Most likely the 8x discs are IS inverse stack process and need a newer burner that is 8x capable for +R dl, otherwise many failed burns will occur. Most likely the discs are Ritek in origin, These are just guesses. JoeRyan is the man to ask
I actually use these discs quite alot, and coupled with the program IMGBurn, I actually get very few failed discs. out of 80 discs I've burned, I've failed maybe 20, and 18 of those were with CloneCD which seemed to have very bad compatibility with these discs. My burner is only capable of 6X Max, with CloneCD I could only burn up 1X Max, any higher would fail. And even on 1X, I still got quite a few failures. With IMGBurn, I can burn up to 6X with no issues whatsoever, the only 2 failed discs I had were due to the media being physically bad, not due to the program. *edit* the above poster is right on one point, however. The discs -are- Ritek discs. A burn speed of 8X is not necessary for an acceptable amount of good discs, though. Any speed can turn out good discs just fine, with IMGBurn, as I mentioned above. All of these discs played properly in my XBOX360, even every disc burned at 6X in IMGBurn. Any more questions, feels free to ask. I highly recommend these discs, they're a cheap solution to the expensive DVD+R DL problem.
25% failure rate .. I don't call that a good value solution when quality media is only 15% more expensive... and isn't destroying your burner and reader as an added bonus.
My intent of the reply was to state that a dl burner capable of 8x was necessary, not that the actual burn was needed at that speed. Newer burners have the firmware necessary to burn successfully IS inverse Stack production discs. Older burners capable of less than 8x burn speeds (for dl discs) lack the necessary firmware to get a successful burn with the IS discs. These failed burns are more often than not attributed to poor media , whereas the burner lacking the correct firmware is to blame.
25% Failure rate, while using CloneCD, yes. I've had no troubles at all once I swapped to IMGBurn. This may be more of a problem with my PC and burner than the program though, who knows? I'm not amazingly technological, I just know that IMGBurn produced alot less failures than CloneCD.
They will degrade over time. All optical discs do that. The degradation, however, will be slow and predictable if the discs were manufactured properly and the recording quality is initially good. That should allow you at least 10-20 years to transfer the information to a new format/medium. (Don't count on Blu-Ray as the next successor. Its design flaws will prevent it from every becoming a popular storage medium.)
@JoeRyan, could you please elaborate on the design flaws of BD discs as to why they will not become a popular storage medium. (I would like to know and to get a chance to pick your brain) Thank you
The intent of high definition video was to eliminate or reduce the artifacts of digital video encoding when seen on large screens (screens over 32"). (Reinforcing motivations were to introduce new hardware and new media once the patents on DVD were running out so that new patents could be issued for new royalty payments. The attraction for the movie industry was the ability to reissue old content another time for more revenue from people who had seen a movie, rented it on cable, bought it on VHS, and bought it again multiple times on DVD issues and reissues. Anti-piracy controls would be also toughened so that it would be very difficult to make copies.) The Blu-ray camp planned a disc with the same MPEG-2 compression scheme that DVD used, and that meant that a Blu-ray disc would have to hold as much as possible--25GB per layer. (Toshiba and NEC planned on using more advanced codecs such as MPEG-4 so that they only needed 15GB/layer for the same or even better quality than a Blu-ray disc.) In order to get 25GB on a disc, Blu-ray and HD DVD both needed a blue laser diode near the ultra-violet range of light transmission. These diodes are much more expensive and fragile than the ruby-red lasers that DVDs use. But Blu-ray also needed a glass lens that read or recorded extremely close to the surface of the disc in a process called "near-field" playback or recording, unlike the HD DVD system that could use plastic lenses focusing at a distance not unlike that of DVDs or CDs. Near-field reading originally required a cartridge, but DVD-RAM proved that consumers did not like the antiquated look and feel of a disc housing. So an expensive hard-coat was developed for the Blu-ray disc to prevent damage from contact with a pickup unite or debris trapped between the lens and the disc. Near-field recording also demands the flattest kind of disc possible. If a paper label can cause tilt on a DVD that prevents the accurate focusing on a DVD disc, imagine how much more accurate Blu-ray discs must be with tracks and pits that tiny fractions of those for DVDs. At the time, all these specifications were for Blu-ray's "cutting edge" technology; but whenever there's a cutting edge, someone bleeds. At first it was the manufacturers who were trying to make these discs. Now it's the consumers who are expected to pay $30 for a pressed disc and $10 or so for a recordable disc. (The manufacturing cost of a CD is about 2 cents, less than a jewel case cover. A DVD is less than a dime. Blu-ray is far more expensive--$15 was the figure I remember a few years ago when I was still in the business. If you compare the cost vs the price charged to consumers, I wouldn't expect to see competitive Blu-ray pricing any time soon, no matter how much the costs have declined. They simply are too hard to manufacture.) HD DVD made some sense in terms of design/cost/functionality. Blu-ray discs are too complex and difficult to manufacture when providing the same functionality. Recordable discs are also extremely expensive, and--at least two years ago--too unstable to consider for archiving anything more than a grocery list. I'm sure things have improved in the last two years, except the prices. The BD design is too complex to bring costs down dramatically unless the volume increases to the levels of DVD production. But that complex design requires a price that is too high to attract the majority of DVD buyers. The Blu-ray group has saddled itself with a cutting edge--an image that would make any horse rider wince.
