EMTEC brazilian cd-r made by VIDEOLAR / HP cd-r made in TAIWAN

[RINLEW]

Hello to all. I've just registered. I live in Brazil and finding good cd-r's (Taiyo Yuden, TDK) here these days is impossible.

So we have to stick to our domestic manufacturer (VIDEOLAR) which makes brazilian EMTEC cd-r's. VIDEOLAR claims their cd-r's are the best here, made of MAKROLON a substance said to be unaffected by extreme temperature and humidity fluctuations.

or

We can use the HP cd-r's all made in TAIWAN which are easily found along with other Chinese and Hong-Kong brands/manufactures.

I would like to have your help concerning 3 things:

1st)
What's your opinion about the brazilian EMTEC cd-r's made of MAKROLON by VIDEOLAR in terms of longevity, storing important data and data deterioration.

2nd)
The brazilian EMTEC VIDEOLAR-MADE cd-r's had their "label" surface slightly yellowish (like Sony or TDK blank cd's). Some of my old EMTEC cd-r's are now turning into a heavy brownish-yellow colour (although the data is ok). What is this? Does this mean I'll lose the data?

3rd)
[FONT=Arial][SIZE=3]What's your opinion about the HP cd-r's made in TAIWAN
in terms of longevity, storing important data and data deterioration?

Thanks to all for your informations and have a wonderful 2013
[/SIZE][/FONT]

[pepst]

Hello RINLEW,
welcome to the forums.

1st)
What’s your opinion about the brazilian EMTEC cd-r’s made of MAKROLON by VIDEOLAR in terms of longevity, storing important data and data deterioration.

Actually, Makrolon (high quality optical grade polycarbonate resin) is very widely used in the media manufacturing industy- at least 50% of all CD-Rs produced worldwide are made from Makrolon.

My personal choise would be HP. “Made in Taiwan” HP CD-Rs are produced by CMC Magnetics. I am not CMC’s biggest fan, but even their cheapest and low grade CD-Rs were always decent and reliable. I have several tens of ~10-15 years old CMC Magnetics’ CD-R and they show no signs of degradation.

Videolar is a quite small and inexperienced media manufacturer and they are using Plasmon’s ATIP, which is rather poorly supported by optical drives’ firmwares.

[RINLEW]

Hi Pepst:)

Thanks for the welcome message and thank you very much for your help.

Glad to know that these old HP’s made by CMC still perform. I have some EMTEC/BASF made by CMC Magnetics which were burned in the year 2000 at 1X speed in a HP-CD-Burner and they perform perfectly and the data is intact. So they are 13 years old.

Concerning EMTEC disks made by brazilian VIDEOLAR, as I said above, the shinny label side of some cd-r’s are turning into a brownish yellow. Brazil is a very hot tropical country and the moisture levels are high.

Probably this isn’t the correct place to ask this, but do you guys would recommend an on-line store which would be safer to buy Tiyo Yuden CD-R’s? I know that there’s no guarantee they will not be FAKE, but maybe there are more reliable on-line stores.

Supermediastore.com doesn’t ship internationally.

Maybe [B]AMAZON ?[/B]

Thank you Pepst for your help and attention.
Paulo Gonzalez (Rinlew)

[pepst]

Off topic - do you have 1 or 2 spare blank Emtec CD-Rs and CD-R/DVDR drive capable of quality scanning? I would love to see some quality tests of Videolar made CD-Rs.

[mciahel]

[QUOTE=RINLEW;2672004]]The brazilian [B]EMTEC[/B] [B]VIDEOLAR-MADE [/B]cd-r’s had their “label” surface slightly yellowish (like Sony or TDK blank cd’s). Some of my old [B]EMTEC[/B] cd-r’s are now turning into a heavy brownish-yellow colour (although the data is ok). What is this? Does this mean I’ll lose the data?[/QUOTE]Backup these discs as soon as possible.

Michael

[RINLEW]

[QUOTE=pepst;2672204]Off topic - do you have 1 or 2 spare blank Emtec CD-Rs and CD-R/DVDR drive capable of quality scanning? I would love to see some quality tests of Videolar made CD-Rs. ;)[/QUOTE]

Yes I can do it. My drive is old, but it is TDK (hope it’s not fake). And I have NERO. I think it can perform the tests you mention isn’t it? How do I send them to you? Do I post the scan here?

[RINLEW]

[QUOTE=mciahel;2672230]Backup these discs as soon as possible.
[/QUOTE]

Thank you Michael for the feedback. I did the backup… when I picked them up and saw that that shinny label surface had turned into a strange brownish yellow. I thought I would not be able to recover the data, but strangely enought the cd-r still works. The process didn’t stop… it is still getting darker.

To tell the truth, I never lost a CD-R in my life. I’ve been burning them since 2000: TDK, HP, SONY and EMTEC. Recently the TAIWAN HP and EMTEC VIDEOLAR made brazilian CD’Rs.

The only 2 CDs I lost were not CD-Rs. They were regular music CD’s done by normal Record Companies (Polygram):

One was IT’S BETTER TO TRAVEL by SWING OUT SISTER. But this one was really abused: after 10 years of heavy use it stayed in a country house in the open air in the rain, in the hot sun, it had deep scratches on the label surface, it was dropped in the pool full of chlorine: no one saw and it stayed there for 3 days… As expected, in a process of months the shinny label side became transparent, full of thousands of little holes the size of a pinhead… as if it was dissapearing away.

The other one was also a regular professional music CD done by EMI or whatever… it was KING CRIMSON’s THRAK. It was also abused. It stayed in the open air for a long time in that country house, in the night cold moisture. A kind of fungus grew inside the disk and the music went away.

I replaced those 2 and today I treat the CDs and CDRs with much care as I can.

[pepst]

[QUOTE=RINLEW;2672264]Yes I can do it. My drive is old, but it is TDK (hope it’s not fake). And I have NERO. I think it can perform the tests you mention isn’t it? How do I send them to you? Do I post the scan here?[/QUOTE]

Does your drive support C1/C2/jitter reporting?
Post your results here: http://club.myce.com/f77/plasmon-75675/

[RINLEW]

[QUOTE=pepst;2672428]Does your drive support C1/C2/jitter reporting?
Post your results here: http://club.myce.com/f77/plasmon-75675/[/QUOTE]

Sorry Pepst: can’t upload the images of the EMTEC/VIDEOLAR jitter C1, C2 report (using Nero)

E-mail me and I send to you: [I]email address: edited out[/I]