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A climate chamber test of most major cd media brands was done around 1999. An interesting read at the very least.

Remember Operation Flashpoint's FADE? ("Original discs don't FADE")

Neither do I. I don't know if anybody's ever actually seen a FADE: it would be too difficult to tell it apart from the regular gameplay broken nonsense of O.F.

http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_protections_fade.shtml

Accuracy reduction? http://youtube.com/watch?v=Cz00enTHr9M

Sniper nerfing? http://youtube.com/watch?v=8z8JhwEJAas&feature=related

Thing is, if neither Microsoft nor Apple had gone the DRM route, they would still get on board [...]

I sincerely doubt that (but feel free to back it up with facts). No, without DRM support by Vista you'd just get 3rd party DRM instead, as has been the case with XP: SecuROM, Safedisc, StarForce, and a lot more.

DRM won't go away before people stop stealing, and whereas people in these forums feel strongly about it, most people are perfectly happy with the way the iTunes Music Store works.

As we can't get rid of it, I for one prefer a standardized platform provided by the OS, instead of the current crop of dirty hacks (yes Sony, I'm looking at you).

Safedisc. Or Discguard. Or Safecast. Or SecuROM. Or...

Oh hell. Here's the list of those who have gone before.

Here's a pretty damn complete list of protections

http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_prot ections.shtml

It includes how to detect the protection, how to back 'em up and usually a bit about how each one works

I remember that many years ago, I based my cd-burner purchasing decision on it's ability to rip/burn copy protected discs.

It's the reason I couldn't play doom3 without cracking it. I don't know why I even bothered spending money on it, it would have worked much better to download it. I had similar issues with fear. I was finally able to get it running using SR7.Stop which worked great at hiding my virtual drives so my retail products could run.

<a href="http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/c d_dye.shtml">different CD types</a>
<a href="http://www.mitsuicdr.com/technology/WSJ.com% 20-%20Portals.pdf">WSJ article</a>, in PDF form

different CD types
WSJ article, in PDF form

<URL:http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd _dye.shtml>
<URL:http://www.mitsuicdr.com/technol ogy/WSJ.com%20-%20Portals.pdf>

http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_dye. shtml
http://www.mitsuicdr.com/technology/WSJ.com%20-%20 Portals.pdf

<a href="http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/c d_dye.shtml">different CD types</a>
<a href="http://www.mitsuicdr.com/technology/WSJ.com% 20-%20Portals.pdf">WSJ article</a>, in PDF form

different CD types
WSJ article, in PDF form

<URL:http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd _dye.shtml>
<URL:http://www.mitsuicdr.com/technol ogy/WSJ.com%20-%20Portals.pdf>

http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_dye. shtml
http://www.mitsuicdr.com/technology/WSJ.com%20-%20 Portals.pdf

You paying customers are getting screwed by the companies themselves. Even before it was as "rampant" as it is claimed to be today, they were building in copy-protection techniques, which made it harder for the paying customer to use their media their way. This is even truer now, with cds like "Break the Cycle" (classic example cd) unable to work on many players.

I highly reccomend a read of The hard-to-find truth about piracy, which includes excellent parts such as:

The leisure corporations are conducting, in fact, a war not against pirates, but on their own customers. For many years now, honest consumers paying full price for legitimate products have been saddled with crippled, inferior versions of what the pirate users get for free:

- Pirate users don't have to keep their precious PC game discs spinning endlessly and noisily in the drive (and being subjected to repeated handling) while they play the game.

- Pirate users don't have to sit through all those infuriatingly long, unskippable splash screens / trailers / adverts before they can watch the actual movie on their new DVD, while the poor saps who paid for it in a shop do.

- Pirate users don't get their brand-new music CD home only to find that it won't play in their computer because it's been made in a non-standard-compliant "anti-piracy" format which prevents legitimate users from legally listening to music they've paid for.

- Pirate users can use their game consoles to play games originating from any country, while legitimate purchasers of, say, a game from Japan will be unable to play it on their legitimate, but UK-bought, Playstation 2.

- Pirate users don't have to uninstall perfectly legal software applications from their PCs, or put up with the secret installation of damaging programs if they want to play their new games, unlike the unfortunate legitimate consumers.

And so on. But astoundingly, the entertainment business still doesn't think it's made life miserable enough for its honest, paying customers.

Found that nice link in NTK for Sept. 9, 2003. I'd say that as a customer, you're getting screwed over. I'm not saying don't buy what you want, please do, but I'm saying it should also be ok for you to download a "Pirated" version so that you get to use the media your way instead of theirs. No-CD Cracks should be fine, but companies are now making your $50 product useless for using them. Sad, I think.

This is a case where buying the higher priced brand can often be better. There is software out there that can check who the manufacturer is of your media.

So if you have CD-R's that are Riteks instead of Taiyo Yudens, you're probably asking for trouble.

I'm sure the same can probably be said of DVD media. But since I haven't been burning to DVD-whatevers I have yet to do much looking-around.

When I first saw that website, I was disappointed that I'd already bought a Fujifilm 100 CD-R spindle for really cheap.

Time will probably show that you get what you pay for :)

These days, I'm looking to get an external FW HD's to keep a recent rolling backup of my essentials.

Usually it's the other way around. According to this CD Media World article, light-coloured (i.e. gold) CDs have a higher reflectivity, and thus a greater chance of being read by the majority of CD drives, than green or blue CDs.

(This article is kind of old, though, so I don't know how accurate it is, anymore. Still, I think it gives us some semi-objective info to rely on.)

D.

You think brand names are any good? Appart from kodak in the early days its mostly rebranded generics.

You may want to take a look at this. Even thought it is out of dte now it still paints a nasty picture of where the money goes... marketing.

CD Quality AND CD Factories

You think brand names are any good? Appart from kodak in the early days its mostly rebranded generics.

You may want to take a look at this. Even thought it is out of dte now it still paints a nasty picture of where the money goes... marketing.

CD Quality AND CD Factories

I just wish there was some technical reviews on media, thickness, quality of materials, burn speed test, tested with multiple media.

This may be somewhat dated, but this site used to have some interesting CD info on it.

In the CDMediaWorld review they simulated the passage of time on the discs and the Ritek were estimated to last 5 years and the Taiyo Yuden 50 years

In reality, 50% of the TDK discs I buy (model: CD-R80, currently with an item code of CD-R80CMEB but many other items codes too) are manufactured by Taiyo Yuden and 50% claim to be manufactured by TDK

These articles should be useful...
'CD Factories':
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_fact ories.shtml

'CD-R Quality':
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_qual ity.shtml

'TDK Inferior Quality CD-R's':
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_tdk_ iq.shtml

(Thanks for the tip on an alternate way to find TY discs)

In the CDMediaWorld review they simulated the passage of time on the discs and the Ritek were estimated to last 5 years and the Taiyo Yuden 50 years

In reality, 50% of the TDK discs I buy (model: CD-R80, currently with an item code of CD-R80CMEB but many other items codes too) are manufactured by Taiyo Yuden and 50% claim to be manufactured by TDK

These articles should be useful...
'CD Factories':
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_fact ories.shtml

'CD-R Quality':
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_qual ity.shtml

'TDK Inferior Quality CD-R's':
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_tdk_ iq.shtml

(Thanks for the tip on an alternate way to find TY discs)

In the CDMediaWorld review they simulated the passage of time on the discs and the Ritek were estimated to last 5 years and the Taiyo Yuden 50 years

In reality, 50% of the TDK discs I buy (model: CD-R80, currently with an item code of CD-R80CMEB but many other items codes too) are manufactured by Taiyo Yuden and 50% claim to be manufactured by TDK

These articles should be useful...
'CD Factories':
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_fact ories.shtml

'CD-R Quality':
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_qual ity.shtml

'TDK Inferior Quality CD-R's':
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_tdk_ iq.shtml

(Thanks for the tip on an alternate way to find TY discs)

a while back http://www.cdmediaworld.com/ had an article explaining how there were something like 256 different brands of CD media, but only something like 16 different manufacturers of the actual media.
Taiyo Yuden were reckoned to be the best manufacturer. they make discs for lots of different manufacturers, but you don't know 'til you get home and get yr CD writing software to read the code off the disc and tell you who the manufacturer is, bcos it aint gonna tell you on the packet. and different sub models of disc can be made by different manufacturers.
I think TDK even had the same models, with some made by Ritek (the worst quality) and some made by Taiyo Yuden. there was a court case against them for this.
I buy a single TDK disc, take it home and check it, and if its made by Taiyo Yuden I go back and buy loads of that same model disc, and have been able to get the people in the shop to say they'd take the discs back if they weren't Taiyo Yuden (a large consumer-space chain in the UK, I shan't name them incase they read this and stop being so remarkeably fair)

I remember way back when, around when CD-R's first came out, they had a type of organic dye that appeared gold whos purpose was for data archival. I have a few of these and quite a few of the old blue Verbatims and some no-name green media. All of these are still quite readable, and they were burned in 1996. Perhaps one of the reseachers in the article left their CD-R's on the dashboard of their car and didn't own up to it.

The other thing to consider is that DVD-R/+R technology is dropping though the floor. I bought a Pioneer A05 for $320 in January and today the A06 is going for $229., and remember I bought this thing from the same place I linked to. I don't know how DVD-R is for archival, but my point is that at the rate the technology is falling in price, CD-R may not be around much longer anyway.

In any case, I found a rather excellent guide on the different tyes of CD-R media. It goes over all the dyes, their manufacturers, theoretical lifespans of the dyes, etc. I recommend a visit...

http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_dye. shtml

And what kind of dye did the CDs use?

I remember when I was first investigating what brand of CD-Rs to buy. I read an article on the differences between the dyes used in CD-Rs.

Don't remember the exact details, but it was something along the lines of the chemical combination used to make CD-Rs with green dye are better for single speed reading (eg. Audio CDs) but didn't last as long. The chemicals used to make the silver/gold dye however were superior for data, and should last somewhere in the order of 20 years. I think blue dye was somewhere in between.

This similar article says gold dye CD-Rs have 100 year durability, and the cheaper green ones only have a 10 year life, but have been enhanced to give 20-50 years of service.

Check out this article on CD-R quality done in 1999.

To sum up the article, price is directly proportional to quality. The company that has the most quality CD-Rs is not surprisingly Taiyo Yuden...the creator of the CD-R dye process.

The overall finding is that the cheapest CD-Rs suck. Pretty much anything made by Ritek, CMC, or Princo will suck. This does wipe out ~90% of all CD-Rs out there. Imation, Memorex, and all of the silver CD-Rs are made by these cheaper companies.

Some of this information is dated, but I have found that Fuji CD-Rs in the blue spindles are now the best source in the states for CD-Rs by Taiyo Yuden. The article I linked to states that Fujis are made by Ritek. This is wrong. I am reading one of the Fuji CD-Rs right now that's over 3 years old and there's not one error.

Check out this article on CD-R quality done in 1999.

To sum up the article, price is directly proportional to quality. The company that has the most quality CD-Rs is not surprisingly Taiyo Yuden...the creator of the CD-R dye process.

The overall finding is that the cheapest CD-Rs suck. Pretty much anything made by Ritek, CMC, or Princo will suck. This does wipe out ~90% of all CD-Rs out there. Imation, Memorex, and all of the silver CD-Rs are made by these cheaper companies.

Some of this information is dated, but I have found that Fuji CD-Rs in the blue spindles are now the best source in the states for CD-Rs by Taiyo Yuden. The article I linked to states that Fujis are made by Ritek. This is wrong. I am reading one of the Fuji CD-Rs right now that's over 3 years old and there's not one error.

a quite complete site is found here: www.cdmediaworld.com .

oh. and my 2 : if you intend to use cds for backup, except using the good kind, also make sure you are not writing or sticking labels on the cds, keep them in plastic covers intended for storage (not crystal boxes, since they give off fumes that damage the cd), and keep them in the dark with some moisture absorbing stuff alongside.

f64 : tutti bianco!

Philips licensed the logo for their use; it's up to Philips to decide if they're in breach of that license agreement.

And Philips has in fact decided to warn the labels about the use of the logo on non-conforming discs.

I dispute the notion that you have the foggiest idea what you're talking about.

The CD-R FAQ, section 2-4, lists the major CD copy protection methods in use. Thus far, I have concentrated on the "static" method, for which I could find the most evidence of potential violation of the Red Book specification.

I also dispute the notion that anything you've said here is even remotely true.

I have presented evidence by linking from my comments to web pages containing evidence. It's your turn to present the flaws in the evidence to which my comments link.

For instance, this web page states: "According to the Red Book standard, the BLER count for a disc must be less than 220. In practice, an average BLER of 50 is more acceptable ... A Burst Error is defined as seven consecutive blocks in which the C1 decoding stage has detected an error [... and] constitutes a Disc Failure." I have presented the evidence; what do you not accept about it?

You are an idiot, therefore nothing you say should be listened to.

"You are a coward, therefore nothing you say should be listened to." See how that sounds?

The onus is then on you to prove that you are not, in fact, an idiot.

What do you think gives me such a burden of proof? I'd guess you don't get along with others well in real life either if you think everybody is an idiot by default.

So far, you've blown it.

id.i.ot n. "A person of profound mental retardation having a mental age below three years and generally being unable to learn connected speech or guard against common dangers" (American Heritage® Dictionary). Given that I have scored 130 on an IQ test and received a B.S. in computer science from a reputable engineering school, I don't see how I match this precise definition of "idiot". If you claim that this definition is in error and that I match some other precise definition of "idiot", please state such a definition, along with why "idiots" under your definition should not be listened to.

doesn't know how to read Google's help page, maybe?

You claimed that Google would phrase enclosed in quotation marks as an exact phrase. Then why does Google's help page state: "Search for complete phrases by enclosing them in quotation marks"?

If you continue to argue without providing evidence against what I have mentioned in this thread, then you are a troll, and I can find all sorts of reasons not to listen to trolls.

The Napa DAV311 can be purchased in any computer bazaar in Mexico for about 80USD...

It plays CD's, MP3 CD's, and even has a video output if you want to play VCD's on it.

Behold! The power of Chinese sweatshop manufacturing!

>It was in the box, sealed, and it worked. It just wouldn't burn onto any of the CDs I had (Memorex).

Yeah, Memorex, eh?

Memorex == OEM Ritek == Junk.

I've not yet met a burner that handles their media well. Maybe a laser cutter would do...

>Why does everybody want to vote on-line?

This is simple. Jean Chretien is straining to leave a "legacy" behind in this country after 3 terms of heavy-handed rule. He doesn't like what his opposition paints as his legacy -- A liar on the GST "The GST is history!", a thug with his shawinigan handshake, a bumbling moron infront of cameras, a person who can't even keep himself safe from break-ins no matter how much security he can pay for, a man who puts the lives of the Canadian military in jeopardy without them even being on a mission, a man who can't handle being wrong, a man who doesn't believe in your chartered right to free speech, a man who wrongfully invests your money, a man who supports things by doing nothing, such as the CD-Levy that assumes all Canadians are criminals, and the anti-piracy laws that leave at least 3 million Canadians with the inability to be multicultural in their television watching.

The rubber suit is wearing thin, finally.

Of course, those $0.15 CD-Rs you're getting are probably crapola...

You should really check out this site. Copy protection is easily averted using many of the utilties linked from this site. I myself use plextor drives and -never- have bad burns (referring to another post), often people mistake their "bad burns" with buffer underruns where your system can't keep up with sending data to your CDR. Plextor has burn protection which allows the CDR to slow down giving your system time to send it more data. In the past people just turned down the CDR burn speed and it works, so now they think that "lower burning speeds = "higher quality burns" which is absolutly not the case, it's merly increasing the frequency of successful burns because your system can finally keep up with the burner.


People shouldn't knock on a product if they don't know the brandname. Plextor's drives are top notch, the price premium over other drives is definatly worth it.

Upgrading your CD writer drive via firmware is nothing new, it's been going on for quite a while.

Coincidentally enough, just last night I upgraded a 6x burner I bought for $10 to an 8x using the tricks on this page. There's info there for several older model drives.

On:

http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_prot ections_key2audio.shtml

Is this quote:

A digital-2-digital (digital CD output to digital CD-Recorder/MD input) generates an "Copy Prohibit" or "Cannot Copy" error message!

I have a HiFi system which delivers digital data to the ampiflier, which has a DSP processor (all modern A/V receivers are like this). This way I avoid introducing the noise/distorsions through audio cables between CD player and ampifiler, and also let the ampifiler process the digital signal better than CD player would do.

I use all normal HiFi components, and just use the digital connection between them through optical cable between my CD player and my ampiflier.

In short, the disk with stated protection wouldn't play on my HiFi system. Note: I don't use any computer.

And that is not stated on the sticker. Fantastic reason to buy, open and return the opened disk to the store.

At the end, Sony'd have to put on the sticker something like:

"this disk won't play on Mac, PC and on digital HiFi systems"

CD disk which you can't play on digital HiFi systems -- only on analog ones -- it's really a good buy. ;>

Even if somebody at the moment doesn't have the system which I explained (and a lot of people can upgrade the present systems to it by just buying once optical cable), why would anybody buy a CD which wouldn't work once he improves his HiFi system?

For how to copy it and more information see here

Back in July, BMG caused an uproar over the bugs in its copy-protect scheme which rendered many CDs unplayable. Even given Universal's generous promise of unquestioned returns, this latest attempt to copy-protect seems likely to generate a lot of resentment.

It would be interesting to know what kind of copy-protect they're devising that results in such profoundly "unplayable" CDs. Some of the major players attempting to win the early lead in the copy-protection tech field include TTR Technologies and Midbar Tech.

CD Media World discusses how to create a copy-protected CD. Personally I wouldn't want to, but I think it's interesting to see the business maneuverings and keep abreast of the technological tricks they're trying out on us.

• CD Media World has extensive reviews and information on CD media sources, burner reviews, etc.
• CD-Recordable.com, if you're in the US, is (so they claim) the only US Manufacturer of CD media. Their site makes it look like they put real effort into their product, I've ordered a few batches for work and personal use (~100) and not had coaster problems. (Disclaimer: I haven't really had coaster problems with other brands either)
• CD-RW's may play better in some finicky CD players than plain CD-R's. I have not verified this myself, nor seen more than rumors on the subject. Anyone have any experience?

Again, i'm not one to advertise, but GameCopyWorld and their daughter sites are imo the best for information on stuff like this. They are the ones that lead me to my decision on which CDRW to buy and I have been nothing but happy with it. You can find a link to a DVD Comparison of theirs Here which gives a comparison between them and different drives and such. They will also give you links and info on DVD Backup software that you can use.

The HP drives are just rebadged Philips internals, the early ones sucked, I had a HP 6020 2x CDR in 1997, it died within months, they replaced it with another, it died.

In fact the products sucked that much that a bunch of US consumers initated a class action suit against HP and Philips and won. I believe you're entitled to $150 or a new drive if you were unfortunate enough to have purchased this drive.

I had a nice little chat to HP UK about the above class action and they offered to send me a new SCSI CDRW drive, it was to shut me up, I guess they didn't want risk the same action happening in the UK, especially now precedent had been set.

We're not talking about $90 CDRW's you see today, I paid £350 (~$500) for the 6020 SCSI in 1997, so you can see why people felt a little cheated when it died after 4 months.

Now, I'm not usually one for supporting the heranging of companies with frivolous claims (e.g. hot coffee burnt me, doh) but there were some serious technical deficiencies with this drive which shouldn't have gone to production in its current state, in effect many people became beta testers at a very expensive price, so they did have good grounds.

I'm not trying to start a fight here, but please refute these points because I am curious about MD.

audio quality:

MD uses lossy compression. Is there no MP3 quality setting that compares? There must be. And if you are storing files on a 650 or 700MB CD-R, there's got to be a way where you get as much music as you can on a (128MB?) MD.

simplicity:

Depends too much on the device to compare categories. However, if you already have a load of MP3s, copying them to a CD-R is pretty easy.

cheap media:

A CD-R is pretty cheap. How much is a MiniDisc? Aren't they about $3? I could be wrong.

battery life:
I do not have a CD-R based MP3 player so I can't comment, but my geek intuition tells me that since both kinds of devices have spinning media, decoding hardware and audio hardware they will probably have similar battery life. Likewise I assume cost of the player is about the same too.

There are links to CD-based MP3 players on this page.

This article at cdmediaworld has good reviews as well as links to other sites with reviews.

This news item came out a week ago:
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_prot ections_safeaudio.shtml

• Copy-protected CD hacked--or is it?
• How to Create a Copy Protected CD
• BMG's New Copy-Protected Audio CDs

That said, I find it interesting, but not unusual for CDs and other media to be released, without mentioning that they're copy-protected. I suspect the reason is that most copy-protection schemes are temporal at best. They're sort of like locks on our doors and cars, they keep the honest man honest.

I found some interesting articles along this same topic:

• Copy-protected CD hacked--or is it?
• How to Create a Copy Protected CD
• BMG's New Copy-Protected Audio CDs

Though I am by no means a fan of the SafeDisc copy protection, your condemnation of its use flies in the face of Slashdot's praise for (guess!) Diablo 2. Diablo 2, among quite a few other popular games such as Age of Empires 2, all use the SafeDisc copy protection, so if you can't run Myst III, then you must be missing out on Diablo 2.

For a (presumably incomplete) list of games that use SafeDisc, go here: http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_prot ections_safedisc.shtml

You can probably do a simple search on Google to find out what other games use SafeDisc. Yes, it's a "feature". Yes, it causes the game to be unreadable by some CD-ROM drives. But no, it is not a valid reason to specifically blast UbiSoft for a "feature" commonly used today by many other companies in computer games.

Go find a computer that will run Myst III, and you'll find that the graphics and puzzles are great. Wonderful, even. Even the flaky Hewlett Packard I installed it on managed to run it fine. Incidentally, my copy of Myst III came with an instruction manual. You know, in the CD case. Like Riven. Like the original Myst. And it has installation instructions. Just to let you know.

...that if this recycled gadget happens to use anything more than the barebones chassis, motor, spindle and laser of the CD-ROM unit (ie the electronics, which I can't find out as the site is badly slashdotted) then should SunComm's copy protection scheme be widely adopted, none of the discs will be playable in this player, nor will you get the option of downloading "secure" MP3/WMA files of them as you supposedly will if you play the protected disc in a netified PC.

Perhaps this is a good thing. A few thousand angry customers who can't play their discs in their car player demanding their money back will be a good shot in the arm for fair use. The European copy-protection scheme along the same lines only failed in 3% of CD players, but this was enough that it was immediately withdrawn and shelved.

Doh.. I hate having to reply to my own post, but I searched for this ages ago, so I wrote the previous post. Now, after posting I find what I was looking for .. typical.

If anyone else is interested in this, a very good source of info is here:

http://www.cdr-forum.de/faq/faq07.php3#[7-6]

List of media types and apparent sizes on CDMediaWorld: http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_cdr_ info.shtml. I don't know how easy it is to identify the exact type of disc you have though.. I only managed to find the ones I have by looking at the capacities listed from what I've observed myself.

Having played with things a bit and tried using Easy CD Creator to tell me the disc size, I've found that the TDK 74 minute / 650MB CDs I have can actually store 658.7MB, and I can store 702.8MB on the 700MB CDs.

--
Delphis

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