BD-R discs will become even more necessary as more and more of these new-fangled HD-camcorders are sold to the masses. The average soccer mom doesn’t need high definition video of the family vacation, but since her new camcorder is capable of it, then by golly she’s going to use it… the problem is this: where are you going to put your videos? They’re freaking huge and really won’t fit on a single DVD, and since its H.264 it won’t work in a standard DVD player.
I’ve rambled on long enough. The point I’m trying to make is that BluRay is here, and it’s here to stay. Recordable BluRay drives are about the same price as when DVD-R drives reached mass acceptance (around $150 — you can check prices here). The only problem is the price of media.
When I bought my first BD-R drive, I knew that I needed to purchase some discs to go with it. Unfortunately, buying a 10-pack of media with your drive increases your overall expense. When I looked on the rack, Verbatim discs were clearly the cheapest. I’ve used Verbatim DVD media before, and they work great.
Not exactly 25GB but close enough
BluRay discs are actually much more stable as a backup medium than DVDs ever were. The thing that makes the disc fail is the ability to read the pits of the disc. In a pressed disc, these pits are created on a thin sheet of aluminum, but writable discs actually burn holes into a layer of ink in the disc. CDs protected this layer of ink with a thin coat of lacquer, which was easily rubbed off or scratched (taking the data layer with it). DVDs tried to improve this situation but adding another polycarbonate (plastic) layer above the data layer, but scratches on the underside could still render the disc unusable.
Lookit all the features my drive supports!
BluRay has finally gotten their act together and added another layer of protection: a slick Teflon-like coating to the plastic. If you get fingerprints on a DVD and try to wipe it off with your shirt… then you have new unsightly scratches on your disc. Wipe those fingerprints off of a BluRay disc and it is still perfect.
The fabulous scratch protection is what makes BD-RE discs much more valuable than DVD-RW discs. I could realistically only use a DVD-RW disc a few times before it became unusable, simply because small scratches made re-writing the disc unreliable. Many people just got used to burning BD-Rs and then throwing them away when they were no longer useful.
Burning a Verbatim BluRay Disc with Nero
In my testing, Verbatim BD-R and BD-RE discs worked better than advertised. Even though the BD-R discs were rated at 4x, Nero was able to burn the disc at 6x (or 26,970 KB a second). Just be sure your computer can handle that kind of data load, or you may find that it takes significantly longer to burn a disc, as the computer has to stop and restart a lot. BD-RE discs take a bit longer at nearly 40 minutes. While they will certainly last much longer than their rewritable DVD counterparts, I doubt most people have the patience to wait almost an hour for data backup.
Still, Verbatim discs are currently some of the most inexpensive on the market (go check prices for yourself), and they work great. The only real problem I have with them is the top surface… there really isn’t a lot of room to indicate the discs’ content with your trusty Sharpie.
