a few quick and obvious points.
The Millenniata comparisons are silly. Ridiculous.
- Verbatim is Mitsubishi, and Mitsubishi is Verbatim. At the risk of offending somebody, the only word I can come up with is "retarded" when looking at their comparisons chart at the official site.
- Delkin is MAM-A.
- Taiyo Yuden is JVC, and JVC is Taiyo Yuden.
That this company tested these discs twice and came up with different results is amusing. That they don't seem to know anything about the underlying manufacturers of media leaves a reasonable doubt wide enough to drive a truck through it.
True, sometimes you'll find TY discs under Verbatim name in Europe, or junky grade CMC/Ritek in the Value/Life brands of Verbatim in the USA. But even then, there's no such thing as a "Verbatim" disc -- it's just a branding to an actual disc.
The attempt by the article to make M-Disc look like a "new format" is similar to the narcissistic idiocy of Karl Wagner (online named "kwag") who would pretend his non-compliance to DVD-Video or VCD standards somehow made a "new format" (KVCD, KDVD). That was pretty much laughed out of mainstream video forums, and M-Disc will share that same fate if that's how they want to approach it. When it comes to technology marketed to advanced users, you can't treat them as if they were as stupid as the average Best Buy consumer. That may work on Ma and Pa Kettle, but photographers and archivists worth a salt will be far more scrutinizing.
An M-Disc is really nothing more than a DVD using inorganic materials, instead of organic dyes. It's not much different from DVD+R, another unofficial DVD sub-format that requires special DVD+R capable equipment to write, but can be read by any DVD format player/ROM.
This is the only accurate information I saw in the first article:
"Gene Ruth, a research director at Gartner, said generally he's not heard of a problem with DVD longevity. And, while he admits that a DVD on a car dashboard could be in trouble, the medium has generally had a good track record."
The M-Disc video on Youtube shows the "average" lifespan of a DVD to me 6 months to 5 years. I'd go so far as to call that a lie. A fib. A nose grower that even Pinnochio would know better than to tell. Most DVDs have lasted at least 10 years now. Most. A decade. Where they pull these random numbers from is beyond me.
One of the most crucial fail points of a blank DVD is the adhesive layer -- the bonding that smushes the layers of the disc platter together. The M-Disc still has this layer, and adhesives don't last forever. Most won't even last 100 years -- the idea that you'll get a millennia from an optical disc is to live in a world divorced from reality.
I also question the idea that oxygen won't affect this DVD type. Oxygen affects everything.
Sure, it would be great if somebody has finally invented a technology that can rival the more permanent mediums of yesteryear. But I'm not going to buy into hype and promises by nobodies. We already had the "gold DVD" hype thrown at us for years, and those discs have turned out to be lousy (by the consensus of most experienced optical users and archivists).
To date, I'm not aware of any independent researcher (individual or group) having verified any portion of any claims made by these two companies in the last two years. No, that DOD test does not count, because details on the relationship or testing methods are unavailable even in summary form. High prices, lots of promises ... and that's all we get.
To top it off, Millenniata partnered with one of the most lousy drives makers there is -- LG.
Yes, I probably have a pretty harsh tone here -- but again, articles like this just rub me the wrong way. It's not serving any greater good, it's just re-advertising and spreading company propaganda. The authors of those articles should hang their heads in shame. Research before you publish.
DSLRphoto.com is just a spam blog anyway -- not a real site with quality content. They'll republish any ol' piece of crap just to push out "content" that brings in traffic for their ads and affiliate clicks. It's not a useful website of any kind.
I could debunk a lot of this in further detail, but I'm stretched for time right now. I'll expand on this further at some point in the future.
I'll leave you with this folksy saying: "Mama didn't raise no sucker."