Sony DVD player reads "Disc is Dirty"

It sounds to me like you've been using crappy media. Too many people make the mistake of choosing their media based on the brand name rather than the actual manufacturer.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Dee

Thanks for merging threads. Both my computer, Sony set top DVD player, and PS2 plays real DVD media fine.

After an exhaustive search of what my problems really are, I've narrowed it down to my media. I used Verbatim, which is a brand I used to trust. I've created a table of around half of my DVDs and I can clearly see that almost all my Verbatim burned DVDs are now lost, unless I can quickly save them before they are completely unreadable.

All my Maxell burnt DVDs play fine, even those of same age as the Verbatim (by same age, none of my DVDs are older than 6 months).

The thing is that a Maxell disc could have been made by anyone. The same goes for a verbatim. The last spindle of Maxell that I bought were Ritek G05, which are good, but not stellar. They were stamped Made in Japan. I've seen Verbatim before now (Japan, Pastels -R x8) that were Yudens, and I've also seen Verbatim before now (Taiwan, Pearl White, -R, x4) that were actually by CMC Magnetics.

Now the upshot of this is that you want Yudens, and to a lesser extent Riteks, but you need CMC Mag like a fish needs a bicycle. You should pay as much attention to the country of origin when buying discs as to the brand. All the major resellers buy from multiple manufacturers, and multiple countries of origin.

As a rule Japan > China >>> Taiwan.

Use DVD Identifier to find out what you really got for your money. The label is no kind of a guide.

http://dvd.identifier.cdfreaks.com/

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Dee

Most DVDs sold at reasonable prices are made in Taiwan. I'm very shocked to find that Taiwanese products can turn out like this. It's more industrialized and developed than China.

I pay ~28c for Ritek, or ~40c for Yudens, if I buy in packs of 100. The Ritek can be purchased locally at retail, but I have to mail order the Yudens. I recommend http://www.rima.com. They have the cheapest prices on TY media that I've seen, and I'm certain it's genuine. With regard to economic development, I don't believe that the Taiwanese cannot make good disks. It just seems that there is more profit in making crap disks. Look at Memorex.

Quote:

Although I did read in the cdfreaks forum that CMC is alright. Verbatim actually uses two manufacturers or something, one is CMC the other is something else. The CMC one is preferred, apparently.

CDFreaks and I don't really get along. I despise CMC, because of bad personal experiences. I also don't think that Ritek G05 are actually that bad, whereas they rate them much worse than CMC. The only solution is to buy the best, but I'm too cheap to do that, so I half-and-half my media solutions. The important backups go to TY, the not-so-important go to Ritek.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.