Interesting article on DVD recorders (1 Viewer)

[smithbrad]

That’s definitely part of it for me: I don’t have particularly high trust for burned DVDs. I’ve had glitchy TV DVDs that a friend burned from his DVD DVR type device in the past. Digital content that goes on to my computers is at least stable on the RAID, and potentially triply backed up locally and in the cloud.

I’m also increasingly surrounded by friends and colleagues who have roughly zero interest in physical media.

YMMV

I generally don't trust any media burned by others either, primarily because they may use cheap blanks and burn at faster speeds. However, I've had much better success with what I've done myself. I typically have backups on portable hard drives, as well as burned disks. Lately, I've been using Verbatim 25G BD-R's for the additional space and the fact that they are price competitive with DL DVD-R's. IMO, the hard drives will crash before the BD-R's or DVD-R's will go bad.

 

[TJPC]

Sorry, but I still don’t trust anything that just floats in the air and you can’t really see or touch. I can’t tell you how many times my daughter had picture or music collections which vanished when her computer got a virus or had to be wiped.

I have no interest in popular music. My collection consist of many obscure CDs that I had to search for or order from other countries plus most original cast recordings of broadway shows. Very little of this music is readily available on the Internet.

Physical media is the only way for me until all movies and all music is on the Internet.

 

[jcroy]

Sorry, but I still don’t trust anything that just floats in the air and you can’t really see or touch.

....

Physical media is the only way for me until all movies and all music is on the Internet.

(As an aside).

I'm this way to the extreme when it comes to books or the written word more generally. I have a hard time reading a lot of dense text on the computer screen or even on a tablet.

Even worse for the types of books I normally go through, the digital versions are frequently atrocious. A lot were so poorly scanned that plus "+" signs are sometimes not printed properly, and end up looking like minus "-" signs. (For example).

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Don't know. Very smart technically savvy guy made a DVD. It played in his home players, including his car. Took it to technophobic in-laws and it didn't work. Would have been easier to made a thumb drive with videos and plug into the new TVs they had to buy anyway.

If the in-laws are technophobes, maybe they have really old (say, pre-2000) DVD players? Burnt DVD playback was very iffy in the early players. Some could only handle -R discs, some could only handle +R, some gave poor playback on any burnt discs... My first players had trouble with burnt discs. I"m sure really old people/technophobes are probably still using the very first player they ever bought, and if they bought before the present millennium, then they probably can't handle most burnt discs.

Another possibility that I've encountered with other people I've swapped discs with before: some old and/or finicky players can only handle discs that are burnt at really slow recording speeds. Most people seem to be able to handle discs recorded at 4x speed or slower, but I've found some people who can't even handle that and need the discs burnt at 2x speed.

 

[DaveF]

If the in-laws are technophobes, maybe they have really old (say, pre-2000) DVD players? Burnt DVD playback was very iffy in the early players. Some could only handle -R discs, some could only handle +R, some gave poor playback on any burnt discs... My first players had trouble with burnt discs. I"m sure really old people/technophobes are probably still using the very first player they ever bought, and if they bought before the present millennium, then they probably can't handle most burnt discs.

Another possibility that I've encountered with other people I've swapped discs with before: some old and/or finicky players can only handle discs that are burnt at really slow recording speeds. Most people seem to be able to handle discs recorded at 4x speed or slower, but I've found some people who can't even handle that and need the discs burnt at 2x speed.

Except they then bought brand new blu-ray players. They too failed to play the discs.

Possibly, the discs got damaged en route? It’s a puzzler for now. I asked my friend for a disc so I could check it out on my players.

 

[smithbrad]

Except they then bought brand new blu-ray players. They too failed to play the discs.

Possibly, the discs got damaged en route? It’s a puzzler for now. I asked my friend for a disc so I could check it out on my players.

From what you stated it was most likely an issue with the initial burn and not the playback players. I've received disks before that appeared to burn fine, but under closer examination you could see the beginning of discolored rings appearing on the disk showing that the burner is starting to fail. Burners will begin to slowly fail at some point and most people don't take the time to do a verification afterwards, so they don't realize there are issues. Some players can work around the bad areas better than others. Ultimately, I always copy anything I received to a hard drive for preservation. Copying to a computer will immediately show any issues since it won't work around the bad spots.

 

[DaveF]

^ hoping my friend will solve the mystery and tell me what was wrong!

 

[Ron1973]

Sorry, but I still don’t trust anything that just floats in the air and you can’t really see or touch. I can’t tell you how many times my daughter had picture or music collections which vanished when her computer got a virus or had to be wiped.

I have no interest in popular music. My collection consist of many obscure CDs that I had to search for or order from other countries plus most original cast recordings of broadway shows. Very little of this music is readily available on the Internet.

Physical media is the only way for me until all movies and all music is on the Internet.

I'm not disagreeing with that philosophy at all. I have rare 45's and 78's that will likely never see the light of day even on CD. There's no way I'd discard those even if I do have digital backups!

 

[DaveF]

Sorry, but I still don’t trust anything that just floats in the air and you can’t really see or touch. I can’t tell you how many times my daughter had picture or music collections which vanished when her computer got a virus or had to be wiped.

I have no interest in popular music. My collection consist of many obscure CDs that I had to search for or order from other countries plus most original cast recordings of broadway shows. Very little of this music is readily available on the Internet.

Physical media is the only way for me until all movies and all music is on the Internet.

But then you rip the music to a computer for easy playback on all the things. And store the physical media in a box in a closet out of sight. (caveat, I think of my friend how still makes mix CDs for his car because he dislikes dealing with playback on an iPod or digital system or whatever)

If you're regularly losing all digital data due to computer reboots and viruses...something more basic is wrong that should be fixed. Minimally, that's what backups are for. Even if your computer dies a tragic death, you have the backups to restore from.

If you're chronically plagued by viruses, that can be alleviated by a little bit of knowledge and little bit of basic self care: don't install any browser add-ons, don't click on any pop-ups form websites, and don't download stuff from pirate sites. And don't open email attachments from computer ignorant friends/relatives.

 

[jcroy]

I can’t tell you how many times my daughter had picture or music collections which vanished when her computer got a virus or had to be wiped.

If you're regularly losing all digital data due to computer reboots and viruses...something more basic is wrong that should be fixed. Minimally, that's what backups are for. Even if your computer dies a tragic death, you have the backups to restore from.

If you're chronically plagued by viruses, that can be alleviated by a little bit of knowledge and little bit of basic self care: don't install any browser add-ons, don't click on any pop-ups form websites, and don't download stuff from pirate sites. And don't open email attachments from computer ignorant friends/relatives.

(As an offtopic aside).

Whenever a local computer illiterate relative/friend/acquaintence asks me about how to "unbrick" their bricked (or dead) computers, the only thing I tell them is to reinstall the entire operating system from scratch or buy a new computer. I don't even bother doing any postmortem analysis.

If they want me to do a postmortem analysis of their computer for "data salvaging" purposes (ie. they didn't back up important files), then I demand they sign a written notarized agreement that they will not come back to me about the same (or similar) problem. I strictly enforce such agreements.

I know this is a very harsh way of doing things. Unfortunately this is the only way for others to take responsibility for their own computer habits. People have to fail on their own.

 

[TJPC]

But then you rip the music to a computer for easy playback on all the things. And store the physical media in a box in a closet out of sight. (caveat, I think of my friend how still makes mix CDs for his car because he dislikes dealing with playback on an iPod or digital system or whatever)

If you're regularly losing all digital data due to computer reboots and viruses...something more basic is wrong that should be fixed. Minimally, that's what backups are for. Even if your computer dies a tragic death, you have the backups to restore from.

If you're chronically plagued by viruses, that can be alleviated by a little bit of knowledge and little bit of basic self care: don't install any browser add-ons, don't click on any pop-ups form websites, and don't download stuff from pirate sites. And don't open email attachments from computer ignorant friends/relatives.

We have not had any virus problems since my daughter went to university 10 years ago. Her problems however have lead me never to trust any computer with my only copy of anything. I do use iTunes to load my CDs on to my iPhone etc, to play as I cut the grass etc., but the secure CD is always shelved with the rest. Any iTunes purchased is burned to CD.
Actually I have recently bought this:

https://m.aliexpress.com/item/32821113165.html

so I can listen to my music with earphones in bed as I fall asleep. That way I can listen to my originals with out all the fiddle farting around with iPhones and iTunes etc.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

(As an offtopic aside).

Whenever a local computer illiterate relative/friend/acquaintence asks me about how to "unbrick" their bricked (or dead) computers...If they want me to do a postmortem...then I demand they sign a written notarized agreement that they will not come back to me about the same (or similar) problem. I strictly enforce such agreements. I know this is a very harsh way of doing things.

I know that family is "forever", but, seriously, you make people you call friends sign a notarized agreement? Do you ever hear from them again on a social basis? Looks like that would be the first step in killing a friendship!

I'm the local "computer expert" (Macs, though), but as aggravating as people I would consider friends/acquaintances can be sometimes, I don't think I'd ever go that far if I wanted to stay their friend. I'd either tell them it was beyond my capabilities, or quote them a really high price to properly compensate for what I'd consider time wasted if they're dead-set on using my services.

Maybe you don't come across as harsh to them as you sounded in your post, though.

 

[jcroy]

I know that family is "forever", but, seriously, you make people you call friends sign a notarized agreement? Do you ever hear from them again on a social basis? Looks like that would be the first step in killing a friendship!

I'm the local "computer expert" (Macs, though), but as aggravating as people I would consider friends/acquaintances can be sometimes, I don't think I'd ever go that far if I wanted to stay their friend. I'd either tell them it was beyond my capabilities, or quote them a really high price to properly compensate for what I'd consider time wasted if they're dead-set on using my services.

So far only one case where there was a signed statement. It was an acquaintence I didn't really want around anymore.

I usually ask for the signed statement when someone is highly persistent. Usually most folks will not ask me anything more, when I just answer their questions with "buy a new computer".

 

[Tony Bensley]

I have two Magnavox DVD recorders purchased a couple of years apart, and even they don’t recognize each other’s unfinalized discs.

Fortunately for me, my replacement Toshiba DVD Recorder, which I purchased in early 2014, was able to finalize discs that were recorded on the first Toshiba DVD Recorder that I had bought around mid 2007. On the other hand, recording from PVR has been somewhat dicier on the newer setup; plus unlike the '07 Model, the newer one won't play non DVD video formats.

CHEERS!