Christmas Shopping the geek way: Blank DVDs
I just got some blank DVDs for my brother and I am amazed how much you money you pay in highstreet shops for low quality DVD-Rs.
Here’s some dirty secrets:
- The brand of the packaging is irrellevant, there are a lot less DVD-R producers out there than brands.
- There is a stunning web site that explains you all about quality and reliability of DVD-Rs at No more coasters
- according to this web site - and that has proved right for me in the past (having burnt about 500 DVDs since I got a writer) you need to make sure you know the real brand of the DVD-R which are:
1ST CLASS (A): PVC, MXL, TY/YUDEN, MCC/MKM, TDK/TTG/TTH, SONY
2ND CLASS (B): RICOHJPN, PRODISC, RITEK, FUJIFILM, OPTODISC, INFODISC
3RD CLASS ©: CMC, LEADDATA, DAXON, INFOMEDIA, MBI, MAM-E/A, PRINCO, ONID, GSC, PHILIPS
4TH CLASS (F): LONGTEN, YIJHAN, AN/ANWELL, AML, INFOSMART/ISO, VDS, UME, WFKA
As you normally won’t find a shop or online store that has this information, check out SVP who give this information for each of their DVD offers.
I am not at all affiliated with SVP, but they did save me a lot of money in the past and I don’t think you should pay a lot for consumables.
December 15th, 2006 at 2:23 am
I just came across that same table and was shocked to discover after a media ID check that the spindle of (extremely cheap, and therefore inherently suspicious) DVD-Rs I purchased from Future Shop (a Best Buy-owned electronics retailer here in Canada) were, in fact, masquerading as high quality Taiyo Yuden DVDs. The first two in the stack worked fine, while every subsequent DVD I’ve attempted to use has failed to even be detected by my burner… Suffice it to say, I’ve learned my lesson. No more cheap media…
December 15th, 2006 at 3:03 am
I should mention that the brand of the DVDs was “Hyundai” and the media ID being used was TYG02, which is apparently a popular media ID used for fakes. I’m really surprised a big chain like Future Shop was carrying these things. Oh and the link in your article pointing to svp.com should be svp.co.uk
December 19th, 2006 at 11:16 am
Hmmm, and where is VERBATIM in this list? I know that it should be somewhere in the top?…
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:52 am
Wow, I had no idea it was possible to get “swindled” like that. That’s crazy. I had been having problems burning cd’s (mp3 and/or data) lately and I thought something was wrong with my burner or the drive itself, but nope, just bootleg cds. That website you linked to was great and very informative. I’m gonna bookmark it (and this post) because I know I’ll never be able to remember the heirarchy of dvd quality (ie first class, second class etc.). That’s good information to have handy though, and I’ll definately want to have easy access to it before I go buy blank cds or dvds again. I’m kind of surprised to see Philips so low on the list though. I would have thought their products to be of a higher quality. I guess I was wrong though. All in all great post though, and thanks again for linking to that website.
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:17 am
Has anyone here experimented with the printers that print a label directly onto your DVD? A few months back I saw one for the first time and bought a set of the DVDs which come with a blank white label on top. I suppose it’s similar to those kits you can buy that allow you to create a label that you peel off of a page and stick on to your disk. In this case, though, the label is already there, only it’s blank. However, I haven’t seen any of these printers in stores lately, and so I wondered if they just didn’t catch on, or if there was actually something wrong with them. In addition, I wonder if some of these selling techniques (ie marking up garbage to look like gold) are being used in the CD industry as well. I would expect it since many of the companies involved produce both. Is there a web site that offers categories the way this one does?