A short guide to buying the best quality DVD-Rs
There are many different brands of blank disc media, from supermarket own brands, to well known media brands, and some you will never of heard of before. But there is one brand and one manufacturer that stands out. Verbatim and the Japanese manufacturer Taiyo Yuden.
Why Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden?
Some of you will know that the Japanese blank media maker Taiyo Yuden is renowned as making the best quality blank disc media in the world.
You will also know that Verbatim is the best brand of blank disc to buy to guarantee good quality discs that will work and produce less burn errors or coasters, and will continue to be usable for years to come.
So logically combining the Taiyo Yuden (TY) produced discs with the quality control and packaging of Verbatim will give you the best blank discs on the market.
Plus these days Verbatim branded TY discs are not that much more expensive than any other make of blank disc, so it is worth using them. You can get a 50 disc DVD-R cake pack for around £10. working out at 20p per disc.
Now the hard part. Actually tracking down and buying Taiyo Yuden based discs...
What make are the discs really?
Firstly something that often confuses people. When you buy blank CDs or DVDs you buy them with a manufacturers make on the box or cake pack, and the same branding often on the disc surface label. Something like Verbatim, Imation, Maxell, Ridisc, Ritek, Datawrite, Prodisc, Sony, or many others. The problem is that most of these companies don't make the actual discs themselves. There are just a few actual disc manufacturing plants around the world, and each of these disk brand companies buy their disc stock from these manufacturing plants, brand them with their own disc labels and packaging, and then sell them to us.
Therefore it can be quite random what you actually get when you buy some blank discs. Even buying the same brand of disc in an identical package twice might not guarantee you the same actual manufacturer of the discs actually being used.
Identify the actual make of disc dye being used by a disc.
The only was to actually find out what make the discs you have are for you to use a tool that comes with Nero called Nero Infotool. This gives you full details of the writers in your system, and with a disc in the drive it will show you details of the disc, including the all important disc manufacturers ID code.
For Taiyo Yuden discs they will normally have an ID code of TYG01, TYG02 or TYG03, with the 03 version being the most current media on the market at the moment. These are the best media to try to buy.
Next to the actual brand of disc. If you want to be guaranteed that the discs you buy are the best quality then always buy Verbatim discs. Their quality control is a lot better than any other brand of disc on the market, and even if the media used in a batch isn't TY the discs will still be better than any other make you have the option to buy.
That is because Verbatium also uses a make of disc media dye from Mitsubishi with a dye code of MCC03RG20 (the current dye ID). The reason for this is that Verbatium is a subsiduary of Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings and so it is logical that they would use the blank discs they manufacture for their brand. Mitsubishi media is very close to the quality of Taiyo Yuden, so will still guarantee great results, and I've not had any problems with it.
Why is the dye used to make Misubishi and Taiyo Yuden discs better then others?
Most dyes used in the making of blank discs has a life of about 30+ years. This is due to the instabilities in the dye slowly breaking down over time, and eventually making the discs unreadable. This is because they are based on non-metalic organic dyes which are photosensitive and break down due to light.
However Mitsubishi and Taiyo Yuden dyes are said to last at least 100 years! So they are great for archival, and for storing your family pictures and videos. This is because Verbatim and TY both only use dyes based on the much more stable Metal based AZO formulation. So always look for the AZO label on discs you buy to guarantee you are getting a much better dye formulations with the discs.
Metal AZO dye is also said to perform almost as well as a pressed metal platter, so it is good!
Another dye formation called phthalocyanine, developed by the now defunct Mitsui, is also meant to be very stable, so discs with a dye based on this forumation might also be worth purchasing.
About the only blank disc media that is said to last longer is 24 carot gold based disc dye, and as you can imagine that is more expansive. It does however have a 300+ year shelf life so it's probably used by governments and other high level organisations for data storage. Although knowing our government they probably use the cheapest, worst discs they can find! ;) In fact I used to use Kodak CD-R Gold Ultima blank CDs to burn copies of all of my design projects for safe keeping, and all of these discs still work perfectly, with some now being over 10 years old.
In contrast I've found a couple of CD-Rs burnt on TDK branded media cannot now be read! And this is only about 10 years since they were written!
People have also reported that blank DVD-Rs they wrote less than 5 years ago are now unreadable. Dye technology has progressed a long way since 5 years ago, but it also shows that using a good quality dye based DVD-R will guarantee you a much better chance of actually being able to read the disks at a later date.
How to identify what you are really buying?
Firstly I've estabished that Verbatium branded blank discs are going to always be the best quality of any you can buy, so if possible always go for them.
At the moment you can be guaranteed that if you buy Verbatim branded discs with the AZO dye mark on the packagine that you will be getting discs with either the Mitsubishi or Taiyo Yuden AZO made media dye. So you will be getting the best quality discs regardless. And they will more likely work in computer drives, DVD players and games consoles.
However I've found you can also fairly reliably identify if the Verbatim discs are Mitsubishi MCC or Taiyo Yuden TY dye based. When you look at the disc packaging it states where the discs are manufactured in Japan then you will most probably have TY dye based discs. Whereas recent batches I've purchased with Made in India have been Mitsubishi MCC. This is however not a gurantee and only what I've personally found.
You may also see some Verbatim discs made in Singapore or other regions of the world. This can be due to both Mitsubishi and Taiyo Yuden having manufacturing plants around the world. But as long as the disc packaging has the AZO dye mark you should be OK.
Other makes of disc.
There are obviously loads of other makes of disc. Both Mitsubishi and Taiyo Yuden do also sell discs under their own name, so buying discs with either of these two companies names on them should also guarantee you quality discs. Mitsubishi only use the AZO dye formulation, so you can guarantee results.
Taiyo Yuden don't however just produce discs using AZO dye formulation. They also make discs using the Cyanine dye formulation, and they own the patent on this one. Their own discs using the Cyanine dye forumulation is injected with metal additives to increase quality and longevity, so it is pretty good. But not as good as AZO dye, and definitely not as reliable or long lasting.
ONe rule of thumb with other brands of disc is that as long as the label indicated Mitsubishi Kagaku Media Co., Ltd. you should be able to guarantee the discs are the same as Verbatim discs.
Panasonic branded discs (previously called Matsushita) are normally also TY03 based discs, and the ones I hve been using have a very smart gold label that makes them look very good quality and professional. These are identical to Verbatim discs.
What to avoid?
There are other dyes used on the industry as well. Any dye that is non-metallic organic should be avoided because they are more photosensitive so light will degrad and damage the discs dye layer. These types of dye only have a lifespan of 20-30 years. Dyes using this type of formulation includes Cyanine and Oxonol, and current companies using this dye forumation are Fujifilm, Ritek, Datawrite and Philips. Although these companies do also use other dye types so it cannot be guaranteed.
Anything with Prodisc branding or a Prodisc dye ID is normally never very good quality. Many other brands use Prodisc based dye so try to avoid these. I've had many coasters with discs using this dye. Especially Datawrite Reds. However some Prodisc branded discs have used an AZO based dye, so that confuses matters!
Ritek used to produce some really bad discs, but under the Datasafe brand, using their own Ritek G05 dye the quality improved a lot. They are still only reasonable quality though and should be avoided for anything you want to keep longterm.
Finally I would like to mention Ritek, Ridata, Ridisc, Datasafe and Datawrite. These are all roughly the same company and their media can sometimes use top quality dyes, and at other times it can be complete rubbish that should be avoided. Datawrite Titanium, Datawrite Grey and Datawrite Yellows have been the best disks from them with a dye code of CMC MAG AE1. However there are two types of dye within this dye code because they are made in two different factories. It is therefore a lottery as to which one comes in the pack you buy. One is great quality, and the other is quite rubbish. Therefore because it is so random what you might get I recommend avoiding anything that uses a CMC dye, and that means anything from these companies.
Final summary
To sum up, the best advice is to buy discs based on AZO dye technology. Verbatim discs with the AZO mark, or discs with a Mitsubishi based dye will gurantee this.
Metal AZO dye also guarantees much better hardware compatibility. How often have you burnt a video DVD only to put it into your DVD player and it can't be read? This is normally because the disc you used is using a non-metalic organic dye such as Cyanine which don't reflect as well as a Metal based dye. And with AZO dye being metal based this is the main reason they work better in DVD players and other hardware such as games consoles.
I hope this little guide helps.
