The rarest/most obscure recordable medium

What is the rarest or most obscure CD-R or DVDR (for whatever reason - MID, age, brand, etc.) you have?

My rarest media are:
DVD-R: Emtec 1x (4M MID, made by 3A Media in Austria), only a few tens thousands were ever made
Princo 16x media, extremely hard to find in Europe and USA
AlfaVision medium with EZOSDVDR MID, made in Bulgary in very small quantity (thanks, Zivija)

CD-R: cyanine 8x TDKs, made in Luxembourg
Viva Magnetics made audio CD-R (thanks, EZ647)

DVD+R: VDL ODMS test media , they were never available on the market
Sky media DVDs made in Switzerland with SkyMedia R01 MID (thanks, jubjubbird)

DVD+R DL: media made by Must Technology Taiwan

DVD-RW: Princo 1x, absolutely crappy and unusable medium

DVD+RW: Budget 2,4x branded Sentinel, made in Belgium (thank you Womi for both RW media)

Yeah, I also have few of this AlfaVision meda, and they are still readable
Princo 16x can be foud here, my friend have few of them, but I never tried them myself....
My rarest was one Platinet DVD+RW 4x with Infodisc A10 code.

The rarest DVD medium burns at maximum speed in all DVD burners, regardless of batch it always produces great scans and is always readable in all readers and players, and it is inexpensive and readily obtainable.

... I'm still searching for such a DVD medium, but it is too rare!

I'd guess you have two chances of finding it: slim and none!

Princo 16x media was quite ubiquitous under the CompUSA house brand in the states, before they were bought by TigerDirect. There was tons of it, but of course, no one wanted it.

For me it would have to be the Made-in-Japan-by-TDK-itself TTH02 media I recently acquired. I also have two TDK CD-R blanks made in the USA.

Did you have a chance to test them? Are they still sold?

The question was that you have ? So wrong answer. Still it is the truly the rarest media of all. Even princo +R media doesn't come close.

Hmm what is rare media.
Some might say Customer Pressing Oosterhout cd-r's might be rare but fact is that they were sold with big volumes through all sorts of homebrands.

So were 4x TY and MCC DVDRs. But they're very hard to get nowadays, so theyre rare

The best CD media I have ever used are genuine 'old school' TDK discs, preferably 650MB (even better than my old TY and Mitsui discs). Almost impossible to find these days, but as good as it gets when it comes to CD media (example). I still have 20-30 discs left, and use them only for very special audio recordings.

They simply don't make media like that anymore these days.

I don't really have any "rare" media....unless you count Sony TYs (TYG01 and YUDEN000 T02, also Sony Music CDRs (TY)) - rare in the UK 'cos AFAIK it wasn't sold here

Also have some Maxell TYG01 and YUDEN000 T01, which is rare as hen's teeth here now

Edit: Oh, oh...and two pieces of Maxell 12x DVD-RAM!!

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Last edited by Arachne; 16-09-2008 at 17:53.

Lead Data CD-RW (unrated speed) 74min 650MB might be rare? I have two still shrink wrapped in jewel cases.

It definitely is crap media! Pepst would love it!

I have a few of old MIL TDK CD-Rs too. They are great, but only a few of modern burners can handle them.
tdk box.jpg TDK CD-R.jpg

Could you test them? Maybe you will be pleasantly surprised.


Here are some of my rare media:
Emtec DVD-R Gold, made in France by MPO
Emtec GOLD obal.jpg Emtec gold.jpg Emtec MIF.jpg
eProformance 1x DVD-RW, made in Taiwan by Prodisc
eproformance.jpg eProformance2.jpg
Multidisc 99min CD-R, made in Czech republic by Eximpo
multidisc.jpg

The rarest I have most probably might be my oldest - an Apple MCC00RG20 DVD-R. Although at some point waaay back in time everyone (or at least the oldest of us) who had access to these early media wouldn't have called this "rare".

...too lazy to search through my old media to see what could be rare/obscure...

Philips CD-RW Audio, made in Austria (97:27.00 ATIP). Best CD-RW I have ever had, with results better than TY made Maxell or Verbatim CD-Rs!
philips.jpg philips RW.jpg
Emtec DVD-R, made in Austria by 3A Media Kittsee (4M SYS 202C1 MID code)
emtec.jpg
Creation 4x DVD-R, made in Greece by OPM S.A. (VDSPMSAB 01 MID code)
Creation.jpg

Very true, that's what I have the Plextor Premium for, which I very rarely use these days. I actually have / had both, MIL and MIJ old school TDK CDRs.

Aren't they pretty?

P.S.: If I think about it, the rarest media I have are probably those Yamaha branded 4x CDRs, made by Mitsubishi (Verbatim). Gorgeous dark blue dye, white top. Yamaha branded discs were rather rare in Europe.
Those old school Mitsubishi discs were brilliant also.

Very pretty ...I like those...nice clean-looking design

I just found an old 12x Verbatim CD-R, unfortunately already burned...
Made in Europe, probably Ireland. Where are those good times of ultra dark Metal Azo dye...

Emtec cd-r Made in France gold (only two pieces).

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f33/not-bad-princo-221407/

No, they are no longer sold. However, there's lots of it out there, as tons of it was sold off as the CompUSA retail stores were closed and the online operation made it's changeover. Lots of people have them, just not any CDFreaks.

How old are they? What is their rated speed?

Phtalocyanine or cyanine? Do you have a chance to post some pictures?

Does anybody still have some Mitsui or Kodak gold CD-Rs, any 1-4x CD-Rs, SKC cyanine CD-Rs, first Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs or Mitsui Gold DVD-Rs?
Any pictures would be great.

The rarest disc I have is a Memorex branded Ritek CD I bought a couple of years ago. It looks just like the other 99 in the pack and even has the same ATIP code. But there must be something unusual about it because when I scanned it the C1 average was only 0.78. Every other disc in the pack that I scanned had a C1 average of at least 20 (and a few C2 errors) so there must be something special about that disc. I still have it somewhere.

Okay we all know about Ritek's inconsistent disc quality these days. But it does show that Memorex's quality control was only 99%. How did they let that one slip through?

On a more serious note I am now inspired to go through my oldest CDs (all burned) and see who made them. I don't have that many, but the oldest are from 1996 (or possibly earlier) and are an interesting mix of branded and unbranded. I am also curious to see how many are still readable.

I'd be interested in hearing about those, if you have the time to go through them

I still got couple hundred Hitachi Maxell CD-R ( Dark Blue )
and SONY CD-R ( SONY MID ) Made in Italy

I got them off of Ebay this year, but I'm sure they're 10+ years old. They're rated 1-8x.