Innovera DVD-R

Innovera DVD-R DVD discs come in a 50 pack container. Their recording speed is 16x/4.7 GB. And they're very cheap for the money. They're probably the cheapest DVD-R's you can purchase. Unfortunately, I'm fast discovering if you buy cheap you get cheap. In short, you get what you pay for.

This is the first time I bought this brand of DVD-R recording discs. I usually buy Maxell, but I'm short of money and they seemed like a good buy for the money. I bought them from Walmart: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Innovera-DVD-R-Discs-4.7GB-16x-Spindle-Silver-50-Pack/15118367 . Unfortunately, I'm wishing I would have spent a little more for the Maxell disc's, since I've discovered they're not very reliable

Generally, you can expect a couple of bad discs in a pack of 50 or 100 DVDs. Sometimes a bad disc here or there will get in a large batch of discs and can be forgiven, but this goes beyond a bad disc here and there. So far, pretty much every disc I've tried to use has been bad. Even when they seem like they might be a good disc, they turn out to be bad.

Usually, if I pre-test the disc by recording on it for about 30 seconds to a minute and it records fine, that means the disc is good and you can trust it to record the program you want to record. Unfortunately, with these Innovera discs you do that and the disc seems to be good and then when it comes to recording a program it won't record it. When the DVD recorder is recording to disc an error message will appear on your TV screen. Even when you've successfully recorded a program on one of the discs and you think it's a good disc; when you try to record another program on the same disc the same thing happens, and the disc error message appears and the program won't record.

I record on the discs in the format where you can record 4 hours of programming on one disc. I looked on the label to see if maybe it's my fault because of the recording mode I'm using, but it doesn't mention anything about causing an error by using the EP taping mode. However, the Maxell DVDs I had were +R and these discs are -R so that could be where the problem lies. I can't see anywhere they say about using them to record TV shows, but I assumed all DVDs could be used to record video on. In the description on the Walmart product page [which the link above will take you to] it mentions recording movies, so that would suggest it's okay to record TV shows with them. The only thing the label says is they're not responsible for any lost data.

I bought these discs because I blog TV shows that air at the same time. I have to record one show, while I watch the other show and take notes on it. For instance, on Sunday I need to tape Once Upon A Time and Revenge because the football game on CBS causes The Amazing Race to come on late. I also may want to rewatch Once Upon A Time, which is why I record it instead of watching it and recording The Amazing Race. Generally, The Amazing Race comes on thirty minutes late, so I end up missing the last 30 minutes of Once Upon A Time and the first 30 minutes of Revenge. If the discs don't record the programs then it messes things up for me and I have to wait until the programs are online so I can watch them there. And this is a situation that exists for several programs that are on at the same time that I blog.

It's gotten to the point I can't trust these discs to do what they're supposed to do. They're really causing me problems. I still haven't been able to find time to watch the first thirty minutes of Sunday's Revenge so I can blog it.

And on the discs that will maybe record one or two programs, I can't finalize the discs so I can play them on other DVD players or my computer. If I try to finalize the disc with the shows that did tape I get the same error message. Sometimes I even like to video capture certain scenes and do You Tube videos and with the discs unfinalized I can't capture the video from the discs from the DVD player I have hooked up to my computer to do video capturing. These discs are really causing me problems.

This isn't just the rare disc this is happening with. It's happening with every disc I'm using. There's no way to determine if a disc is bad or good. As I said, sometimes you can record maybe on half the disc and the other half is bad and won't record and it doesn't say it's a bad disc until after the show is done and it's about to record it on disc. By then it's too late to try and use another disc to record it. It's gotten to the point that I have to hope it'll record and consider myself lucky if it does, but I have absolutely no trust or confidence in this product.

The money I saved isn't worth the frustration and hassle these discs are causing me. I would never buy this brand of DVD-R discs again.