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Grain wrote:I take it your saying they're 4X -R's are Valueline? The price and the 4X rating tends to say so. I have found no evidence of dual serials, and I did spend quite some time "peering at them" with a mag. glass about a year ago when discussing this on another site, however I have not done so more recently due to the lack of problems. They're very good folk at blankmedia.ca, my favorite TY supplier! (Got a heck of a deal on some Ricohjpn +R's from them also, just before Christmas)

Yup, all of Blankmedia.ca's 4x Taiyo Yuden's are Value Line discs. You can tell from the SKU they give it, which matches Taiyo Yuden's Value Line SKU.

And as for Dual Serials, you really need to know what you're looking for in order to see them. Most people wouldn't notice them unless they were looking at them, and had a premium line disc side by side for comparison.

And again, the problems I specifically said would be likely, were with TYG03 discs on the LiteON 851s burner. You'll notice that Blankmedia.ca took my advice and amended their webpage in the last week, to mention the compatability issue:
http://www.blankmedia.ca/proddetail3.asp?id=421

The spindle you receive may be Ty G03 media coded depending on the batch lot. There are alot of 4x burners that are not compatible with this disk.

And yeah, they're not a bad supplier of TY product. I have issues with their other sourcing habits though. They have a tendancy of grey marketing a lot of product in from asia, which is not meant for sale in North America. Sometimes this product is one or more grades below the stuff normally sold in Canada, but their customers couldn't possibly know that... they just see a cheaper price!

Thanks for the info. Is it safe to assume that any 8X or 16X rated -R TY discs blankmedia.ca carries is Premiumline (obviously not counting the 4X rated TYG02's & G03's)? Or is any TY bot from them suspect valueline in your opinion?

Grain wrote:Thanks for the info. Is it safe to assume that any 8X or 16X rated -R TY discs blankmedia.ca carries is Premiumline (obviously not counting the 4X rated TYG02's & G03's)? Or is any TY bot from them suspect valueline in your opinion?

Nah, they're not out to screw people over. They don't mis-represent their products knowingly like that. (it's the UNknowningly you have to watch out for!), and they know their TY DVDs. The 8x and 16x stuff is premium line.

I thought as much, but your confimation is good to hear.

I have these discs and have been testing them after burning. I usually get a quality score of around 55%. Does this mean my discs will go bad quickly or what? The discs always seem to play fine. Usually it gets a lot of PI failures right at the end of the disc. Any rewson it does that. Thanks let me kno.

The quality score means nothing in my opinion. Why not post the scan itself?

I will post a couple. What speed should I do them at. I always test at maximum. Is that good? Or what should I do?

Here is three tests with three different burned dvd's. Let me know. This seems like really bad burns to me. THey all seem to work fine.

NEC drives don't make very good testing devices. The scan is done at full speed though, and the drive seems to have no problem reading the disc at full speed. So completely ignoring the results, and looking just at the transfer rate, I'd say it looks ok. Still, being value line, the life span is not guarenteed.

Thanks for the help!!

Is the transfer rate curve still fine of that third disc because I think that one possibly could be problematic on some players.

Ohh and this once again proofs do not burn TYG03 at really slow speeds the dye is optimised for higher speeds (6x and 8x). 2x is asking for problems.

RJW wrote:Is the transfer rate curve still fine of that third disc because I think that one possibly could be problematic on some players.

Ohh and this once again proofs do not burn TYG03 at really slow speeds the dye is optimised for higher speeds (6x and 8x). 2x is asking for problems.

Remember that the drive was running at 16x... most error scans are done at 4x or 8x, and most transfer rate tests are done at 8x or 12x. Also, NEC drives are not known for being super tolerant readers, especially at high speed! So I still think that chances are decent the media will work alright... but yeah, it's really hard to be 100% sure with NEC or Pioneer based scans.

Dolph, have you gotten any more specifics about the 4x value printable TY discs, as far as what media codes to expect? I see SuperMediaStore has them for sale already, albeit at not much of a savings over the regular TYG02 hub printables. Even if they are TYG01, all my drives could handle them fine but I'm still curious.

Gen-An wrote:Dolph, have you gotten any more specifics about the 4x value printable TY discs, as far as what media codes to expect? I see SuperMediaStore has them for sale already, albeit at not much of a savings over the regular TYG02 hub printables. Even if they are TYG01, all my drives could handle them fine but I'm still curious.

Word from Taiyo Yuden is that all Value Line is being switched to TYG03 code. How long this will last... I have NO idea.

dolphinius_rex wrote:

Gen-An wrote:Dolph, have you gotten any more specifics about the 4x value printable TY discs, as far as what media codes to expect? I see SuperMediaStore has them for sale already, albeit at not much of a savings over the regular TYG02 hub printables. Even if they are TYG01, all my drives could handle them fine but I'm still curious.

Word from Taiyo Yuden is that all Value Line is being switched to TYG03 code. How long this will last... I have NO idea.

If so, that should be a really good deal for those of us with burners that can handle TYG03, considering the premium TYG03 hub printables are over $50 for 100 still.

Gen-An wrote:

dolphinius_rex wrote:

Gen-An wrote:Dolph, have you gotten any more specifics about the 4x value printable TY discs, as far as what media codes to expect? I see SuperMediaStore has them for sale already, albeit at not much of a savings over the regular TYG02 hub printables. Even if they are TYG01, all my drives could handle them fine but I'm still curious.

Word from Taiyo Yuden is that all Value Line is being switched to TYG03 code. How long this will last... I have NO idea.

If so, that should be a really good deal for those of us with burners that can handle TYG03, considering the premium TYG03 hub printables are over $50 for 100 still.

Eh.... remember this is a lower quality disc then the Premium Line. Use it with CAUTION.

dolphinius_rex wrote:Eh.... remember this is a lower quality disc then the Premium Line. Use it with CAUTION.

Even so, I'd take a lower quality TY disc over most anything else. By most accounts the value TY is still very good.

Gen-An wrote:

dolphinius_rex wrote:Eh.... remember this is a lower quality disc then the Premium Line. Use it with CAUTION.

Even so, I'd take a lower quality TY disc over most anything else. By most accounts the value TY is still very good.

I only use it for short term storage, in the neighborhood of days, not weeks or months. Why? Because I have Acro Circle which I *KNOW* will last if I need it that long For stuff I need better then Acro Circle, I use Maxell Plus Series media, which is very close to Premium Taiyo Yuden, just with a MUCH smaller chance of bad bonding.

But then again, I'm pretty picky (Still, I know several people who think I'm not picky enough!)

Well, I went ahead and ordered a 100 pack. I have plenty of drives to test them on so I'll let you know what MID I get and how they burn. Won't be until next week sometime when they arrive.

Well, the discs came today. I didn't have to open them to tell what they were though; one glance at the stamper code visible from the bottom of the package told me they were TYG02. I had a mishap upon opening the tape wrap and dropped several discs on the floor so a few of them are already coasters Upon inspecting some of the discs on top, I found "speckling" like I've seen on Fujifilm-branded TY media in the past. I'll have to see if it will adversely affect burn quality, but I think my next bulk TY purchase will be from the normal "Premium" line, especially since 100 8x TYG02 isn't much more than these value discs, and the TYG03 hub printables have dropped to $49.99+shipping at Rima.

Gen-An wrote:Well, the discs came today. I didn't have to open them to tell what they were though; one glance at the stamper code visible from the bottom of the package told me they were TYG02. I had a mishap upon opening the tape wrap and dropped several discs on the floor so a few of them are already coasters Upon inspecting some of the discs on top, I found "speckling" like I've seen on Fujifilm-branded TY media in the past. I'll have to see if it will adversely affect burn quality, but I think my next bulk TY purchase will be from the normal "Premium" line, especially since 100 8x TYG02 isn't much more than these value discs, and the TYG03 hub printables have dropped to $49.99+shipping at Rima.

Interesting. That would back up my theory that the specking is problem directly linked to silkscreening, or in the case, applying the printable surface. I have NEVER seen or heard of any laquer Taiyo Yuden suffer from speckles. This has been going on for at least 2 years, as far as I know, and you think Taiyo Yuden would have sorted it out by now.

Rencor wrote:Interesting. That would back up my theory that the specking is problem directly linked to silkscreening, or in the case, applying the printable surface. I have NEVER seen or heard of any laquer Taiyo Yuden suffer from speckles. This has been going on for at least 2 years, as far as I know, and you think Taiyo Yuden would have sorted it out by now.

I personally haven't heard of speckling on any of the printable TY "Premium" discs either. It only seems to affect some branded TY, specifically Fujifilm (US), Panasonic, and Verbatim (Europe). I'd given TY the benefit of the doubt, and placed the blame with the rebadgers, but now I'm not so sure seeing as how these should be straight from the TY factory. I haven't heard of TY's own brand "That's" having such problems, nor the various branded TY media sold in the Japanese market (JVC, TDK, Fujifilm). Hmm...

Gen-An wrote:

Rencor wrote:Interesting. That would back up my theory that the specking is problem directly linked to silkscreening, or in the case, applying the printable surface. I have NEVER seen or heard of any laquer Taiyo Yuden suffer from speckles. This has been going on for at least 2 years, as far as I know, and you think Taiyo Yuden would have sorted it out by now.

I personally haven't heard of speckling on any of the printable TY "Premium" discs either. It only seems to affect some branded TY, specifically Fujifilm (US), Panasonic, and Verbatim (Europe). I'd given TY the benefit of the doubt, and placed the blame with the rebadgers, but now I'm not so sure seeing as how these should be straight from the TY factory. I haven't heard of TY's own brand "That's" having such problems, nor the various branded TY media sold in the Japanese market (JVC, TDK, Fujifilm). Hmm...

I find it a little hard to believe that Verbatim, Panasonic, and Fujifilm all silkscreen there own discs, with the exact same defect! I think its more likely that Taiyo Yuden is silkscreening them, because Taiyo Yuden being the manufacturer is the only common factor among them.

An explanation why is doesn't appear in the Japanese market could be the surface used. It seems like it's only the "rough" Fujifilm TY surface that is affected. I believe Verbatim and Panasonic use this same surface. It could be that the stuff sold in Japan has a nicer surface, kind of like European Fuji or (any) Sony.

I know virtually all my Fujis suffer this to *some extent*, but most of the time it is literally a *few* speckles at the very edge of the disc. I've had some pretty bad ones too, though.

This could be one of the reasons Taiyo Yuden has lost a bunch of OEM contracts as of late.

Rencor wrote:An explanation why is doesn't appear in the Japanese market could be the surface used. It seems like it's only the "rough" Fujifilm TY surface that is affected. I believe Verbatim and Panasonic use this same surface. It could be that the stuff sold in Japan has a nicer surface, kind of like European Fuji or (any) Sony.

Interesting theory. The TDK and Sony-branded TY media sold in the US have a pearly white finish, very smooth, and I've never seen any speckling on them. That is true of the non-printable TY media for the Japanese market; it's all smooth "ceramic" tops. That doesn't explain why the value printables have specks and not the premium discs though...

Gen-An wrote:

Rencor wrote:An explanation why is doesn't appear in the Japanese market could be the surface used. It seems like it's only the "rough" Fujifilm TY surface that is affected. I believe Verbatim and Panasonic use this same surface. It could be that the stuff sold in Japan has a nicer surface, kind of like European Fuji or (any) Sony.

Interesting theory. The TDK and Sony-branded TY media sold in the US have a pearly white finish, very smooth, and I've never seen any speckling on them. That is true of the non-printable TY media for the Japanese market; it's all smooth "ceramic" tops. That doesn't explain why the value printables have specks and not the premium discs though...

It's not *all* discs that are affected. It seems to be a somewhat random occurance, so you might have lucked out in the past. Who knows though, it could be the speckles are the reason they're being sold as value line.