LG branded media?

[admin]

From e-mails...

QUESTION:

Came across some LG branded disks at Tiger Direct as well as Fry's
electronics. UPC # 048231294546 Seems to be decent--all have burned. Made in Macau. White screen with blue printing, a fish symbol used. the LG logo is cut out to show the alum. substrate. Any info on these? Not listed on your website. Thanks!

RESPONSE:

What's the media ID on the discs? Macau was the source of quite a few fakes in 2006-2007. Knowing little else, instincts say to stay away, it's probably low-grade media. Burning isn't necessarily an indication of the disc quality -- there may be hidden or latent errors that could be found later. Better test those!

FOLLOW-UP QUESTION:

I'm using Toast on a Mac--disc information tells me that the manufacturer is ISSM. Does this help?

FOLLOW-UP RESPONSE

ISSM = Info Source Multi Media of Hong Kong.

Commonly sold under the Fry's GQ house brand, as well as other no-name brands around the world. As with most other GQ discs, it's far from "great" or "quality" in any sense of the word.

Lots of users report bad burns, players not recognizing the media, and other typical low-grade media issues. If you burn the discs at 4x, they may be marginally acceptable. Errors are randomly located on the discs, so check thoroughly with disc check tools (Nero Disc Speed, DVD Info Pro), and the only burn easily-replaceable data (duplicates, a.k.a. copies from master discs).

If you thoroughly check each disc, I'd bet you'll find at least 10-50% of the discs have errors present, or are otherwise weak when being read (ECC needed, drive retries, slow read speeds, etc). At least that is the typical user experience, when using these media, especially if burned at the so-called "rated" speed of the media (8x-16x).

There might even be a slim chance that these are more Macau fakes, using a low-grade fake ISSM media ID. Such things are not unheard of.