DVD Media Frequent Asked Question

On this page Supermediastore.com intend to provide customer with detail information on the Frequently Ask Question on DVD Burning Industry

1. Your burner may not support the media format.
2. Media might not be compatible with your burner.
3. You don't have a proper software, hardware, and firmware combination.
4. You might have a problem with your recorder.

Usually the burning speed of the media is regulated by the actual DVD burner and the certified speed of the media. For instance if you have a burner that are capable of burning at 4X but you actually purchase a disc that could only runs at 1X. The chances are your burning speed of the media would only be able to reach 1X speed.

DVD-R was developed by Pioneer. It is designed to be a recordable format compatible with DVD Video players and DVD ROM drives. This standard was approved by the DVD Forum and has been adopted by many DVD equipment manufacturers. Due to the fact that such standards are based on numerous patents, where the licensing of these patents costs manufacturers who do not own the patents substantial royalties in order to produce compatible equipment or media, a separate consortium of manufacturers decided that their financial interests would be best served by developing a competing recordable format. This format is known as DVD+R. The consortium is known as the DVD+RW alliance.

It is hard to say that one format is better than the other. Neither have significant advantages over the other. Both are good but not perfect in terms of their ability to create discs that are playable in most standalone DVD players. The bottom line is that you should pick a burner that suits your requirements, and buy media designed for your burner. The good news is that there are new burners such as Pioneer106 or Pioneer 107 that now support both -R and +R.

The thing that must be realized is that most media is produced by a relative small number of factories, located in several different places. These factories are present in Taiwan, Japan and China etc. This being said, understand that the media brands means nothing. Companies like Memorex, Fuji and Imation all outsource to media vendors. Media ID is important, as it reveals the disc maker.

There are Media IDs of some high quality DVD media:

RITEKGx = RITEK

OPTODISC = Optodisc

RICOHJPN = Ritek or Ricoh

PRODISCS03 = PRODISC

MCC = Mitsubishi Chemicals

PVC = Pioneer.

Be aware of fake discs using forged ID's: SONY = Fake Sony (Sony doesn't make DVD media with Media ID: SONY)

The Media ID is the location of information about the disc. The Write Strategy is the maximum speed the disc was manufactured to use. Burning faster will often cause errors. Most DVD burners read the Media ID for determining write speed allowed by the burning software. You should always check the Write Strategy to ensure the Media ID is not forged for and incorrect speed. Be aware that never burn faster than the write strategy.

DVD burners are required to read the information. Several programs exist for checking the Media ID and Write Strategy of the disc. Most of these utilities are free. You can download DVDINFOPRO from www.dvdinfopro.com. I am using the free release of DVDInfo. This test shows that my disc is made by Ritek and the Media ID RITEKG04 approve that. Write Strategy speed is 4X that matches Media ID speed.

You should always check the Write Strategy to ensure the Media ID is not forged for an incorrect speed.

In order to get the fastest burning speed, you should always keep the firmware of your DVD burners upgraded to the latest version. Most DVD burners read the Media ID for determining write speed allowed by the burning software. If Media IDs of new released DVD media are not listed in DVD burners' firmware, burning speed might downgrade. That is why you should keep upgrading firmware to solve compatibility issues. There are a lot of tips for burning DVD, please check our website at http://www.supermediastore.com/burningdvdtips.html

We recommend http://forum.rpc1.org/portal.php to download firmware.

DVD media is still new, and methods for creating faster and better discs are always being perfected.

User error A common "error" with "bad media" is actually user error. Do not try to use your computer extensively while burning, especially at 2x and 4x speeds. Close resource-consuming programs while burning at high speed. Please read our tips for burning DVD to avoid some common errors.

Fake Media. Fake media is often bad. If you ever purchase good media like Ritek, TDK, or Maxell, and the results are bad, check to see if the media is authentic. You can download some free software such as DVD Decrypter or DVDInfoPro to check the media ID of those discs. SuperMediaStore.com only sell authentic brand DVD media.

Gradual data loss. Keep your discs dust-free. Store them in DVD Cases or Paper Sleeves. Prevent the discs from scratches and damages etc.

There is a industry inconsistence. The "4.7 GB" is actually 4.7 billion bytes. But on a computer, it takes 1,048,576 bytes or 1024 Kbytes, not merely 1000 KB, to make up a full MB

There is wide variety of DVD recordable media currently available throughout the industry. Often all these different type of media are enough to confuse even a computer expert?

There are actually 6 major categories that we may use to categorize each type.

1. General DVD-R and DVD-RW media
2. DVD+R and DVD+RW formatted media
3. Authoring DVD-R media
4. Rewriteable DVD-RAM media
5. Inkjet or Thermal Printable DVD-R
6. Double Sided 9.4GB DVD-R

Often the price different on the disc are usually varies by different manufacture. Different manufacture uses different materials to manufacturer their disc. All disc offers by Supermediastore.com usually are pre-tested before we offer to our customer. Although some media are sometime offer at an extreme low price but it is a promotional deal we do to offer the customer great product at great price.

Often the price different on the disc are usually varies by different manufacture. Different manufacture uses different materials to manufacturer their disc. All disc offers by Supermediastore.com usually are pre-tested before we offer to our customer. Although some media are sometime offer at an extreme low price but it is a promotional deal we do to offer the customer great product at great price.

The best solution to this problem is to first determine what you drive are capable of burning. If you are looking for General-Purpose DVD-R all the DVD-R that is listed on the DVD-R section page are compatible with most of the burners on the market.

The following chart are some of the information that we gather in effort to assist our customer.

Pioneer DVR-103, DVR-A03	DVD-R, DVD-RW, CD-R, CD-RW
Pioneer DVR-104, DVR-A04	DVD-R, DVD-RW, CD-R, CD-RW
Pioneer DVR-105, DVR-A05	DVD-R, DVD-RW, CD-R, CD-RW
Pioneer PVR-9000	DVD-R, DVD-RW, CD-R, CD-RW
Panasonic LF-D311	DVD-R, DVD-RAM, CD-R, CD-RW
Panasonic LF-D321	DVD-R, DVD-RAM, CD-R, CD-RW
Panasonic LF-D521	DVD-R, DVD-RAM, CD-R, CD-RW
Panasonic SW-9571-CYY	DVD-R, DVD-RAM, CD-R, CD-RW

Usually the burning speed of the media is regulated by the actual DVD burner and the certified speed of the media. For instance if you have a burner that are capable of burning at 4X but you actually purchase a disc that could only runs at 1X.

The chances are your burning speed on the media would only be able to reach 1X speed. What Supermediastore.com has done was to provide customer with a better idea on the burning speed of each disc that we carry. In many of the item page there are charts that could pretty much illustrate the burning speed of the specific media in the most popular burner.

In most case the burning speed can be determine from the following chart:

1X Full disc burning = Approximately 45 minute

2X Full disc burning = Approximately 30 minute

4X Full disc burning = Approximately 15 minute

Usually using the industry standard the Gold, Silver, and Blue DVD-R are referring to the non-recording surface of the DVD media. Such as Optodisc Gold, Optodisc Silver and Optodisc Blue. In many cases it is an additional layer that is printed on the DVD-R disc by the manufacture. It is only there so that consumers may be able to write on the disc using a magic marker or pencils.

Yes, but only for personal usage. In many case movie that you purchase are usually scramble in different code to protect against making illegal copies. And currently this process is a bit difficult but it is possible. Unfortunately Supermediastore.com will not be able to provide customer with support such as making a DVD movie backup. It will be somewhat illegal for a company to guide customer into making illegal movie backup under any circumstance.

In the industry today there are many rumor that has been going around that +R formatted disc are under the impression of Better quality media. The word Plus does not stand for better quality. It is just a name that company that initially design the Plus formatted disc use to differentiate themselves from the -R formatted industry. The +R formatted media usually runs at a higher price comparing to -R media. But the volume of sale has dramatically increase during the past few month due to the price decrease.

In comparison to the +R media the advantage of using the +R format would be the burning speed. +R Media has the standard burning speed of 2.4X even with the oldest +R drive ever develop. Usually the burning speed is a factor that is determine by the compatibility of the burner and the media. But in this case most of +R formatted media will burn at 2.4x to begin with. New generation disc has also been available such as the Ritek 4X DVD+R or Samsung 2.4x DVD+R

Printable DVD-R disc are discs that have a special coating that is applied on the non-recording surface which allow consumer to do printings onto them directly. Usually this process is done by using a special CD/DVD printer. There are two type of disc that is currently available, one is the White Inkjet Printable DVD-R such as the Ritek White inkjet printable DVD-R, or Silver Thermal Printable DVD-R such as the Optodisc Silver Thermal DVD-R

A thermal CD printer uses pressure and heat to apply text and graphics to the CD-R printable surface. The resulting print is waterproof and scratchproof and does not require any additional coating. The major limitation of a thermal print is it's inability to adequately produce photographic images. A thermal print should only be used for simple text and graphics. An inkjet CD printer works very much like a regular paper inkjet printer. The ink is sprayed from nozzles onto the inkjet printable CD-R surface. After printing, the CDs are coated with a lacquer or laminate to ensure the CDs are highly water and scratch proof. The print quality is superb.

In fact, the vibrancy and detail of an inkjet print can only be matched by an offset print (not even a screen print comes close!) Photographic images, text, logos and other graphics are all rendered superbly. The main drawbacks of an inkjet print are the inability to produce Pantone colours, some degree of difficulty to precisely colour match and time. It can take up to 4 minutes to print one full coverage CD! We use an inkjet print as standard for all our short run CD and DVD runs. The quality print out and the low price make it the best and most cost effective option for your projects with quantities below 500 units. We would always recommend an inkjet print instead of a thermal print for all short run work.

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