hi Ian,
I bought my liteon yonks back - it`s a 5005 and has done 2000+ discs and is in the shop for service. Having done favours for all the people in the pub (recorded cricket and ER and the odd movie for them etc), they have mostly gone out and bought their own and as I managed to set mine up in the blink of an eye I am now considered to be a technical guru and end up doing everyones, and all their various formats, I don`t mind, it keeps me in beer.
So far on makes such as Toshiba, Sony, Matsui, Panasonic and Phillips and a few others I can`t pronounce (and Phillips dvdrs are weird - just an opinion ;) ) all of them like TUFFDISC in either + or - format and run at about £20/100 inc vat delivery extra, from places like digital promotions. TDK in both formats also seem to work faultlesly but are a bit dearer. DABS do a great lil multi-format disc which isnt much more expensive then their usual budget range and takes all the guesswork out of choosing, they seem fine on all of them too, except my LITEON which is bizarre as it`s a multiformat machine.
I would definitely avoid brands like DIVA and ones without a good solid dye, avoid cheapies in bulk unless you can pinch one from someone else and try it on your own machine in all speed formats. It`s all very tempting to get the cheapies with their own special `free cases` but I can assure you the couple of extra quid for a hundred for branded, decent quality discs is so much more of an investment than so many beer mats, or movies or your favourite shows with drop out squares and/or bad tracking.
Here`s a list of discs which I would recommend to anyone, it`s all about how much you have to spend.
TUFFDISC (-, +, ) about £20/100
TUFFDISC -, re-recordables in 25`s about £9 (please see my note below about this)
(please remember that even tho the technology and speed of discs is getting faster, if you`re going to be recording off the telly - 1 x speed is all you can use!!)
RITEK Gold Tops (-.+, ) about £7 / 25
JVC 8`s (-, +, ) about £7 / 30
DATAWRITE Titaniums (- only tried so far) about £10 / 50
DATASAFE CMC`S - all formats - brilliant quality - about £11 / 50
FUJI (all formats) about £4 for 10 (they come in cute cases too)
SAMSUNG PLEOMAX ( + only tried so far) about £7 / 25 (shame about the name)
DATAWRITE SCRIBBLES (- only tried so far) about £19 / 100 (megggga value and highly recommended but won`t be around long so gettem while you can)
TDK/SONY - all formats - look round the net for best prices
DABS VALUE multiformat discs - wait for offers but currently about £7 / 25
Gigatain (+) about £5 / 25
Taiyo Yuden (make sure they ARE Taiyo Yuden because they aren`t usually printed on) Taiyo Yuden are really megga if you want the sharpest of sharp images on your dead posh and picky sony recorder at single speed (so I`ve been told - I am personally a bit short sighted and too vain to have me specs on all the time 8) ) price is commensurate at about £45 for the +, £40 for the - / 100. I shared a 100 tub (bought 10 +r discs just to try them and to be honest my LITEON and me didn`t really notice much difference but they recorded perfectly at all speed settings and they DO work on picky sonys)
About re-recordables.
Yeah well true, I thought I would never have a use for them, and they are dearer and I am always broke and even two and a bit years back when I was paying at least double sometimes triple the above prices for dvd blanks, I wanted to keep my little treasures on dvd and refer back to them for ever. This is still true. But then it dawned on me I couldn`t edit them once they were recorded, and if I wanted to make someone a disc as a present, I either had to first make a recording and then playback via the player and in essence waste a disc, or stand around with me finger on the remote control for the duration of the show/movie/ whatever I was recording which takes up an horrendous amount of time.
Solution..? Re-recordables.
First of all they have come down loads and loads and the TUFFDISC ones are less than 50p each now so they don`t break the bank. Second - they seem to go on forever! I am still on disc one and have used it about 30-40 times for odds n sods and it formats right back to perfection. Third, and most importantly, is that if you don`t have the money (as I don`t) to go out and buy yourself one one of these posh 250gig hd dvdr`s then this is the way you can record loads, then use your player as input to the dvdr you have to record what you want to keep `forever and ever` (plus you can get rid of all those annoying little adverts).
If anyone wants any more info then you can get me at yralih[at]moc.emor but don`t spam me `cos I will spam you right back and I never open anything with an attachment other than a jpg.
[img]Hilary [/img]
