DVD media Qs

[JonH]

I bought some Fugifilm and Verbatim discs last night. I was told that the darker the color of the burn side of the disc, the better the chances are that it will play fine in stand-alone DVD players. The Fugifilm discs are a reddish purple, as are the Imations I have, and the Verbatims are a darker, bluish purple and cost quite a bit more. Is this true about the color?
Also, in MF3 my speed choices for burning are 2X and Max for Fugifilm and Imation discs and 2X, 4X and Max for the Verbatim discs. I still don't have the option to burn at 1X with any of these three brands. Did I miss an update? Is my Lite-on burner incapable of 1X, or could it be that these discs simply can't burn at 1x?
Should also note that the +R discs that I have can only burn at 2.4X and 4X. 1X is not a choice in the menu.
Thanks.
Jon

[Brian Ellis]

1. I don't believe the colour of the dye is significant. The signal in the player is always optimised to maximise the contrast between a "pit" and a "non-pit" bit. Remember that digital is all or nothing. That having been said, it is possible that the greater the absorption of the laser light at its wavelength, for a given power level, the hotter the disc will get and thus the greater the potential tracking errors due to expansion.

My burner came out of Noah's ark (Pioneer A03) and is rated 2 x. I always use it at 1 x, even with 2 x -R blanks (have empirically found there is better reliability). Can not answer for either your burner or +R blanks, as I have neither.

[Sasq]

I can't make a comment on DVD, but back in the PS1 days, I used to have a lot of issues with disks that didn't have a high enough reflectivity rate on older units.

*those games were expensive - backed them up

The dye colour wasn't a problem, the problem was if i could use the CD as a mirror or a window.

[wkulecz]

Every brand of media and burn speed I've tried has worked perfectly on a player that officially "supports" DVD-R/DVD+RW media like the Sony NS-315.

On any player not having this compatability listed in its owners manual its been hit or miss even across two nominally the same model players with one working fine the other showing bad playback glitches.

In general unless the player in question says it supports DVD-R and/or DVD+RW in its owners manual, IMHO you are simply wasting time and media trying to permute things to get disks to reliably play on that player -- get a compatible player and be done with it!

--wally.

[JonH]

Thanks, Wally. I have no problems with my DVD player playing my discs. We've been making team baseball videos (and some other kinds) for the last 5 years and there are a lot of people who would like a copy on DVD to replace their VHS tape. I'm just trying to increase the likelihood of my discs working for them.
Jon

[DentyCracker]

Get Ritek discs. They are compatible with most burners. They tend to be less prone to errors than other media. It is the level of errors that tend to do in most modern players. Bad media (media that burn with lots of errors on the burner used) tend to not play in non PC drives. The Verbatims are usually Riteks. The media code is RICOHJPNR01. Use dvdidentifier to read the codes on your media. RICOHJPNR01 is good. I you see Vanguard, be afraid, be very afraid, these are complete crap discs

[KRSESQ]

Know anything about CMC Magnetics, who make the Memorex disks I've been using?

Kevin