[vmpaul]

Only asking because I just got a Pioneer A05 unit and when I was looking at them in the store a fella mention how he had lost some data on a disk after a month of storage.

I don't think he was talking about the A05 in particular and he didn't mention the brand of disk used either. So who knows...

I'm just asking if anyone has had any trouble with DVD degradation. I remember it was a problem in the early days of CD data backups. Doesn't seem to be a problem now.

[Eug]

Cheap discs are crap. By name brand good quality discs. Actually, do the same for CD-R as well. Yes, cheap CD-R are still a problem actually. Cheap CD-R aren't as crappy as cheap DVD-R, but I've had problems with recent el cheapo CD-R as well. In fact, I (and my friends) have had problems with even name brand 2nd tier CD-R media.

I pay literally 2-3X as much for CD-R media when it's for backup of important data. I use the cheap CD-R stuff for less critical stuff - temp file storage, secondary backup, sneakernet, etc. I don't buy cheap DVD-R at all because it's so useless. The cheapest stuff is like cheap CD-R of 5 years ago. Won't even burn reliably, and if it does, it may only be readable for a few weeks.

[vmpaul]

Hmmm... I've been using Fuji brand for CD-R's because I've had such success with them. I might try their DVD media as well.

I guess it's safe to assume if it burns rather reliably than I shouldn't worry about degradation so much?

You think that's a safe assumption?