talkmagic.co.uk

hi

I'm making a dvd for my aunt's 40th party. Normal DVDs have a blue back but i've been told there are dvd's which have a silver back and these don't spoil the dvd player and last longer.

does anyone know where to get silver backed (the side which is placed down into your dvd player) dvds?

thanks

Spoil the player? How, exactly?

my uncle distributes electoric stuff and he says that after some time the particles which have the data burnt into them get loose and slowly erode the device it is played in.

obviously this is after some time but this party was a big hit so I'm sure it would be viewed a lot

DVDs don't make contact with the player head at all, so it's unlikely that a disc will damage your player in the same way that badly oxidising VHS tapes can gunk up video cassette recorders.

The problem with recordable DVD discs is that the dyes used to store information can degrade over time - but this just results in a loss of data from the disc. A player might refuse to play this disc when it becomes corrupt, but it won't be harmed by it.

A lot od research has gone into the dyes used in recordable discs ever since 'DVD rot' was first identified, and it's pretty safe to say that any brand name disc manufacturer will make media with the most robust dyes available. it's the ultra-cheap no-brand discs you have to look out for, as they tend to be B-grade stock, rejected by the big companies.

As for silver DVDs, these can only be made in a factory. They're created en masse and made by physically pressing the disc image into the DVD from a specially created glass master. I use this method for the music DVDs I release, but have to order at least 500 at a time for it to be cost-effective. It's not a route to take for a one-off disc.

Hope tnat makes sense.

Pete

most makes sense but i've seen at his house he has a a small pack 10 sitting above his comp but he doesn't remember where he got it from

but thanks

soz 4 the double post

I've even seen gold backed dvds

Tomo wrote:Spoil the player? How, exactly?

To put it very simply a dvd player reads the disc by firing a laser at the reflective surface of the disc, the reflected beam carrying the information is read by the lens which is mounted on lots of tiny wires which move the lens around to catch the reflection and decode the information gathered in that reflection. (that clicking sound you get sometimes when a player is having troubles reading a disc is actually the lens hitting its mounts as it frantically tries to align itself to read the reflection.)

This happens many times a second and the processor will try to read and decode many times before actually outputting the information (oversampling)

If the disc is damaged/dirty or badly burned the lens has to move about more times to catch the correct information which is why it is true to say that copied discs/ discs burnt onto bad quality media will in fact "wear out" your dvd player faster than "pressed" discs which have a much better reflection.

Hope that makes sense