DVD media, what's the "best" brand?
 

By best, i mean price-wise, burner compatibility and quality-wise, any hot deal tips are appreciated, thanks!

Your question entirely depends on what burner you use and what brand dvd player you'll play them on.

Research here and you'll have a good place to start: http://www.videohelp.com/dvdmedia

I always go for the sales at Best Buy: 50 spindle for $19.99 on a near-weekly basis. Sony, Maxell, TDK, Verbatim. All great brands. There are certainly cheaper deals, but I prefer the big brand names and the ability to pick them up when I need them (as opposed to online ordering and waiting a week).

Ritek. I've burned hundreds with maybe 2 coasters.

Different strokes for different folks, I hate the Sony discs, but I heart Philips discs.

I like Ritek and Taiyo Yuden. I can usually find them for around forty cents a disc.

How about DVD-R versus DVD+R? My computer burns both, and my DVD player I believe theoretically only plays DVD+R; dvdrhelp.com has a bunch of comments from people who say DVD-R have worked on it, but the one DVD-R I've got [not burned/created by me] doesn't play on it.

I use Ritek DVD-R and they play fine on my player. You can get them for 35 cents a disc at allmediaoutlet.com

staples B&m and online has 50pak maxell for 17.94. when you buy the maxell, look by the barcode for the fine print that said Made in Japan
DVD-R = SKU: 573525
DVD+R = SKU: 573411

First Class Made in Japan media. As good as TY.

other deal for media this week:

Staples
maxell dvd media 17.94 50 pack
#573525/573411


Office Depot
maxell dvd media 18.99 50 pack
582-488/582-496


Best Buy
Verbatum 16x +/- dvd media 11.99
#6965251/6810187

Memorex 50 pack dvd-r 19.99
#6678589
Not a good deal.

I've gotten some really good deals at Circuit Shitty:

last week: 25pack of TDK DVD+ or -R for $7.95. I bought 2 of them for $16 overall.

this week: 15-pack of Philips DVD+R for $4. Thus, you can buy 60 for $16.

Just curious, do you know what the media code are for these?

There really is not such a thing as "the best dvd media". Find a price you are comfortable with and read reviews.

Last week I bought the Memorex at Staples 50 for $15.00. they seem to work just fine.

I wish someone here would summarize what they consider good media. What makes it good? buren success?, quality?, compatibility?, what?

I also would like to hear the differences in -R and +R. So far I haven't had a problem with either. I don't want to go to that other forum and reads hundreds of posts. Someone please summarize.

That's something else, I don't want to buy a 50 pack until I'm sure the one I use works with my stuff.
I didn't see the 15 Philips for 4.99 on CircuitCity.com, but they do have 15 TDK DVD-R spindle for 4.99, and a tenpack of Verbatim DVD+R with cases for 8.99.
Never mind, it's on the Weekly Ad


PHILIPS DVD+R 15 Pack

save 60%
#DVDR4711
3.99
--actually my ad has it for 3.99.
Of course, that means they'll be sold out.

I have avoided either Memorex or Maxell CDRs, because the one set of coasters I've burnt have been with one of them [I forget which], so I'll probably steer away from those.
I have heard various levels of compatibility with -R and +R, according to some sources, one is more compatible, and vice versa.

I hate Verbatim and Memorex (poor quality disks). Ritek is my favorite, because they are pretty good quality and really cheap.

Unno

You can't go wrong with Taiyo Yuden. Great quality and usually burns at higher than its rated speed. Supermediastore.com often has great deals on it at .30/disc or less.

only use TDK. they're usually on sale at BB or CC every other week at 19.99 for 50. never had a coaster out of the 200 or so i've used.

Shot4Tech also has these at very good prices. Check fatwallet.com for recent deals on DVD media.

http://www.shop4tech.com/ Just in case anybody isn't aware of the store name. ;)

LOL! Shot4Tech! haha... maybe that should be a pawn shop.

I usually get DVD+R (even though my burner does both....never tried a DVD-R actually) Verbatim has been doing good, also RiData. I'm looking for some cheap PRINTABLE DVD's now since I got my Epson R300 printer

Short answer--Anything made in Japan

The Taiwanese made discs and others generally have more of an error rate and break down faster over time. Go with a Japanese made product (Taiyo Yuden, some Fujis, etc) and you can sleep much easier...

Sure you can. It all depends on the burner/media compatibility.

I had an NEC 2510 and a LiteOn 411 that burned TY consistently bad. Ritek and other media burned much, much better. Like having 10% and lower the amount of errors as the TY media. However my older Pioneer drive did like the TY media. I have the KProbe graphs of the PI PO/PIF errors clearly showing this.

I got newer models of the NEC and LiteOn burners and the TY works great. The same media previously giving me the huge errors now produces about 1% of the previous error rate.

The Fujis I bought that were from Japan were TY and gave me the problems I explained above. The +R Fujis from Taiwan were Ricoh and worked enormously better on the two burners I mentioned.

I use Ritek and nothing else.

Ritek +R (not -R) has been the most consistently good media over all burners for me.

Some other combinations (such as TY +R with an NEC 3500) can be better together. But not a whole lot better.

I used Ritek -R 4x until I got my new burner and switched to -R 8x. The Ritek 8x was pretty crappy.

It all comes back to burner and player. I don't think there's a "universal constant" when it comes to media. It's what works for you and you just have to experiment.