Few things are more entertaining than seeing the expression on an intern's face after he's just tried to microwave a recordable DVD. No, this wasn't the culmination of some weird hazing ritual, but part of a carefully planned test matrix designed to prove whether cheapo store-brand DVDs could stand up to their pricier—and supposedly more robust—variants.
The microwave test was inconclusive—and not only because the sales staff banished our poor intern from the floor after the earsplitting and electroluminescent explosion had turned five DVDs into puddled plastic.
Apparently, microwave ovens will turn any recordable DVD into a high-tech Roman candle. Still, the results were worth the trauma: psychological to the poor intern, and physical to the five copies of Scooby Doo and the Loch Ness Monster that we'd previously burned onto those DVDs.
The shell-shocked intern wasn't the only collateral damage from the tests. My wife has even more reason to think me insane after opening the dishwasher to find five sparkling DVDs inside.
All in the name of science, or of saving you a few cents or some valuable data. For years I'd heard from vendors that recordable DVDs vary greatly in quality, that more expensive ones were better able to stand up to abrasion, smudging, and other user-inflicted wear and tear. So I put this to the test.
I hit the usual retail locations and did some online shopping, too. Curiously, Web-based stores had trouble keeping up with the brick-and-mortar retail bargains I found. Cascade Media, one of my favorites, quoted a price of 52 cents each—but I'd have to buy 600. American-Digital got down to about 38 cents each—cheaper than my best but still in quantities of 100 or more for generic DVDs.
Even more surprising was that generic recordable DVDs were more expensive than branded packages at the mass-market retailers. CompUSA's house brand, for example, averaged $1 a blank, while their 25-pack of Memorex blanks was just 60 cents each. Needless to say, I opted for Memorex.
The most expensive "cheap" brand of DVDs I found came from Walgreens: 15 Maxell recordable DVDs for 15 bucks. Wal-Mart came through with the cheapest overall, a 30-pack of Imations that cost $15, just 50 cents each. I found a 20-pack of TDKs at Target for $13, or 65 cents each.
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For other views on optical media quality check out these stories: Are DVDs and CDs Disintegrating? Bargain Media Could Hurt DVD Rot, or Not? OSTA: Don't Scrimp On DVD Burner Media |
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I had wanted to include DVDs from Costco, but they were out of my range—well over a dollar each.
As a control, I added a spindle of Verbatim DVD-Rs, normally pricier than those I've described. They add a "VideoGard" protection layer they claim is 40 times as scratch-resistant as standard media.
Then the fun began. I had devised a nasty set of tests bent on bringing any DVD to ruin. Our Scooby Doo movie was burned onto six DVDs, one of each type. Along with our microwave and dishwasher tests, I also subjected the DVDs to five minutes of direct sunlight, a rotary buffing with steel wool, a fingerprint smearing designed to replicate a preschooler's attention, and a DynaFlex-like bending test—10 hand flexes, both vertical and horizontal. After each test, the DVDs were inserted into the $50 Philips DVD player from last month; it had proved the best at playing scruffy media.
So how'd they hold up? Apart from the microwave test, which none survived, the DVDs were pretty robust—except the Verbatims. VideoGard delivered scant protection, as smudges, sunlight, steel wool, and the dishwasher all turned Scooby Doo into Scooby Doesn't. The only passing grade came on the bendy test.
The Memorex DVDs were a distant second-worst. They passed the dishwasher, sunlight, and steel wool test, but were defeated by the bending and smudge tests. The TDK, Maxell, and Imation blanks passed all except the microwave test, although the smudged Imation disk was slow to load.
My conclusions: Don't buy DVD blanks based on brand. Some brands may claim to stand up better to abuse, but my tests didn't bear that out. Don't expect generic DVD blanks to cost less—Wal-Mart's Imation blanks offer great value and decent performance at just 50 cents, and for just 15 cents more you can pick up the TDKs, which delivered the best mix of price and performance.
I couldn't test for longevity, but don't believe brands that claim to last up to hundreds of years. Make copies of key data at least every five years. And store those DVDs in a cool, dry place, preferably far away from your microwave oven—unless, of course, you're breaking in a new intern.
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