MediaRange BD-R SL (CMCMAG-BA5-000)

[Kabombon]

Hi, I'm new around here and this is my first post on ImgBurn's forum so bear with me 🤔

A friend of mine started doing a pretty nice project with an animated series I liked, but due to the sheer size the final result had I was in a pinch deciding where to actually store all of it... after thinking on the situation for a bit I reached the conclusion to use BD-R discs. For my needs best would have been BD-R DL or BD-R XL but their price kept me VERY far away, so single layer (SL) discs were the way to go.

Considering the market in my state and prices in local retailers, I decided to get spindles of MediaRange BD-R SL discs at a price of 0.59$/disc with shipping included. Upon the arrival of 4 spindles containing 25 discs each I started researching on the best method to burn BD-R discs with ImgBurn, after a few dozen discs burned with no issues, I wanted to see how high rated are they among other people by searching the disc's ID.
(now imagine how deep my soul started sinking when I saw that CMC discs had a high failure rate after burning them an year or so later)

I've started doing a comprehensive list of .IBG files from ImgBurn's burning results, making snapshots of DVDInfoPro's graphs, gathering information about the discs and my Blu-Ray Writer, which doesn't have pretty good reviews either (soul proceeds to sink deeper) and I am now patiently waiting for them to reach 1 year old so I can start verifying and testing them if they TRULY are that cheap for a reason.

I'll leave below Google Drive links of my research's results, so if anyone sees the information I provide here as useful and actually tries to work with these discs, tell me how it went in the thread.

• ImgBurn Graph Data Files (66 Discs)
• DVDInfoPro Graph Snapshots (66 Discs)
• DISC INFO
• Package Photos

And here is the data of the driver I've used to burn these discs with.
(maybe relevant to those who burn the same discs but with another writer and have, or not, issues with the discs afterwards)

• ASUS BW-16D1X-U

NOTE 1: Unfortunately, it would seem this Blu-Ray Writer doesn't support PIPO scans, so proper verification according to the standard of ImgBurn's team won't be possible unless I get my hands on one which supports it.
NOTE 2: I will update the content of the links above with more data after the first year since I burned the discs ends. As I will make a verification for each disc to see if they have any failures with VSO Inspector.
NOTE 3: Any ideas of how I could research the discs further would be an awesome help 😥                                                                                                               THANKS FOR READING!

[dbminter]

All I can add is even if BD-R completes Write and Verify doesn't mean it's any good.  Last year, I had an experience with BD-R from CMC.  For a decade, Verbatim, owned by CMC, made a high quality BD-R that was branded with a blue and white Verbatim label.  I only ever had 1 failure that was not down to a drive that needed replacing and that was oversight on my part.  However, I discovered a cake stack of these BD-R I had last year were completing Writes and Verifies, but were partially and sometimes totally unreadable in less than a week!  Thinking it was just a bad batch, I got another and those were fine.  Thinking it was just a fluke, I got a 3rd batch and out of those, only 1 completed Write and Verify while all the others I tested did not complete Writes!  It didn't matter if I used my ASUS or LG BD burner, the results were the same, meaning it was the media.

 

So, CMC changed the quality of the branded Verbatim BD-R so they're junk now.  The DataLife Plus BD-R from Verbatim appear to still be good, but you can only get those in inkjet printable variety.  So, you're paying an unnecessary extra fee for something you probably won't use just to get quality media.

 

DataLife Plus (aka AZO) was always Verbatim's high quality CD-R, DVD-/+R, DVD+RW, and DVD+R DL made by Mitsubishi.  Everything else is Verbatim's Life Series which uses CMC junk, except for the branded Verbatim BD-R.  They weren't labeled Life Series and don't appear to be "CMC" in that the DID is "VERBAT-IM-000" but they are typical Life Series trash quality.

[Kabombon]

I see...

From what I can figure out, the 3 batches you tested might have been manufactured in different dates so they must have aged by at least an year, the batch which worked probably was newer too.
And it might also be that, before you got them, they have been kept in improper conditions in the warehouse by the retailer.

While all this is simply a theory, it's a fact that not all discs are made the same. Best we can do is to see what we get from our order, burn the stuff to the discs, watch them over from time to time.
If issues appear, we could research what we think that happened to the disc, how long did it take since it was burned (and how long was it since delivery).

Conclusion is that we are lacking proper experimental data, of like... 10 discs of each variant from all manufacturers, where they burn the same content at the same time and are tested in different storage environments to see how they degrade, how long does it take, if can data be salvaged and so on.

I will keep using these discs and provide data from time to time.

[dbminter]

CMC has a track record of changing manufacturing processes and borking discs.  At one point, DataLife Plus DVD-R from Verbatim stopped working with the LG WH16NS60.  The solution was to stop using them and switch to CMC Pro discs.  Yes, even something with CMC in its name CAN be high quality because CMC Pro discs are not made by CMC.  CMC Pro discs are made by Taiyo Yuden, which was the other high quality manufacturer of optical media along with Mitsubishi.  CMC Magnetics then bought out TY like they did with Verbatim.  Eventually, a firmware update to the NS60 fixed the issue, just reinforcing CMC changed the manufacturing process of the DataLife Plus DVD-R as only a firmware update for the NS60 fixed it.

 

As for tests over time, I went through hundreds of BD-R's burned more than 5 years old over the past few years.  All of those were the old Verbatim blue and white branded surface discs burned by ImgBurn in an LG WH16NS60.  Every single one I burned still had totally readable contents after 5 years since burn.  They were put in one of those CD carrying cases that hold like 320 discs and just stored in the corner of the room where I keep the PC in.