DVDR problems

I pulled out a few DVDRs today that I had transferred over from tape. All TDK brand. None of them played. Luckily I didn't use a lot of them, maybe a couple hundred or so. Mostly i used Taiyo Yuden and Fuji. But now I'm going to go through the collection and pull out every TDK disk and if I can get any of them to play, transfer them over. What a nightmare.

 

I forgot what label my DVDRs are on?! I'm gonna check. Thanks for the tip...and that royally sucks! for the past few years I used JVC made in Japan which are Taiyo Yuden.

 

I pulled out one TDK and it played OK. Mine have "TDK" on the left side and "DVD-R" + "2x" on the right - is this similar to yours?

 

I've got a large collection of old TV shows (mostly game shows) that I started dubbing over from VHS to DVD around 2006. I basically finished the project a few years ago but still do some here and there. I must have burned over 1200 discs during that time. I always went with a name brand - many are Maxell, but I also used TDK and more recently Verbatim. I always use the 2-hour speed which equates to four or five episodes per disc.

Over the years I've had to redo around 20 discs. These were discs with at least one episode that wouldn't play all the way thru anymore. It's mostly the early Maxell's which this has occurred for.

When I first started doing this, I was told that in general, an average of 2 of every 100 discs will be bad.

I'm not aware of any other issues with them. I was always wary of everything going digital, fearing it wouldn't be as reliable as the old analog system we used to use.

I'm glad I've kept all the tapes but it's pain when I do find one that doesn't work

 

Majority of my discs are Taiyo Yuden and Fuji. I'm finding that the TDKs which came with jewel cases seem to be alright but the once that didn't are causing major problems. I always recorded at SP or XP.

 

This is why I never took to transferring my VHS tapes to DVD. I have VHS tapes that are 40 years old and still play like the day I recorded them. With very few exceptions. Praying I can always find a working VHS player to view them and despite the space considerations of storing hundreds of tapes. I'm glad I never wasted the time.

 

I wasn't dealing with hundreds of tapes. More like thousands. I had a huge collection and then inherited 2 massive collections from friends who died. Had to downsize and tranferring to DVD saves a lot of space. Not to mention all of the shows which came out commercially. So I could get rid of big run shows like Man from UNCLE, The Avengers, I Spy, Mission Impossible and so on.

 

That's the problem. Right now it might not be too difficult to find a working VHS machine (I've still got three of them!), but with moderate use, they won't last forever. There probably will be a time where getting working machines might be a tough find. It's very hard to find them in stores anymore. Do they still even make the parts?

 

I've made hundreds of DVD-R from VHS tapes, and television in the past 13-14 years using different recorders and different brands of discs, and I've not had any issue. Maybe try them on a different player, and see if that works.