Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

jsw

Moderator emeritus
Mar 16, 2004
22,910
44
Andover, MA
In my experience, the only differentiator is that they're a lot more expensive. They do work fine, but so do most.
 

Timepass

macrumors 65816
Jan 4, 2005
1,051
1
celebrian23 said:
I wouldn't buy them unless you are the ultimate apple fan who will pay a premium for DVDs that work exactly the same as cheaper ones.


that and to add there really only a handful of compainey that really make the blank DVDs. Everyone buy those and stamps there lable on them. Apple DVDs are just over price and no better than the cheap ones. I been using cheaper DVD for years. heck the pack I pull from now is 2 years old paid 15 bucks for 25 2 years ago. still all of them are good. Never had a one go bad or be regected. CDs I tend to get about a 1-3% failure rate on tehm. Which is well with in the norm and that using cheap ones.
 

airkarol

macrumors 6502
Nov 12, 2005
280
0
I would never pay that much for blank DVDs.

I usually buy Verbatim from The Micro Center. They work fine.
 

Makosuke

macrumors 604
Aug 15, 2001
6,748
1,437
The Cool Part of CA, USA
Very, very early on Apple blank DVD-Rs were quite inexpensive and good quality. Now the quality is fine, but they're drastically overpriced.

From everything I've read and a fair amount of personal experimentation, Verbatim is the safest name brand to go with, although most are at least ok. Taiyo Yuden (which is actually a manufacturer, not just a rebrander) is also a very good company, but they're not so easy to find outside bulk packs. Ritek was good until a couple years ago, at which point their quality decreased a lot.

I have a big lot of Taiyo Yuden and Verbatim, and anything important gets burned to both, so if one turns out to have longevity problems the other will probably be ok. I've never had a problem with either, though.

Note that if you want REALLY good discs, Verbatim sells "cherry picked" spindles of "Medical grade" discs that are supposed to be extremely good, but they're also extremely expensive.
 

superbovine

macrumors 68030
Nov 7, 2003
2,872
0
princealfie said:
I saw some Apple branded blank DVD's at the Apple Store... any those any better than the other brands?

apple support has told me to buy apple branded, memorx, and vertabim. my guess is apple dvd's are rebranded dvd's of one of the above brands.
 

Macky-Mac

macrumors 68040
May 18, 2004
3,704
2,795
so what's a good price for DVD-Rs these days?

(Apple sells a 5 pack for $12.99 at their stores near me)
 

sushi

Moderator emeritus
Jul 19, 2002
15,639
3
キャンプスワ&#
Macky-Mac said:
so what's a good price for DVD-Rs these days?

(Apple sells a 5 pack for $12.99 at their stores near me)
Depends on location I think.

Here in Japan, you can get a 10 pack for about $8.50.

Purchasing in larger quantities gives you more of a discount. For a 50 pack, you can get them for around $33.
 

Timepass

macrumors 65816
Jan 4, 2005
1,051
1
Macky-Mac said:
so what's a good price for DVD-Rs these days?

(Apple sells a 5 pack for $12.99 at their stores near me)


got a 5 pack with DVD with case for 5 buck so to give you something to compare it with. (full size cases)
 

WildCowboy

Administrator/Editor
Staff member
Jan 20, 2005
18,490
2,991
I just got a 30-pack spindle of Memorex 8X DVD-Rs from CompUSA for $6 + tax.
 

cwright

macrumors 6502a
Jan 5, 2004
573
0
Missouri
I always buy my DVDs online–it's MUCH cheaper, and better quality in my opinion.

Your best bet (as already mentioned) would be the Taiyo Yuden DVD-Rs, for about $.039 per disc in a 100 pack, and cheaper when you buy more. Ritek and ProDisc are two other brands that are a bit cheaper but still work great (I've tried both of them). These are great prices, but you will not find them in any retail stores, and you generally can't buy them in fewer quantities than 100.

If I were you, I'd order these. $76 for 200 high quality discs is pretty cheap–and they're inkjet printable too!

If you need something from the local store: Verbatim, Fuji, Sony, and TDK are all good brands, but can get expensive. I have always stayed away from Memorex. I've had too many of their hard drives fail and too many of their discs become coasters. And most of their printable discs have ugly white text printed around the hub of the disc, which I've always hated (they may not do this anymore–I don't know). Anyway, I just don't really trust that company anymore.

Like JSW said, Apple DVD-Rs are fine, but the actual recording surface of those discs are really the same as anything else.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.