quality of writeable optical media (was Re: SCSI CD drive capable of reading CD-R)

Billy wrote: And the composition, thickness and uniformity of the reflective layer, and the tolerance of the centering (spiral center vs. spindle hole center), and the wear of the stamper, and a myriad of other characteristics. The Red Book and Orange Book have a huge list of parameters and their allowable ranges, and any one of them screwed up will yield unreliable media. It's not just the dye and deposition process by a long shot. What you're saying about recent writable DVD media is not unlike how the situation used to be with writable CD media. But there *are* a lot more manufacturers of writeable CDs now. Maybe there aren't many sources of bare polycarbonate discs, but everything else in the process is done by many vendors. For CD-R and CD-RW, it has far more than doubled. Rare, my ass! In six different stores in three different major US cities I have had no trouble spotting multiple brands of that crap. It's routinely advertised as store specials in the local newspapers. Usually with "no returns" in fine print. Lots of the stuff *does* make it to the US, precisely because there isn't any accountability for it. If you have a bad disc (or a bad spindle), who are you going to complain to? Stores buy it because they know there are gullible customers they can flog it off to. No. Saying that media from CMC Magnetics is crap is a statement of fact, backed up by much evidence collected over a period of years. CMC Magnetics discs purchased last month were not any better than those purchased three years ago. Multiple sources of CMC Magnetics media tested on thirteen different drives from multiple vendors and of different generations from 1994 through 2005. The CMC Magnetics discs are just crap, pure and simple. Readers: Toshiba, TDK, Teac, Philips, Sony, Plextor Burners: Yamaha, Plextor, Toshiba, TDK, Liteon, Sony, Plextor Also, the fact that TDK has at times in the past shipped CMC Magnetics media under the TDK brand does tell me something very important about the TDK brand. Even though TDK might not be shipping CMC Magnetics media today, there's no way in hell I'll ever buy writable optical media recently I don't know. But instead, because it is proof positive that TDK does not perform adequate qualification of their suppliers. Thus there is no way to buy TDK optical media and have any reasonable expectation that it is not crap. Eric