Because I thought it'd be amusing to see which path of confabulation it leads you down, here's a quality test of one of the oldest Verbatim discs I own. I just pulled the first one in the case which means it's from the time I started re-burning all my crappy discs two and a half years ago.
Of course I have no way of remembering what the burn test was like when I originally burned it, so I'll await your deductions as to whether it shows it's aged, it hasn't aged, whether the quality of newer discs has increased, or whether they've decreased, etc etc.
Either way, I've now posted results from the same era as yourself while you've failed to post any current results as requested (or any others to back up your claims) and it shows whether it's today or back in 2008, I'd have had no problem burning an installation disc to Verbatim media and using it to install Ubuntu.
I did wonder, while burning some BluRay discs the other day, whether I'd even care if my collection of DVDs lasts longer than 10 years. Not that I'm trying to give you another Red Herring to chase, but I did wonder how long it'd be before I re-burned the whole lot to BluRay anyway, and whether in ten years I'd be as concerned about theses DVDs still being readable as I'm concerned about the collection of floppy discs under my bed still working. I burned all the floppies I wanted to keep to DVD years ago.
While you're confabulating, you might want to factor the fingerprints into the burn results and any new theories you develop as I didn't bother to clean the disc before testing it. Plus I figured "handling" is part of the deterioration process anyway.
