X-bit labs

Ultimate Testing of Recordable DVD Media Discs (page 3)

Category: Storage

by Andrey Kuznetcov

[ 04/14/2005 | 08:08 PM ]

Testing Participants

Creation DVD+R 4x

The first of the two Creation discs we got for our tests comes to market in the “box-less” way. The real manufacturer of this disc is Interaxia AG, as you can see from the screenshot of the DVD Identifier utility.

By the way, the information about the manufacturer is stored in the ADIP zone (Address In Pre-groove) on DVD+R/RW discs and in the LPP zone (Land Pre-Pits) on DVD-R/RW discs.

We have no desire to comment on this. The result is utterly disappointing. It starts out quite well, but ends in a total failure. The quality of the disc comes to naught towards the end of the recording – all the norms are violated over and over again. Purchasing this disc would be the same as throwing this money away (but don’t forget about the psychological shock you’re likely to suffer with such media!)

Creation DVD-R 4x

The second disc from Creation is also manufactured by Interaxia AG. Unfortunately, we couldn’t test it fully – the disc proved to be incompatible with the Lite-On drive. Nero Burning ROM would issue an error message as soon as we tried to burn this blank. Of course, it doesn’t mean this disc is going to behave like that in other drives. It’s possible that there’s “mutual antipathy” between the given disc and drive, which may vanish with the next update of the drive’s firmware, but you should be careful nevertheless.