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What shocked me the most in the test? The poor - even disastrous -;results of most Japanese media. I was immensely disappointed that many of the tested media showed strong signs of DVD rot. Sure, most of the media is over 20 years old, but I did not expect them to ultimately prove more problematic than most cheap, single-use +-R media. I would be interested to know the cause - whether it is due to an inherent tendency of the rewritable layer to break down, or whether it is caused by some flawed, ill-conceived, or improperly executed manufacturing step, or perhaps an interaction between the recording/reflective layer and the adhesive bonding the two halves of the disc. Alternatively, given that these discs are by far the oldest among those tested (2002 - 2003), are we reaching the age-related limits of disc durability, and will we see the same issues in a few years with younger discs that have been problem-free so far?
On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised that:
- One of the best test results was achieved by what was once considered the most run-of-the-mill medium possible: the Imation DVD+RW from Moser Baer.
- despite a large number of errors right from the start, the DVD+RWs from Infodisc - which were once widely disparaged and considered among the worst discs on the market - also showed unexpected resilience to repeated rewriting over the long term.
The Philips disc (actually produced by Philips OM&T in the Netherlands!) has a very high error rate, apparently due to problematic and poorly optimized firmware compatibility. Still, the quality is not bad; with better initial write quality, the recording layer would likely have withstood even double the number of writes, which is not bad at all compared to Japanese media.
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