Bad Sam's Club Verbatims

I can post my cd/dvd speed results if I have to. I bought the 16X 100 pack dvd-r disks (MCC 03RG20) and 8X 50 pack (MCC 02RG20) from Sam's Club. I initially had great scans. PI errors below 20 on the MCC 02RG20 and below 10-15 with the MCC 03RG20 - burning at 8X on both. One week later, I could not play one of the dvds on my home player so I scanned them again. Errors ran up in the 1000's on most of them (scanned about 6 different dvds). This is the same type of problem I had with the last batch of Riteks a few month ago. Is it me or is anyone else having the same type of problem?

Post all info please

Scans, serial numbers of the discs, what country they are made in, what writer you used etc.

I've not had such issues so far at least

And pictures of the packaging if you could.

I have attached 3 scans. I use the Benq 1640 drive burned at 8X. How do you get the serial numbers?

Most likely the serial to look for is in the clear plastic hub area of the discs.

Did you put stick on labels on those discs?

Excellent question!

I see one disc is 8x and two is 16x?

Different batches/spindles I guess?

And are these printable or regular matte silver ones?

Bingo! That has to be it. I searched the forums for "labels" and found many threads on that subject. Makes sense that originally I had good scans, only to turn bad after I applied the labels. Sorry for the false alarm. Thanks for the input.

Paper labels, once again!!!

You've just learnt an important lesson, my friend

BTW, you can take the labels off, make sure you wipe off all traces of glue with isopropyl alcohol, and the discs will be back to normal

Glad you caught it before you had around 200 to reburn (as I do). For me it is going to be easier to reburn as I have time, rather than soak off all those labels. Thought about loading all of them into the dishwasher and running it, .

I am now reading an interesting article on cd/dvd inkjet printing on my Canon mp750. Somehow I cannot go back to the "Sharpie". I have already returned my 100 pack of 16xdvd-r disks to Sam's (although nothing is wrong with them). I wanted to try the 100 pack of verbatim inkjet printables. Perhaps I'll start another post on that subject.

You're right about the Sharpie - I keep all my DVDs/CDs etc in those Rigid cases, and designed myself a nice little basic template in Epson PrintCD. (Title of CD/DVD and little logo to indicate if it is game/DVD/music etc). Then I have "INDEX" with a blank box for writing in the position of the CD/DVD in the Rigid case (I usually do this with my Sharpie after I've printed the disc though).

How I managed to keep my collection organized before with a bunch of different brands/dyes/styles of writing I will never know!

I have removed the sticky labels and rescanned the dvds. I do not understand how these labels can have so much effect on the dvds. Here are the results:

Those scans are still not that good Did the discs get distorted? And the speed of 11.11X in the center picture?

What is the results on discs that have never had any labels applied?

Applying labels to a disc = BAD idea. Better get printable media and a nice inkjet printer that could print directly onto the disc.

Applying a label to a disc modifies it's geometric axis, in other words it's balance and weight. Any excess vibration due to being off balance will generate a rougher read or Jitter. Look at the jitter in your first postings; you'll see how bad it is compared to when the label is off. It's as simple as that!

Also notice when you took off the labels, in a high jitter spot more PI Failures occur? This is likely a false impression due to the jitter.

You can tell allot from a scan just as much as you can tell nothing. I've seen scans with PO failures yet pass a CRC. I've seen perfect scans, then all of a sudden the disc is unreadable a few days later. This varying from the best media, to the worst. It seems that this rarely occurs with the best media though.

Once you find a good media that you are happy with, it's a good idea to stick to it! Right now, I'm into Sony DVD+R Made in Japan discs.

I only use this form of test as a guideline and not concrete. Allot of other test can be done, but nothing is absolute!

Hope this helps...

Notwithstanding the information posted about labels in general, are there any other people having problems with MCC 03RG20 Verbatim's?

I used a few for data discs, and the scans have been completely out of whack.

When scanning a DATA dvd-r, should I even expect the same PI/PIF's that I would get from a movie dvd-r?

Definitly.

The most common cause of bad burns with data discs is a fragmented HD: files tend to be much smaller (and far more numerous) than with video files... so you can run into buffer underruns, and even if these are managed by the drive, the burning quality suffers. The higher the speed, the worse the symptoms.

So to burn 16X discs with data it's paramount to defrag...

I figured I should post a few scans from my MCC 03RG20 Verbatim's and see if they're actually as bad as I think them to be.

I found these at Staples a few months back on clearance @ $2.50 for a pack of 10 dvd-r's. So if by chance they are bad discs, I'm only out a few dollars. Thankfully!

Well the PI's look a little higher than what I'd expect (though still within reasonable limits) but the PIF's look just fine. I generally take much more notice if the PIF's than the PI's anyway, so those scans seem ok by that measure.