OK. I went and bought some new DVD-R's the other day. they were called "Laser". 25 pack for 30 bucks. good price here in australia. 4x btw.

ANYWAY, i got them. took em home and burned em. they were made by a31n or something like that. at 2x the errors were horrendous. getting like over 300 normally and at the end getting up high to 500. the PO was like 50-60 near the end. not good!

so then i say. ok, lets see how they read in cd speed. yep major slowdowns near the end. so then i say k. they r gonna certainly suck at 4x. lets see if THESE 4x DISCS BURN at 1x. beleive it or not at 1x the errors were : PI more than 600 and 1000 near the end. PO lets just say WAAAAAAAY out of spec. geez. they r total garbage.

i tried at 4x but it spat the disc back out and said it couldnt even find the track or something LMAO. F*** that i said im taking these back. they wont burn at ANY speed acceptably.

so i go back. i say, mate, these discs u sold me r complete rubbish. they wont work at any speed. the F***en dickhead says to me, nah nah nah, we sold thousands of these and nobody has ever come back complaining.

i said listen, i know alot about error checking dvd's. these were WAY out of spec and wont even work on my dvd player (not that i even bothered, i know they werent gonna work with PO over 60 LOL). i said look these discs are shit thats all there is to it. then the pretty boy surfer Fa**ot goes, mate my buddy has burned tons of these. he earns 250g's a year. i think he knows what hes talking about.

at that point i should have put him in hospital. i say, look, nobody knows about dvd error checking and i bet ur buddy doesnt either. just coz u burn it sucessullfy it doesnt mean all is well and good. theres more to it than that. hes like, nah but i plays fine. (obviously a few months later it WONT) so he's like ok i can't refund ur money but i can let u get some different discs for the money we owe u. im like k. i get some trusty maxells (branded TDK). i only got 7 though coz they are hell more expensive but of course hell better lol.

then this old ass hat next to him is like it must be that ur burner is incompatible. i say, mate its a pioneer 106, its the crap discs my firend, that are the problem. he asks what do i usually use? i say taiyo yuden. do u even know who that is?? he's like all dumbfounded with no idea. i say yeah obviously u don't have a clue.

then THEN he says, do u know who andy such and such is? im like no. he says, it doesnt make u a bad person for not knowing something. then i was like in my head (u f**king moron ur selling garbage and ripping people off IDIOT!!!!). arggg. anyway. i got my discs and was on my way.

went next door to the other computer shop. haggles for a discount on these a grade princo's. go them. burned them at 2x speed. beatiful results. no skipping WELL within error specs.

in conclusion, some people need to be slapped. i cant believe the nerve of them telling me that my burner was the problem etc etc. they have no, absolutley NO idea about blank dvd's, who manufactures them, what the error specs are, what kprobe is, what PI and PO are but they have the nerve to attempt to tell me im wrong and they sell thousands of them!

do u think i did the right thing returning them and putting them in their place? even though they would not listen lol.

All I can say is: if you want good media, DO YOUR HOMEWORK!

Remember that in almost every industry, shop assistants, employees, checkout chicks, or whatever you want to call them are likely to know jack all.

dude i wanted stuff that was of lower quality for copy movies at a cheap price. i didnt ask for a FUALTY product. coz thats what it is. it WONT burn at 4x and even at lower speeds it is still completely unacceptable.

now tell me why i can go and buy princos for a slightly higher price and they work LITERALLY 10x better with 134 times lower amount of errors??. go on tell me lol.

seriously, these princos i got have lower error rates than taiyo yudens.

edit: BTW, i know that the employees have no clue. tell me why they have the right to tell me im wrong and refute everything i say. they have no right to act as if they even know anything. why can't they just refund it without any dramas? nope, the discs r fine they sell thousands. selling lots MUST mean they r the best.

Thanks, man, your post made my day! I had to laugh, 'cos I can imagine just how you felt (as in wanting to re-arrange someone's facial structure slightly)!
The shop wasn't by any chance in Grote St., with the other one about two doors back towards the market? I've bought a few Grade A's from the second shop, they seem to work fine, and the guys there seem to have some idea of what they're selling.

I've also posted earlier about AN31 discs - didn't get much of a response, but the general feeling seems to be that they're pretty crappy. Having said that, I've bought 20 discs that identify as AN31 and have burnt 9 with no problems (in a Pioneer, of course ).

However, I haven't bothered doing any testing yet (still new to DVD burning). What proggie do you use to test yours with? I'm getting a bit curious about these discs I've got.

Cheers.

AN31

AN32

There's another called AN30 floating around that's the same quality. Apparently they come from Hong Kong, and there have been reports of bootlegged media coming from the same factory.
(Sold as something else and turned out to be "AN".

cd pirate:
A wiser person than me once said: "You have done nothing when you have bested an idiot."

It's still frustrating, though, because the idiot is convinced he's right and doesn't even know he's been bested!!!

that quote basically sums up my dealings with many idiots.

thanks for the support fellas lol. the place i went to is strathfield car audio lol. they should stick to car audio imo.

btw, i use kprobe with a liteon dvdrom. it only works with liteon dvd and dvd writer drives. however u can still use it to do a transfer rate test with any drive i believe.

the program is called kprobe. find the latest version and download it.

Regarding an30, I ordered 250 AN30 disks, and as cd pirate posted I knew they were of lower quality, but there's a big difference of being of low quality and a faulty/broken product.

I burnt 3 of those DVDs. 2 of 3 had 1000+ read errors with dvdinfopro. If I inserted any of them in my Plextor 116a drive all that happened was the drive making very scary sounds - none of the DVDs was playable in any way or fashion in the Plextor (which normally reads everything including badly scratched discs and low quality burns).

The reseller was a nice guy though, and allowed me to return all of them.

I've had my share of bad experience with low quality media now, and even if my wallet hurts when I buy media I'm going to stick to good quality media.

@cd pirate
I bought my Princo Grade A's, 4x -R, from PCCentury in Grote St. for $2 ea. They sell them off the spindle (no case), they also had Shintaro, same price (which they said were the same as Princo -???). They also had Princo -R re-writables for $4.50. I was a bit dubious, but bought one to try and it's been working fine.

Cheers.

I think i should warn u. the princos arent very good at 4x. the errors were too high for my tastes (600 PI, only 10-16 PO max throughout so not unreadable by any means). however at 2x they were a dream (ave PI= 10-25, ave PO= 3-5). even beating out taiyo yudens. but of course taiyo yuden can be burnt at all speeds including 4x and is always within the error limits

edit: btw, i got my "A" grade princos 50 for $90 at the IT ware house. they were normally 50 bucks each but i asked for a dicount if i bought 2 and since i paid in cash he gave me a $10 discount. they also have 50 pack of princos for $85 normally. thats why i haggled. they had no 50 packs and i didnt want to pay $15 extra for the same amount of discs. ended up only costing me $5 extra lol. maybe i could get a discount for buying 100??? nah the 25 packs seem to be of better quality imo. like the discs have no dust or anything on them. in the 50 pack there were a few towards the bottom and top which had some dust and scratches etc.