Best quality blank / recordable DVD's.

Interesting article on the subject at: http://www.manifest-tech.com/media_dvd/dvd_compatibility.htm.

Can't speak from personal experience though, since I haven't had a DVD-R long enough to be affected. From what I understand, though, the writable DVD is one of the items that fits under the "You get what you pay for" heading.

Matt wrote a great article about this at www.techlore.com/article/10284

Azo is a good choice for archival, considering they have a good archival life and can be safely written to at higher speeds. However, if you've got a good quality burner and software that can adjust recording speeds, like Nero Burning ROM, pthalocyanine will last longer if you plan on never reduplicating these videos to a future format.

Would love to hear about your experiences converting your tapes to DVDs, the selections that you made along the way, and any trouble that you ran into as I'm sure the community would too.

Pthalocyanine is usually pretty easy to pick out. Discs are commonly silver and gold, since the dye formulation is basicly clear. Also, the odd colored discs (like red) are usually a silver reflection layer, pthalocyanine, and a red colored plastic shell. When picking a disc by color, you must verify that the plastic on the disc is clear. After that, you can usually figure it out by the color of the disc.

To help further, I use a small program that reads the ATIP information of a blank CD or DVD called CD-R Identifier. It provides lots of cool info about a blank disc, and best of all, it's freeware! You can download it here.

There's two ways you can approach it, because it's not always easy to find out this kind of info.

1. See what friends, family, and neighbors use. They've already bought a pack, so you could check one out that way.

2. Visit the manufacturer's website. Oftentimes they show a disc out of the package, so you ay be able to get a look at the color. Remember that rewritable discs use a much different structure, so don't focus on dyes when shopping for rewritables.

3. I always recommend experimenting. While the dye can tell you a lot about what to expect from a disc, it can't tell you everything. Buy a disc off of a friend, or small packages in stores and experiment. This way you'll be able to find discs that work best for you, and one more compatible to your home video products. Don't be afraid of Azo and Cyanine, they do work well, and can be written a high speeds, and are often cheaper. Plus, many of the big corporations have their own formulations of cyanine, which are often stabilized using other compunds for better archival life than cyanine alone.

To get you started, Mitsui (MAM-A disc brand) is the patent holder for pthalocyanine technology. If you want to try a good pthalocyanine disc, I'd try theirs first. Amazon has a good deal on a 50 pack of their silver DVD-R discs. The link is here.