question about burning and then reading (dd) to confirm sha256sum

[Tim]

On Thu, 2015-04-02 at 11:11 -0600, jd1008 wrote:
> made by Sony, which I thought paid better attention to the quality of
> production

I seem to recall that Sony doesn't actually make their own.  But
regardless of how well media may be regarded, you often need to make
compatibility tests with your own equipment.

Many years ago, I tried out various different brands, on purpose.  Some
were just awful (a friend used to buy the cheapest, with nearly a 30%
failure rate - around 1 in 3 discs needed to be thrown away).  I found
Verbatim to be the best with my equipment, and it was a significantly
noticeable difference.  

Compared to others, a freshly inserted disc was recognised the fastest
(so it was easier to focus on and read the codes), some will sit there
going whiz-whur, whiz-whur in the drive, for prolonged periods, while it
attempts to figure out what's being inserted.  I can only remember
having about three discs fail during burn in the last several years
(which is a hell of lot better than brands my friend has used).  The
discs have remained easily readable many years later (and that is a
fault that a lot of people don't even think about).  While some people
may only require a backup to last a few weeks before it becomes too
out-of-date to be useful, other people need long-term archival storage.

It's getting harder to go out and buy discs, retail, here.  I suspect
because the movie piracy black market has changed to watching them as
files on a computer, rather than inserting a disc into a player plugged
into a television set.  There are only a few disc varieties available,
mostly terribly cheapies.  It's also harder to buy boxes or sleeves,
than it used to be.  It's more than a bit annoying to not have something
to put your discs in.

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