DVD Aging

[hewtra]

It would be interesting to know something about this topic.

Recently I have tried to play an old (3 months!!) DVDrip of
a movie but...surprise: the disk skips or is not readble!!
The same movie was perfect at the first play 3 months ago, on
the same standalone dvd-player!!
The dvd is readable on the dvd of my pc, fortunatly.
Analyzing the surface of the media it's possible to see some
dark irregular spots that were not present 3 months ago.
I found the same problems on other disks.
I have see that these spots grows with time. In the new media
there are not imperfections but after the burning the spots begin
to appear.
This happens only with bulk media. I've tried with Verbatim (-R)
and Pioneer without aging problems.
This are the details:
DVD-R, bulk purchased from Meritline, burned with Pioneer A04.

Any suggestions?

Hewtra

[padre]

When you say "bulk media", have you actually run ADVDinfo to see who the manufacturer is?

[atreides93]

wow, please run advdinfo or use dvd decryptor to tell us what disks these are. Are they the really cheap ones meritline sells for like under a dollar, or are they Ritek's?

Also, where do you keep your DVD's, are they ever exposed to sunlight? The other day I noticed sunlight streams through my living room and hits my tv, so if I put any DVD's near my tv, they could easily be at risk for too much sun exposure. These disks don't like sun

[gooki]

One more question, have you applied lables to your DVD-R discs?

[hewtra]

I have the same problem with two kind of DVD-R.
I've used DVDDecripter to examine the manufactor name and
this is the result:
Meritline bulk DVD-R ----> RITEKG01
Bulk DVD-R purchased in Italy -----> RITEKG03

I keep the DVD-R, burned with the movie, in a standard DVD case
in my library far away from any sun-light exposure and I have
used them two or three times.
I don't use any kind of label or writing pen on the DVD surface.
The Meritline DVD are printable but I didn't print anything.

Thank you for you interest.

Hewtra

[atreides93]

Interesting....so in 3 months my entire DVD collection (well all the ritek's) should be bad eh? heheh

well it could happen. right now my "collection" is pretty small though so it wouldn't kill me.

I think I already have a couple of dvd-r's that are 3 months old though...I can't really say how old they are but I've had my dvd burner for a while now....

[hewtra]

I'm very worried about this topic.
If the low cost media (3€/$) are so bad....
But the more expensive media (Verbatim=7-10€) will
be really more reliable?
Some of you guys have had the same problem of dark
spots on the media surface (growing with aging) after
burning.

Hewtra

[atreides93]

WEll so far, you're the only one in this thread who has seen the problem so lets not jump to conclusion yet.

I went through some old dvd's that i burned last year and i noticed back then i was buying the crappy meritline bulk media.

Right now I'm reading back a 3 gig dvd i burned back in june of 2002. that's more than 6 months ago. I'm using dvd decryptor to read it to an ISO file.

I can't get ADVDINFO to work though, and dvd decryptor doesn't seem to tell me what kind of disk it is either. maybe it will only work on blank disks? blah..

So i'm not sure what exactly kind of disk this is, other than meritline generic.

As for verbatim, I recall someone complaining about those as well.

[atreides93]

Ok! Found an even older disk! I found a Ritek G03 disk that I burned back in April 2002, and its still good. I just read the ISO image off of it and there were zero read errors.

I suppose its possible the Ritek's you get over there are bad quality ritek's...who knows!!

[hewtra]

Good!
I have problems with the movie playing on a standalone.
The same DVD play fine on the Pc-DVD-Rom and using
DVDDecripter.
It's a very strange problem. I hope to solve it.
Thanks

Hewtra.

[andyg]

Someone gave me this link, check this out....

"Mitsui is one of the few CD-R manufacturers that have run longevity tests and then published the results -- the rest avoid the subject, and with good reason. See Mitsui's Gold CD-R test results:"

http://www.mitsuicdr.com/technology/quality/longevity.htm.

[atreides93]

I only need them to last around 10 years or so, cause by then I'm sure there will be a new format to copy them to :)