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Answerman - What's The Difference Between BD-Rs And Regular Blu-Rays?


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rizuchan



Joined: 11 Mar 2007
Posts: 974
Location: Kansas
PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 2:25 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Mass-produced discs last much longer, too. The chemical element inside of a recordable disc will often "go bad" over time -- maybe 10 or 20 years, depending on how its cared for -- and give way to chemical reaction, resulting in an unreadable disc.

And here is the "rub" with the often cited statistic that DVDs will last for hundreds of years - only authored DVDs apply as Justin said, not DVD-Rs. I had a bunch of anime fansubs backed up on DVD-Rs and when I finally had a hard drive large enough to keep them locally, I found that at least half of them had rotted - all burned on the same brand of DVD-R. Luckily most of it I had obtained commercial copies of since but I had to scrounge a bit to find Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei again.

Hence why I would be very hesitant to purchase anything on a BD-R. I had no way of knowing 5 years ago when I burned those that that one brand would go bad. If that were something I had purchased I would be pretty upset to lose it after such a short amount of time.

Also, that video is awesome.
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mangamuscle



Joined: 23 Apr 2006
Posts: 2658
Location: Mexico
PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 2:44 pm Reply with quote
It is very sad that the Hanna Barnera Classic Collection and MLTR to name a few are sold as DVD-R by the publishers, in is beyond cheap and hopefully no anime distributor will copy that business model.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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Location: Another Kingdom
PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 2:51 pm Reply with quote
Hmm, if I burn a disc, whether CD or DVD, those are the chemically etched ones, aren't they? I have about 180 data DVDs I use as archives for my videos I've uploaded onto YouTube. I only started archiving them about 4 years ago, but still, now I'm worried that they're not going to last that long.

I archived them onto discs in the first place because two of my external hard drives had gone bad. They're both Western Digital MyBooks, and in both cases, they had major problems starting up, then eventually couldn't turn on at all.

Regarding dual-layered discs, I knew they were finicky, but I didn't know they were that unstable. I can think of at least one case of a mass-produced dual-layered disc though: Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Starting about four months in, people's copies of the game started becoming unreadable, but no other Wii game had this issue (at least for a while). It was soon discovered that it's due to its dual-layered format: The single-player mode is on one layer, and the multiplayer and online modes are on the other. On the other hand, the dual-layeredness also made the game more difficult to accurately pirate: Most pirated copies of Brawl are done on single-layer discs, omitting the single-player mode's layer completely.
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DJStarstryker



Joined: 16 Jan 2010
Posts: 140
PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 3:01 pm Reply with quote
Professional discs can have problems too. I used to have the version of ABBA Gold that was originally pressed in the early '90s. It had zero scratches on it, but it got to the point where CD players could no longer play certain tracks and skipped them completely. It turns out that a certain timeframe of that CD's pressing had some problems during the printing process.

I'm happy that CD is popular enough that I could just buy the newer version that even has more tracks so I can replace it. But I have a lot of CDs and DVDs that are long out of print and if they ever have pre-mature problems because of manufacturing errors, I can't replace them so easily.
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PurpleWarrior13



Joined: 05 Sep 2009
Posts: 2025
PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 3:13 pm Reply with quote
BD-R hasn't caught on like DVD-R. Even Warner Archive, who sells most of their DVDs as DVD-R, release their Blu-ray titles through traditional pressed discs, ditto for Media Blasters (people who bought Ladies vs. Butlers on Blu-ray confirm the use of pressed discs). Nickelodeon is the only company I know of to use BD-Rs for their niche titles sold through Amazon.
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DJStarstryker



Joined: 16 Jan 2010
Posts: 140
PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 3:15 pm Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
Hmm, if I burn a disc, whether CD or DVD, those are the chemically etched ones, aren't they? I have about 180 data DVDs I use as archives for my videos I've uploaded onto YouTube. I only started archiving them about 4 years ago, but still, now I'm worried that they're not going to last that long.

I archived them onto discs in the first place because two of my external hard drives had gone bad. They're both Western Digital MyBooks, and in both cases, they had major problems starting up, then eventually couldn't turn on at all.


Yes, those are the chemically etched ones.

Hard drives will fail over time. It's inevitable. If you want to not lose data, the best thing to do is back it up in 2 different places. By which I don't mean 2 different places on the same hard drive. Back it up on 2 different hard drives or a hard drive and a thumb drive or something like that. It's not a guarantee that you won't lose data still, but the chances of both devices failing simultaneously is slim.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 3:36 pm Reply with quote
Hmm, I see. What are some reliable external hard drives, ones that will not destroy themselves after about two years of my using them? I got really annoyed when it happened twice.
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mgosdin



Joined: 17 Jul 2011
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Location: Kissimmee, Florida, USA
PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 3:44 pm Reply with quote
I stopped using CDR's for archival purposes several years ago. I had a DAT drive that worked well, but that's become antiquated tech. Now I use various internal & external drives with redundant copies, usually 3 or more. I wonder how well SSD drives will hold up over time?

Mark Gosdin
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DmonHiro





PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 3:50 pm Reply with quote
This is why I check to see if my backups on DVD-R work once eveyr two years, and replace early what seems to start failing.
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Greed1914



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4426
PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 4:12 pm Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
Hmm, I see. What are some reliable external hard drives, ones that will not destroy themselves after about two years of my using them? I got really annoyed when it happened twice.


I've had a Western Digitial 500GB for about seven years now, and that thing has hit the floor a couple of times and survived multiple moves. The other one I have was actually the internal HDD that came with my 60GB PS3, which I converted into an external when I put a larger hard drive in the PS3.
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russ869



Joined: 22 Dec 2006
Posts: 422
PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 5:12 pm Reply with quote
DJStarstryker wrote:
If you want to not lose data, the best thing to do is back it up in 2 different places. It's not a guarantee that you won't lose data still, but the chances of both devices failing simultaneously is slim.

Sure, it's unlikely that both devices will fail "simultaneously" but what about the likelihood of both devices failing before I have time to notice anything is wrong. We're talking about films I watch every few years at most. I recently had to mail for a replacement for a Warner Bros BD that I bought 3 years ago and never watched until now. That was scary because that was a mass produced pressed disc! After that I feel like I need to start unwrapping and testing even every professional disc as soon as I get it.

DmonHiro wrote:
This is why I check to see if my backups on DVD-R work once every two years, and replace early what seems to start failing.

When you have thousands and thousands of DVD-Rs and BD-Rs like me, this is absolutely impossible...
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DmonHiro





PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 5:23 pm Reply with quote
russ869 wrote:
DmonHiro wrote:
This is why I check to see if my backups on DVD-R work once every two years, and replace early what seems to start failing.

When you have thousands and thousands of DVD-Rs and BD-Rs like me, this is absolutely impossible...

But I do have thousands. About 3000, actually. And yes, I check them all.
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Nom De Plume De Fanboy
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Joined: 14 Jan 2011
Posts: 612
Location: inland US west, pretty rural
PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 5:38 pm Reply with quote
Anybody know if M Disc type blu rays are notably better?
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Hameyadea



Joined: 23 Jun 2014
Posts: 3679
PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 6:00 pm Reply with quote
Data will always be lost; that's inevitable, as nothing lasts forever. So at least it is good to know what (in theory) will last the longest.
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TheAncientOne



Joined: 06 Oct 2010
Posts: 1871
Location: USA (mid-south)
PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 7:45 pm Reply with quote
Nom De Plume De Fanboy wrote:
Anybody know if M Disc type blu rays are notably better?

M-Disc is specifically designed as archival media, so I would certainly expect so.

For others reading this wondering what the heck M-Disc is:
http://www.mdisc.com/


While recordable media was originally touted as being longer lasting, rewriteable media may be more stable, due to being a phase change media vs. the dye-based media of recordables.
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