did i get ripped off?

[FeX-]

dont know if this is the right section to post this in and if not then maybe a mod could move it to the right section. Ok here's my story. I have tons of shows occupying space on my hardrive so today I went to the nearest mall and they only had a few blanks discs left. So i bought Memorex DVD-R 16x 4.7GB 100 Pack Spindle Printable Pack for $45 CDN. Thinking that its memorex and memorex are supposed to be like top brand thats why I bought it. Then when I went home and put a blank disc in and opened it up with dvdinfo it gave me the media id as CMCMAGAM3

according to digitalFAQ.com "these type of discs are pretty much only suited for preventing drink cup rings from forming on a table. Most of the time, these are ready-made coasters. If you can actually get a burner to acknowledge the disc, do not expect much. And if the burn actually succeeds, do not be surprised if a DVD-ROM or player chokes on the disc (read/play errors). Cheap prices, cheap junk quality."

I don't know what to do. I just burned a show and it burned perfectly with no errors, now Im going to watch it on my tv. But should i take caution? should i return the discs back or keep them? ive used memorex before but not this pack.

thanks

[direwolf-pgh]

Sony 100 spindle dvd +/- R for $24 at Staples - works for me

[saltman]

It has been my experience that Memorex are crap discs. That review sounds about right to me. I burn Taiyo Yuden discs exclusively. They cost 28 bucks shipped for a hundred pack. US dollars.

[KoolKat]

1 Official TY Made In Japan
2 Verbatim AZO with TY dye Made In Japan
Or
3 Panasonic with TY dye Made In Japan
All you'll get from me......all act the same but #1 is a little more expensive.Well a lot more actually

Tell ya what though & i found this out by accident after a trade.
Memorex DVD+ plays in DVD- only standalones ....go figure

K_K

[FeX-]

my dvd player is the philips one which can play all formats. im not really bothered about that i just wanted to know whether i should return the discs back or not after what i read on digitalfaq.com

[Sid]

TAKE CAUTION....Memorex cdrs+dvdrs BLOW !

I learned the hard way

Taiyo Yuden & Verbatim are all I'll use for archiving.

To burn & play does not matter because you can always get your archived file set and burn a new disc

[spiritinaphoto]

Originally Posted by FeX-

my dvd player is the philips one which can play all formats. im not really bothered about that i just wanted to know whether i should return the discs back or not after what i read on digitalfaq.com

Yeah, I'd say definitely return them and look for some blank DVDs with "Made in Japan" on the label. Depending on your location, they can be very hard to find on the shelves of the stores in your area.

As for ordering real Taiyo Yudens, since you're in Canada you can't use Supermediastore (unless you want to use a mail forwarding service), but the following site has fairly decent prices (I order my Tyvek sleeves from them) and takes Canadian orders: http://www.rima.com

[FeX-]

thanks ill check it out : ) during boxing week i bought 75 Song DVD-R for 19 bucks and all of them burned fine and played fine, no errors no skips and none of them were defective. ive never had problems with sony, ive use ri-tek before and had a few problems but still good. im going for verbatim now

[spiritinaphoto]

Originally Posted by FeX-

thanks ill check it out : ) during boxing week i bought 75 Song DVD-R for 19 bucks and all of them burned fine and played fine, no errors no skips and none of them were defective. ive never had problems with sony, ive use ri-tek before and had a few problems but still good. im going for verbatim now

Well, if your Sony's were Japanese-made, definitely stick with those--that's a nice price for blanks.

[LeifH12345]

It's not just Memorex discs that suck. Every product they've ever come out with sucks. Cassettes, VHS, CDR's, walkmans, discmans, etc. Don'y buy Memorex ever.

[LEDZEPZOSO]

Originally Posted by FeX-

Thinking that its memorex and memorex are supposed to be like top brand thats why I bought it.
thanks

When has Memorex ever been a top brand? Going back to '98 they always was cheap crap.

Here is a suggestion, don't ever let yourself run out of blanks. I wait until I see a good sale and then buy in large quantities. Last year a store had a sale and a mistake in their system so I bought 500-600 blanks in one day. These will last me a couple of years but at $2.50 for 50 TY blanks I could not let them go.

[direwolf-pgh]

Originally Posted by LeifH12345

It's not just Memorex discs that suck. Every product they've ever come out with sucks. Cassettes, VHS, CDR's, walkmans, discmans, etc. Don'y buy Memorex ever.

they had cool commercials in the 1970's about the last time i bought one of thier tapes.

their DL DVD discs have worked fine for me at times.

[N8Slyce]

Dang guys. Now you have me all worried. I've burnt a lot of memorex dvds (at least a 50 pack) without any problems.

I've been thinking about getting an external harddrive to do some archiving though. Any brand suggestions? (nothing crazy expensive, please)

[trustthex]

maxtor, western digital, seagate, ibm, hitachi, lacie, iomega... any of those would do nicely... don't flame me for listing any of those, i've had drives of all of the types listed, and seen all of them fail, but not near as quick as some of the housebrand/noname oem drives ive seen. ive got a 8 yr old 13 gb maxtor still spinning, some 20 gb ibms and wds. there are bad batches, but no major manufacturer is bad.

as to the dvds, get some tys, copy to hd, verify the md5s and reburn.

[N8Slyce]

Would any of those come in a 1 TB size? I'm thinking go big or go home.