With regard to DVD-R media, FWIW, I've had surprising and unexpected consistently high quality performance with the "K-Hypermedia" DVD-R media sold by OfficeMax (on very few occasions, I've seen this brand at other retailers, but mostly at OfficeMax). I expected this to be a cheap off-brand, but I've been using it for almost 3 years now, hundreds of pieces, on several different burners, and I've had consistently excellent results (including, so far, good data retention and readability as much as 2-3 years later). And it's relatively cheap when it's on sale (often). And I've had a few other people who are more than casually into optical media (people formerly associated with Roxio) report the same finding on this brand. Note, this applies only to the Blue silk-screen DVD-R media, 1x, 2x and 4x. They make (or should I say sell) other media, both DVD+ and CD, but I've had no experience with any of the other types.