Re: God Bless-Can't People Agree on This?? Once Again: DVD-R vs. Pressed
Date: March 21, 2007 16:02
I've read many articles on the subject, and while I have yet to see any definitive proof, a few things surprised me.
Early pressed CD's may not last longer than 5 years due to the plastic seperating and exposing the metal which could oxidize. That concerned me a bit since I have 700+ pressed CD's dating back to the mid 80's!
Gold 'Archive' burned discs are supposed to last 100+ years. I haven't seen any commercially produced pressed discs make that claim (of course how could either prove it??).
Most pressed discs do however excel in some areas, namely, playability. That is, they tend to play in virtually every type of machine designed to play them.
Burned discs do seem to be a bit tempermental in that some brands play in only certain players and so forth. For example, my car stereo seems to play most 74 minute CDR's, but only certain higher quality 80 minute CDR's.
And then there are the CDR 'Audio' discs, made specifically for use in CD Player/Recorders (regular 'data' discs can't be used in those; but the opposite isn't true, these can be burned in PC's). From what I can tell is this was something designed to give kickbacks to the recording industry to compensate for copying music, as they are a bit higher priced but I have yet to read anything stating it's because they're higher quality.
One other thing I learned was, don't write on your discs with alcohol based inks (which is what's in most commercially purchased markers), use specially made CD/DVD pens. The alcohol can eventually erode the plastic and corrupt the disc.
DVDR's are even more tempermental, as some players only play DVD+R, some only play DVD-R, and some play both. Some players claim they'll only play one or the other, but may in fact play the other but possibly only of a certain brand. From what I can tell, DVD+R's are slightly less common but are gaining and are more prominent in PC DVD burners. DVD-R's are more prominent in DVD player/recorders.
I've had very good luck with Mitsui (aka MAM-A), which are sold at the datamediastore referenced above. I've also heard good things about Tayo Yuden. Most discs are made by only a handful of companies (like the above mentioned 2), but figuring out who makes what can be a challenge, so I just stick with their primary brands.
Hope that's helpful and interesting! Any opposing views certainly welcome..