I love these articles! You know the ones, where Tom’s Hardware debunks claimed speeds for disc writing with reality!

Despite the stagnation of write speeds for DVD-R and DVD+R at 16x, new DVD writers are regularly being marketed, since performance for other types of writing (RW and dual-layer) is still improving. But as is customary, manufacturers of writers have a lead on media manufacturers. For this article, we visited all the stores to see what types of media are actually available for sale, and once again the result was most enlightening. You can find 16x-compatible -R and +R discs, but in the other formats they simply aren’t out there. For the two rewritable standards, -RW and +RW, 4x-compatible media is all we could find, whereas writers now operate at 8x for +RW and 6x for -RW. As for dual-layer writers, which now reach speeds of 8x, only 2.4x media are available. And we weren’t even able to find anybody to sell us dual-layer DVD-Rs! [Read the rest]