If you’ve ever stood on the blank media aisle at Best Buy, wondering whether those expensive name brand DVD-Rs or are really better than the cheap ass ghetto nondescript blanks, then you’re probably not aware that most of blanks are actually made by a small group of manufacturers and rebranded by the big boys. Yea that was a long sentence.
Anyway, digitalFAQ has compiled an extensive, possibly exhaustive list, of which blanks are made by which manufacturer. Since blank DVDs still cost an absurd amount at the brick and mortars, I recommend checking the FAQ out. It could feasibly save you $20, which you know you can use for something more exciting (like these).
I have used cheap DVD-Rs with not much of a problem.
Blake – I’m glad you’re pointing this out. I discovered this when I was in Shanghai a few years ago. You think there’s a lot of cheepo brands here, you’d need days to sift through the number of brands in Asia. After talking to one of the vendors for long enough he spilled the beans that all of the brands that he carries come from one distributor who get their rebranded CD’s and DVD’s from two different manufacturers. This guy had at least 25 different brands of CDs and DVDs. The cheapest being his own brand, of course.
good to know
I’m a huge fan of Taiyo Yuden DVD’s. In Bulk, it’s pretty cheap and are great quality…
http://www.supermediastore.com/taiyo-yuden-8x-dvd-r-media-value-line.html
Peter – Thanks for that site. Nice to have the Nero test right on the product page. Good thinking.
People need to be aware of this and that the quality media is really worth the extra few $$$. we’re talking fractions of penny’s per disc. cough it up.
I bought 200 blank DVDs at Best Buy on Black Friday but I haven’t tested any of them yet because I don’t have a DVD burner. In fact I still have 100 of the 200 blank CDs that I bought on Black Friday 2 or 3 years ago, so it might be a while before I get to testing the new DVDs. Oh well, it won’t be long before we are carrying terabytes of info around in our phones/pdas/media players/etc. Then we won’t need blank discs of any kind.
I second Peter’s sentiment about Taiyo Yuden. Definitely the best quality you can get. I got a couple spindles of some Ricoh DVD-Rs and my Powerbook won’t burn them.
Cheap DVDs suck.