what media to use
Recommended media :
Will record at its rated speed with error levels within set specifications but there may be a small variance in quality from disc to disc occasionally. This is normally media that doesn't have a premium price tag ( but not always ) but has prooved itself good enough time after time. They quite often offer money back or replacements but not always.
Some brands listed here may use different companies to produce their media which only exaggerates media variance for the end user. You will also find that not every writer as optimised support but on writers that support the media well you will have very good results. Usuallys offer the end user a great balance of Price Vs Media Quality.
Recommended List:
Traxdata * Ridata Ridisc Xtreme HP Ricoh **
Infiniti Philips TDK BeAll BenQ
Fujifilm Imation Samsung Optodisc Thats Write
3A Media 4M Media Piodata ToPrint Emtec
Daxon Mitsui Maxell MAM-E MAM-A
* always uses Ritek A grade dyes - it's as good as Ritek media gets
** DVD-R versions only
This was the hardest catergory for me. Alot of the media mentioned here can be as good as the Premium stuff if the recording device supports it properly in the firmware. You can see some big names in here as well like TDK, HP and Philips. They feel their name warrants a Premium rating but it takes some to get one here at zone! There is no shame in being placed here and you still have many happy hours of recording pleasure but the error levels will be slightly higher than the premium stuff consistently.
Budget Media :
With this media there is quite often a big variance in media quality from disc to disc. You may also find that sometimes the whole disc cannot be recorded to without major dips in the transfer test. It is quite often supported by writers at less than its rated speed. Everynow and again you will get a really good batch but generally they are short term usage only. A good reason for variance in this range of media is the fact the companies don't normally manufacture the media themselves and so can't check the quality at it's source. Another reason is the fact this range of media is quite often 'B' grades.
Budget List:
Memorex Ridisc Bulkpaq Tuffdisc Datasafe
eProformance Datawrite Primeon Arita Prodisc *
Rivision Platinum Freespace Intenso Tevion
Maxdisc Prime Playo Moviestyle Value Disc
New Star Digital Sky Princo Octron Generic 'no name' media
* Some may say its Recommeded media and not Budget media - it really does depend on your batch.
This is the cause of many headaches for consumers. Being Budget media it is aimed at the end user who wants real value for money. You will often find a certain brand will have many varying Media ID codes as the manufacturers constantly try to source the cheapest possible media whilst trying to keep some sort of quality. These are also often 'B' grade versions of more popular recommended media. The Arita can be considered a B grade version of Traxdata for example - they both use Ritek dyes but the Traxdata version has much better quality.
Best used for short to middle term backup needs, these can be considered the most popular due to their extra value for money. Expect the odd bad one but many discs will record fine and quite often theres a gem to be found.
Landfill Media :
What can I say? - This is the cheap of the cheap price wise and should of gone straight to the rubbish dump! Quite often its the pirates friend and responsible for very bad recordings. As the title suggests this is media that should never of left the factory but rather gone straight to the local rubbish dump. You will see very high levels of errors and jitter with goddamn awful transfer curves.
Quite often it is impossible to get the data off this type of media and you usually get cylinder redundancy errors whilst trying to transfer. This category is dedicated to Fake media and obvious low grade versions of well known media. Good luck trying to back up anything recorded onto this media and if you see this rating next to a media on cdr-zone, be advised - we dont recomend it!
Landfill List:
Dataon Hyundai Primeon BlueStar Pro AML
Infosmart Mirror Gigatain Vanguard
Why do these media brands exist? Put quite plainly we allow their existence by being fooled by their extremely attractive price. I quite simply wouldn't touch these with a bargepole. Quite often they pray on the names of Premium media and mimick them using fake Media ID codes to make you think they are the real thing. Please support our campaign to rid the world of such media by refusing to be tempted into buying them and tell everyone you know too!
Use this media at your own risk and don't complain if those important family photos or the grand daughters christening video stops working 1 day after you recorded it.
thanks to
http://www.cdr-zone.com/articles/recordable_dvd_quality_page_1.html for this
this site was recommended for buying media from,looking in through the site they only sell quality brand discs and there prices are competitive, they also sell other stuff. if you register and opt for recieving there newsletter they have offers like 1p delivery
http://www.aprmedia.com/index.php?link=l
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