How is the quality of prodisc and princo dvd-r?

I am thinking of buying some blank dvd-r. I am thinking of going for prodisc and princo. Can anyone please tell me if they've used either one of the disc and how is the quality of it? Thanks

There are a lot of different Princo discs and more of Prodisc. In a nutshell, Princo is considered the standard for a bad disc. Prodisc used to be good in the SO3 days, but I would not use any Prodiscs anymore as you never know what you will get. They may have fixed things but they are not cheap enough to take the risk. Look for Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim. At $30-$40 delivered for 100 they are a very good buy.

Of course there will be those who like Prodisc.

And welcome to the forum.

I backup Chas0039 about Princo: the standard for bad discs (though Infosmart is a strong contender..).

Princo = among the most expensive discs existing, because you'll have to re-burn everything after some time.

Buy more expensive discs (Taiyo Yuden*****, Sony***, TDK****, Maxell***, Verbatim****), they'll cost you LESS in the long run.

This said, Prodisc can make decent discs. Another "low cost" decent alternative is Ricoh if you can find some.

There seems to be so little concrete evidence in this area, the only thing you can really go on is experience - your own, or of people you trust.

For example, people say that TDK media is brilliant and CMC Magnetics media is hopeless. But a quick look at some background info and you'll see that some TDK media is MADE by CMC! Others say that Verbatim is some of the best you can get, but I've found it to be quite tempramental in several drives, and not all that compatible.

The sad truth is that it varies almost disc-by-disc. Sure, the major brands are unlikely to want to tarnish their reputation by making rubbish, so that's a guide. But then the very worst discs I have bought in the last 3 years were Samsung ones...argh! (The prize for the worst media ever goes to some Vivastar discs I bought in Argos a few years back. Every single one of the 40 discs I bought has since deteriorated to become unusable...thanks, guys!)

If I were to sing some media praises from personal experience, it'd be that Kodak, Fuji and Imation media has proved flawless. I've been pretty happy with some recent Bulkpaq and FWS (Prodisc) purchases, but it's too hard to say whether these will prove to have longevity.

Crazily, the best option might be to buy different discs every time you make a purchase. That way, if you get a dud kind, at least you'll only be losing x% of your stuff, not all of it!

Happy shopping, guys.

Kodak was top notch when they made their own media, back in the cd-r days. Their DVDRs are in the avoid category.

Q.

Personally, Prodisc F1s worked great for me. But as you can see, a lot of people don't like Prodisc. Most everyone agrees that Princo is crap. Stay away from media made in China or Hong Kong. Japan especially is the way to go (Taiwan as well, in some cases).
Lots of people having Verbatim problems as of late, good to avoid. Taiyo Yuden probably has the least unhappy customers on this board (and I can personally recommend them whole-heartedly). Watch out for fakes.

Also, tailor your media choice to your burner. Share what burner you have/plan on getting with us or check out the manufacturer forums. Plenty of information to make a resonably informed choice on media.

-Evan-

I am afraid your perspective is way off base. There is plenty of concrete evidence as to burn quality and preliminary evidence from the longevity study indicate TY and Verbatim will have good longevity.

Spend some time burning and reading and see how you feel in a few years.

TDK may be created at a CMC location, but it's TDK media with TDK materials/processes, and not CMC media. Enough on that...

Back to the original question...

Prodisc is good media. They had a deal with Mitsubishi some time ago, when S03 line was new, to learn good processes and license materials. They still have a relationship to this day. Prodisc is good stuff, uses AZO dyes, and is pretty stable. It's not as good as some of the others, but it's decent and comes at a good price. Second class media. I would only suggest it if money is a concern, with the understanding that you'll be testing the discs or can easily replace them if one should go bad. Great for duplication and secondary backups, not masters or important content.

Princo is not the worst, but it's not anywhere near the best. High fail rates. Some people are okay with it, many are not. It's third class media at best. I would not suggest it. I would only use these if the content is 1-2GB and it's totally unimportant. Of course, that begs the question, why burn it if it's not important?

I dont trust any media untill I try it myself. I buy vebatim and TY but every spindle is different, sometimes each disc in the same spindle is very different. I wonder why it sells so cheap lately. Mabey the media Industry is changing.

I've had some bad luck with ProdiscF01 -R 8x media on my LiteOn 812S - FujiFilm 8x media made in Taiwan. I wouldn't touch Princo with a 10-metre pole, it's hideous media, and it doesn't help that we get the worst of it here in NZ!

That said, every Prodisc CD-R i've had has performed extremely well (not the best error scans, but they are definitely some of the more robust discs I have - on par with my few Taiyo Yuden discs, in all seriousness).

I have used prodisc from shop4tech for the past year but the last two shipments of 100 each start out good but the last 20 or so on the 50 spindle I started having problems. This has happen on four different spindles of 50. I just stopped ordering from Shop4tech and went to sup2rmediastore and there prodisc seem to be better. Not sure if the bad ones were real prodisc DVDInfo said they were but they sure not as good as the ones from supermediastore. some of the bad disk you could turn over and look at them and the color of the die seem to fad out in places. I think it is as important as to were you buy as what your buy.

@the original post, which country do you live in? If you live in the US then IMHO there isn't any reason to go with anything but Taiyo Yuden at this point. 4x Value Line is less than 30 cents a disc with shipping and the premium grade 8x is less than 40 cents a disc shipped. IMHO there is way too much variation among the Princo and Prodisc manufacturers to even consider them at this point, no matter what country you live in. Even in spendy places (ie UK) You can still get Taiyo Yuden for less than $1USD per disc after factoring in VAT and shipping costs.

So actually, you DO have to rely on personal experiences after all...? Reckon that's what I said before! Not all that "way off perspective" I don't reckon ;-)

I have close to a thousand 1x Princo discs, many of which are more than three years old, and none of them have "deteriorated." I wouldn't ignore what everyone else has to say, but I think the moral here is to go with what works for you.

Hmm, never had this issue by sticking with unbranded TY. Either the TYG01 or the TYG02. Burned several hundred through different orders over the years and never had a single problem. As far as Bulqpaq and FWS go, well the quality cycle seems to be repeating itself with them. You folks in the UK/Europe really get hosed when it comes to media. Assorted E-net products and even quality media seems to have a little more variation over there. As far as concrete evidence goes there is plenty to support Princo being shite. Most will agree that CMC Mag isn't necessarily bad but there is alot of quality variation and poor firmware support from them, hence they usually are not recommended. I honestly couldn't fathom going through all of that media on a regular basis. I'm glad I can count on TY each time around. Not saying I won't ever get a defective batch from them but it sure won't be often.

Fair enough dude!

When I started burning DVDs in 2002, I used PRINCO because that was the best priced media at the time that worked. I mean, at the time... a 25 pack of discs was $69 for a oddball brand! Not as bad as when CDs first came out though, I remember paying $25 per disc back then!

I tried all sorts of DVDs and all had playback problems. Attached is a disc that had playback problems from day 1.

This disc was burned on an LG drive and was read back with no read errors in an LG drive. The BenQ however, failed to produce an ISO without showing read errors. Notice the "4585" PO errors? That would definately show up during playback if the ISO image had errors that were not reported during an ISO read.

I watched the re-burned image on a Verbatim DVD+R disc and it was perfect.

Media going bad? I think not! This disc has a label on it. How many people are scanning discs with labels on them? Also, how are the discs being stored? What climate are they subject to? These questions and more are the key to a scan result. One small factor can produce a false judgment on "allegedly" bad discs.

This is how I see it anyway!

Good luck and happy burning!