I have recently thought about burning some data to Blu-ray and therefore looked for some cheap blank discs. To my surprise, higher density Blu-rays seem to be much more expensive than lower density ones. In my country (Germany) for example, I could buy a 25 GB BD for 0,44€. A 100 GB BD would cost me 8,77€! At that price, it would be more efficient to store 100 GB on four 25 GB discs instead of one 100 GB disc (1,76€ vs. 8,77€). Sure, if it is one file I would have to split it first and combine it again when I want to access the data, but that effort seems to be worth it.
Why are high capacity Blu-rays so much more expensive, especially compared to HDDs or SSDs where the price per GB/TB usually drops with higher capacity?
Funny you should ask. This is what’s wrong with them… (yes, that’s my own review.)
I couldn’t believe it when I saw this on the first disc I took out, thought that must be an outlier, but one was worse than the next. The holes you see in the pictures were literal holes in the reflective layer, pinhole sized, totally see-through. I thought ok maybe it’ll work anyway and burned one, but of course it failed.
So that’s those. At the same time I also tried the ones that are branded as M-Disc. I you think at almost twice the price per disc those surely must be better, think again – they’re even worse. Again, it took my breath away when I noticed how the inner part of those discs looked. (And as I wrote in the review, those are _not_ scratches on the surface, this is all _inside_ the polycarbonate.
It’s possible that both of those were intermittent issues, maybe a new fab they brought online, or some change in production methods, or whatever, but for archival purposes it’s unthinkable for me to ever ever ever again trust anything from Verbatim, at least as sold here in Germany.
I _have_ been considering giving the Mitshubishi/Verbatim media sold in Japan a try, as it wouldn’t surprise me if they sold completely different stuff there. Especially now that Panasonic has stopped producing (Feb 2023), it may be worth a try. Not sure yet.
I bought these discs from an ebay seller:
https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Verbatim-VBR520YP20SD4-Recording-Blu-ray-Printer/dp/B07YZM8Y1M/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3DS8UZ3OBIW6Z&keywords=bdxl&qid=1700868864&sprefix=bdx%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-2
The surface is covered with weird white specks, but they all worked for me. I burned them overnight at 2x speed. I checked the files with hashes and none of them had errors. I’m considering buying more since they’re on sale for black friday. I do wonder what those white specks are tho.
Here are some pics I took
https://imgur.com/gallery/c1ZYs1W
Huh that definitely looks less than reassuring. Is this superficial or inside the polycarbonate?
I’d actually seen that offer because this whole thread made me check Amazon.co.jp again myself and I saw that the 128 GB Sonys were also now cheaper than last time I ordered (though not in the BF sale) so I decided to order more. ;-) But I also looked around some more and saw this offer — I was close to giving them a try, but ultimately didn’t. Your story would seem to confirm it was the right call.
The eBay ones with the specks came from Japan as well, or were they for another market?
To your first paragraph: Panasonic sadly stopped production this February (which is why around that time prices for all the remaining stock of their discs basically doubled). I’m still picking up some leftovers here and there. Sony I think is now only still producing the 128GB. All their 25 and 50 GB discs I’ve bought over the last two years or so were RITEK.BR3 and VERBAT.IMf.