Don’t Purchase Memorex Media

A couple of weeks ago I was at my local Staples store and saw a great deal for blank DVD-R discs. In the past I used to purchase my discs over the Internet but it started to become a hassle. This was especially true when shipping was added to the overall cost ended up being only a couple of bucks cheaper.

The brand of these discs are Memorex. Normally I don’t care what brand the discs are but I don’t remember ever purchasing DVDs or CDs that were made by them. At home I have a pretty good collection of DVDs and for every DVD that I buy, I make a back-up of it just in case the disc gets scratched and doesn’t play correctly after little bit of cleaning the disc with water and a plain tissue (tissues with any other lotions don’t work). I am completely aware that copying a DVD, even for back-up purposes, has it’s potential legal issues; you will get different opinions depending on who you talk to and what the RIAA or the MPAA have recently been up to.

I use a combination of three programs: (1) Slysoft AnyDVD to turn off MS Windows ability to detect CSS and other types of encryption, (2)DVD Shrink to physically copy the DVD to my hard drive and to get rid of the titles, subtitles, and languages that I don’t want and (3) Nero Ultra Edition 7 (which integrates with DVD Shrink very well). With any other blank DVDs that I have every used, I have never had any problem; until I purchased Memorex media.

Every time I use try to burn a DVD, Nero (integrates with DVD Shrink to do the actually burning) reports that I have an illegal disc. Lucky for me DVD Shrink makes of copy of the VIDEO_TS before burning it. This means that I can try to burn the files again without having to reencode the DVD. I tried using Nero (without also using DVD Shrink at the same time) and the same thing happens.

Luckily, I also have a PowerBookG4 (although it has a broken SuperDrive, I have an external USB/Firewire DVD burner from Kanguru Solutions) and Roxio Toast 8 Titanium. So I copy the VIDEO_TS folder over my network to my PowerBookG4, open Roxio Toast 8 Titanium, plugin my external DVD burner using Firewire, put in my blank DVD, locate the files, and burn the disc. No problems what so ever. I guess Memorex has put some sort of copy protection onto their blank discs. Solution, NEVER PURCHASE MEMOREX MEDIA!!!

P.S. Unless you happen to have access to a Mac.

Tags: memorex