TSSTcorp CDDVD SH-S202J SB03 won't read disc

[dr_ml422]

I bought these because I thought the branded ones from the Verbatim Store were like the branded from Best Buy.

DVD-R 4.7GB 16X VX Shiny Silver 50pk Wrap

DDDecent price at @$22.00 plus $8.95 shipping. They didn't raise the shipping when I added another 50pk. Fast shipping. Were there just now. Now if the branded from the Verbatim Store are not Life series as the Best Buy then I'll check them out. I have a nice burning project with some series. The Walking Dead 1-7, Batman Animated Series including Justice League, just to share a few. To kill time I burnt some Trisonic DVD-R and very surprised for .99cent store pick-up.

[dbminter]

I don't think the Verbatim online store sells the Life Series media.  I believe you will only find AZO and DataLife Plus media there.  I didn't see anything labeled Life Series there.  And I believe Life Series is just the media that Verbatim sells in stores.  It's more likely to reach mass penetration so they sell the cheaper stuff there to maximize profit.

[cholla]

I take it your drive was able to read the Trisonic DVD-R s ?

Also did you ever get ImgBurn to create logs ?

It's usually just settings for the logs when it doesn't do this.

[dr_ml422]

This is their Life series:

https://www.verbatim.com/subcat/optical-media/dvd/dvd-r-life-series/

Whether or not they're the same as Best Buy I don't know. These are the branded ones at Verbatim:

https://www.verbatim.com/prod/optical-media/dvd/dvd-recordable/dvd-r-sku-95101/

Branded and their Life series are different.

[dr_ml422]

The new Drive I posted reads everything so far.

10 minutes ago, cholla said:

I take it your drive was able to read the Trisonic DVD-R s ?

Also did you ever get ImgBurn to create logs ?

It's usually just settings for the logs when it doesn't do this.

 

[dbminter]

Hm, so they do offer their Life Series on their web store.  Well, you probably just wasted your time and money if you bought the Life Series ones off of the Verbatim store.  If it says Life Series, regardless of where you get it, it's CMC media.  The branded ones are AZO, which is good stuff, too, like the DataLife Plus series.

Edited October 10, 2018 by dbminter

[dr_ml422]

I got the shiny ones I posted. I didn't go for their DVD+R Life series. Their DVD-R branded which I posted are also different. I'll knock out those shiny DVD-R. Wonder when the shipping goes up, at what quantity.

[dr_ml422]

@dbminter You were right. The Verbatims are CMC F3, and these are the shiny ones not the branded Life Series. You think it's true that CMC polished up their act, and are putting out good media? I haven't had any issues at all. Some are Ritek as I posted, and then some say CMC F3. I would have to experiment with a pack of Data Life Series and see what they brand out to.

So what media is really good these days? Are the JVCs really CMC Mags?

[dbminter]

I wouldn't trust CMC as far as I could throw their corporate headquarters.  You only get 1 chance to make a good impression.  And they have, for over a decade, made a bad impression.

 

To be even more shady, CMC just happens to be an arrangement of the letters of the good DataLife Plus stuff.  The good stuff will be labeled as MCC for Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation.

 

The only JVC media I've tried in the last few years were BD-RE, and they were CMC.

[dr_ml422]

Wow! To be exact they're CMC MAG, AM3. So what media can we get at a reasonable price that's not CMC MAG? Just the Data Life Plus? Thanks.

[dbminter]

Depends on your definition of reasonable price.  Some people see DataLife Plus as too expensive, even though you're only paying about 50 cents a blank.  And the cheap always comes out expensive.  Personally, I find DataLife Plus priced reasonably.  I don't mind paying some cents extra for quality media.  And DataLife Plus is all I use or recommend.  So, CMC media is cheaper but it's also cheap.

[dr_ml422]

So the days of Sony, Maxwell, Ricoh etc... are gone huh. Are the supposed Taiyo Yuden JVC really CMC MAG as well? I'm going to get a blank from a friend and put it in, see what it brands out as. At the Data Life Plus price no one's getting a freebie from me. Lol...

[dbminter]

Sony still sells DVD-R, but they don't make them.  Ritek/Ricoh does, which is decent enough 2nd tier media.  However, Sony has made little but garbage since 2002, in everything they sell.  Back when they made their own DVD-R, it was quality media, then farmed it out to raise profits.  Don't know about Maxell anymore.  It's been over 10 years since I had a recordable DVD from them.  Ricoh stopped making 8x DVD+RW, that much I do know.  I think they also ceased production on 6x DVD-RW.

 

It would be interesting to see if CMC still makes its own crap media.  Of course, even if the DID was changed, I wouldn't trust them.  It would be just like CMC to use faked DID's.  Plus, if they were still the price of CMC's but said MCC, how could they sell the better quality media at the same price as their crap media?  Answer: they couldn't.

[dr_ml422]

You actually might be even more right than anything, as I do notice these Verbs get touched up quickly via tiny dust etc... I think something is going on with their tag because some I seen say CMC MAG and some tag out as Ritek F 16 or whatever. Prodisc makes Maxwell and they were pretty good, even here at a mom and pop they have the white coated printable ones straight from Prodisc. I'm just afraid to use something else that my burner might not like. I'll have to take a risk with some. TBH I burnt some Fujis from a 5pack, and some Trisonic from a 3 pack and was surprised. I'm even surprised that the Trisonic have a non-ink look, and wondered how they manufacture them without ink? I'll put some of the above mentioned in and post their I'd tags. So far no coaster or bad burn from about 150 of these shiny printable Verbatims. They're $22 bucks a 50 pack with about $8 bucks shipping, so @$50 bucks here there not bad. I wonder when the shipping goes up? That's why I got 2 packs to try instead of one. I'll also get some JVCS see how they make out and brand out.

[dbminter]

Are you saying in the same cake stack, you're getting discs with different DID's?  If so, that shouldn't be and it sounds like someone less than scrupulous mixing and matching media.  If they're from different sellers/suppliers, it might make more sense.  e.g. if they have different labels on top, if they're branded, or if they have different labels on the packaging.  One particular manufacturer might be using higher quality Ritek versus CMC.  Although, they're all farmed out from Verbatim, so why they'd have some as Ritek and some as CMC is a bit of a mystery.

[dr_ml422]

Yes exactly what I'm saying! Now I don't know if it's the app that's reading the media ID for example imgburn, or some other app like dvdfab Etc, but yes even with image burn the same DVD I would put in would ID out with different names etc etc. For instance one will come out as a CMC mag whatever, and then one will come out as in rytec F 15, 16 whatever. I'm going to give it a second look and check just to make sure, though yes I think even the verbatim ones I bought were doing that. Excuse the late response I got caught up with the holidays and all this DVD project I have ahead of me.

[dbminter]

Yeah, if you're getting different DID's in the same cake stack, you probably got sold some junk.  However, if they're from different boxes/cake stacks that all say Verbatim on the package, it makes sense you might get one batch from one manufacturer and one from another.  Verbatim farms out to CMC and to Mitsubishi.  CMC for its cheap junk; Mitsubishi for its quality DataLifePlus/AZO media.  So, farming out to Ritek for another batch might not be too far fetched.  I've admittedly never seen American Verbatim discs from Ritek.  Just CMC and Mitsubishi.  European markets I can't comment on, because cheaper quality Ritek seems to be sold there.  The Ritek I've seen, except for DL media, is generally 2nd tier quality discs.  However, the European Ritek seems to be pretty trashy.  However, you're based in America, it seems, so I can't comment on Verbatim being Ritek as I've never seen that in 17 years of experience.

[dr_ml422]

That's that's what I was trying to tell you about that some programs will ID them as ritek, and other programs will ID the same disk as CMC mags. So I don't know if it's whether the program is not doing its job or whatever. Now I must say I just put in some more verbatims I just got rewritable DVD+R and there coding out as MCC - 004-00. The shiny ones that I purchased not so long ago are coming out to CMC MAG AM3. So yes it seems that some of the non-datalife series are being made by MCC. That's great, though even if we've come a long way I still rather be safe with DVD-R, as even today the +R can't be 100% trusted compatibility wise. I'm not going to lie though that those dvd plus r e rideables that I just mentioned look really really nice! You can see the deep purple ink that's used by MCC. Well they said that CMC might have got their act up a little bit by getting the ingredients or whatever from MCC though I don't know if that's completely true. I just found some Sony's from about 13 -14 years ago and they're still holding up with what's in them. And they code out as Sony straight up and down.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

The Disc/Manufacturer ID itself should not change between programs.

ImgBurn queries the drive for a particular chunk of info and the DID/MID is contained within it.

Having discs in the same spindle with different MIDs is very unusual.

 

[dbminter]

Yeah, I was just going to say the same thing.  It really can't happen that the DID would change depending on what program you're using.  But, if it happens, it happens.  I just can't imagine how it can happen.

 

Sony used to make their own DVD-R and they were high quality about 10 years ago.  Then, they switched to Ritek.  They were still pretty good, but it was typical Sony quality reduction.

[dr_ml422]

Believe me that I couldn't believe it myself when I saw it. What I'm going to do is I'm going to take screen snapshots when I catch it again okay. And it's either going to be that the same DVD had different ids with different programs or that there was mixed batches of disc in the same spindle. You really can't let any of these companies get by with anything these days and sometimes it's not even them. Let's say they sold some oversupply of something or some stash that they had of something and they gave it to somebody else to rebrand or whatever they'll just do whatever they want with it. All I know is that the disc involved one program had it as a ritek f-15 or whatever and the other one had it as a CMC mag. I'll check just to make sure and I'm going to post back with screenshots if it's possible. I think the program that put up a different ID was copy to DVD 4 the older one. I'm going to check again okay.

[dbminter]

Yeah, it would seem more likely that a package of discs would have discs with different DID's than 1 disc have multiple DID's depending on what program read it.

[dr_ml422]

Happy New Year!

Okay so I'm going to need to get some more discs For this pretty huge project I have in front of me. What do you think of the DVD + R blanks today? Do you think I should play it safe and get DVD-R, or should I go DVD + R who some software people say are better made discs then the DVD-R? In your experience are +R better made? They seem to look better made when I compare them myself. Have we come so far that issues with +R are almost negligible? Even with book-setting? I have some Memorex DVD+R Lightscribe that code out to CMC MAG-M01-00, and Verbatim DVD+R that code out to MCC-004-00. These Verbatim even look better made, and have the Verbatim logo on top with lines on the bottom to write your disc info. I'm leaning towards these. The shiny Verbatim I purchased code out to CMC MAG. AM3. Prodisc makes Maxwell and are at a video shop near me. My old Sony DVD+R code out to RITEK-F16-01. They've held up over 10 years now, though I wouldn't pass them by the DVD+R MCC-004-00 Verbatim. Have you ever checked different discs from the same spindle and seen different MIDs? Thanks.

P.S. Unbelievably so the Trisonic DVD-R coded out to MCC 03RG20! No wonder they sell them for about 3 for $2.00 or so. I'm going to look into the Trisonic, and decide between them and those DVD+R Verbatim. Just that the Trisonic don't have any space specifically for writing like the Verbatim.

[dbminter]

DVD+R compatibility really only matters if you're going to burn DVD Video contents to them.  Older stand alone DVD players have some read issues with DVD+R.  If you're not worried about putting one such disc in an older DVD player, then go with DVD+R.  DVD+R is slightly larger (A few MB.) than DVD-R.  So, sometimes you may create an image that fits on a DVD+R but won't fit on a DVD-R.  I actually encountered that just earlier this morning.  If you're primarily going to just burn non DVD Video data contents, go with DVD+R.  Most modern DVD players shouldn't have trouble playing a DVD+R.  All modern PC DVD drives should support reading DVD+R.

 

If you have a choice between using a CMC DVD+R or an MCC, I would always recommend the MCC.  I had a few CMC DVD+R because I needed a 10 pack to test LightScribe writing with, back when they made drives that supported it.  So, I had about 9 discs left over to use up, since I didn't want to use CMC discs for my own contents.  So, I used them as temp burners for some DVD Video contents my mother wanted to see.  Turned out it was a waste of time as her DVD player wouldn't even recognize playable discs had been inserted.  That's how much  CMC media is.

 

Sony has been farming out the DVD-R it used to make to Ritek for over a decade.  It's decent enough 2nd tier media I've used before with no problem.

 

I have never encountered a package of DVD's with many discs in them that had different MID's on different discs.  Generally, when such things happen, it's from shady sellers who have opened various packages and mixed and matched discs into a new selling package to maximize profits.  For instance, put a quality name on the outside of the package, but use cheaper media on the inside to make more money and make the buyer think they're getting quality product.

[dr_ml422]

Thanks! Yes you're totally correct about DVD + R holding more information! As it happened to me just recently myself trying to transfer some stuff that I have made previously from some DVD + R .iso  and transfer them onto a DVD - R. And Imgburn told me that there wasn't enough space. The Trisonic wholesale store is here in the city in another borough but it's not too far. By train I could probably stop by and check out those trisonic which I see they have in dvd minus r and maybe dvd plus r. If they code out to mcc 00 whatever and I could get a good buy on them I will. Although the verbatim just look neater and are more specific to my needs. Most of my data is in the MP4 format which I found out was the best way to go because I was having a lot of small issues here and there with MKV. So I had to transfer everything back to MP4. The rest of the stuff like my series DVDs, and TV series DVDs I make DVD video disc of in a smaller size format using some other software, and so yes some of it is DVD video. Tbh I feel like converting most of my stuff which is very good stuff anyway to DVD because that way I could just shoot it into any player, and not really have any issues whatsoever. But we're talkin a lot of video work here, so might be something that if I start to do I'm going to have to buy a lot of DVD blanks. Did you ever use  Trisonic DVD/CD blank? Mostly in the .99¢ stores. Who would think they're MCC stock!?

Edited January 16, 2019 by dr_ml422
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