So I have been creating these Poker DVDs so I can go back and watch some hands and improve my game whenever I want. I was making them for myself, and I figured that and would be interested as well, so I extended the invitation to them. Adam ordered some blank DVD-R media and had it sent to me. He found a 10-pack of Optodisc brand 4x DVD-R media for about $20 online, so it seemed like a decent deal for such a small quantity.

When I got the discs I started making copies of the discs I already had made. Everything seemed solid, so when I ran out of the bulk Ritek 4x discs I had been using, I ordered another 10-pack for myself. Things seemed to be going along swimmingly, enough so that Adam ordered me another 10-pack. One day, when copying the latest disc, I got distracted by something in the other room and when Toast said it was done, I wasn’t around. When it finishes, it gives you the options to eject or verify the disc, and since I had never had any troubles with DVD-Rs verifying at some point I stopped doing it. Well, that dialog defaults to verify after 10 seconds or so. When I got back to my computer I saw that the verify had failed. I tossed that disc and tried another one, and it too failed on the verify. I kept this up, decreasing the burn speed to 2x, and finally at 1x things seemed to be working. But it turns out that at 1x it was just less likely to fail, because yesterday in burning some discs it took me like 7 or 8 discs to get 3 working ones. I started to suspect that maybe my drive was on the fritz.

This morning, I drove over to Best Buy and got a 10 pack of Memorex 4x discs. I burned three in a row at 4x and all 3 of them verified cleanly. So I guess those Optodisc blanks are just complete shit. I am now going back through the 5 discs I had burned for Adam before realizing the problem. I have found one bad one and one good one out of the two I have tested so far.

The moral of this story: Don’t buy Optodisc media. If you are looking for cheap media, I recommend the 4x Ritek media. I have gone through 75 of them and not coastered one yet. And my friend James also uses them and hasn’t had a single problem with any of them. I have bought my Ritek media from shop4tech.com and they have never given me any trouble (and offer free shipping to boot).