Blank media make lasers work harder

[Yenome]

So a guy at work who brother just got into the emulation scene and backups and modding consoles. told him the dvd+r will make his wii laser work harder to read them. and cause his laser to burn out faster. they think its true cause they had the laser go out after a year of playing. altho in that whole time they wasnt using burnt games. So my question is this how many others believe the myth that diff blank media has diff effects on the lasers in the drives of diff systems.

[05SRT4]

Here is an educational site on how a DVD laser works.

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/dvd6.htm

I don't think having a blank or non standard media would effect the strain on the laser.

Where is Mythbusters when you need them.

[Vigo]

I would say if it makes a difference it would be slight. I have no doubt that lasers have a much harder time reading a lot of burned media, so the only way I could see it being an issue is if the media is poor quality and the drive has to spend more time tracking. more time sitting and waiting for your stuff to read means more hours of use, and i am guessing the drive trying to track is under the heavier end of the drive's use. So, maybe a little extra exertion of use from the drive if anything, but not a laser killer.

[northerngames]

it's not so much blank media or the type of format but the disk quality themselve's.

if you hold a cheap cd or whatever up to the light and can see through it the laser is going to move back and forth and bounce the focus eye up and down more often.

now a good media you can stick it up to the light and see nothing through it.

it also comes down to the quality of the layer of the disk used on top that stores the media but also blocking out the erelavant light.

remember how dark and black a ps1 disk was and even know they were scratched terrible but seemed to play good on an ancient laser technology still? that is becuase the disk were themselve's were quality.

stick a cheap scratched blank in there and it probably would not even read anything.

there is some truth to it though but it is not becuase it is a blank or a certian type of format it comes down to the disk quality in general.

[SavannahLion]

Here is an educational site on how a DVD laser works.

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/dvd6.htm

I don't think having a blank or non standard media would effect the strain on the laser.

Where is Mythbusters when you need them.

Where was this site ages ago? I remember some moron tried to tell us we knew nothing about CDs. In his words, each "track" consisted of tracks of data at about 23 degrees apart.  So a laser at 90 would read one, at +/- 45 would read two others. Not three different tracks, but the same track, just different sides of it. Kind of like the hologram stickers. Problem was, when you would try to correct him, he would whip out his MSCE you would lose the audience and he would win the argument. He was an astonishing ---uvula---.

[Vigo]

Load time is amazingly less from an HD as well. I won't go back using the wii CD drive for more than ripping games to the HD.

[SNAAKE]

I used a usb flash drive for wii. there was almost nothing I wanted to play anyway. a 16gb flash drive would be more than enough. I was mad at the new donkey kong for raping my childhood


but yeah crappy media probably kill lasers. I burned random videos on memorex DL and watched them on my ps3 and after a while my bluray drive stopped working. but it was the 40gb fat ps3 which is known to have REALLY crappy bluray drive in the first place. whatever..

[kalars123]

For most consoles I doubt there is a noticeable differnce but I know atleast with the dreamcast the laser did work alot harder to read burnt games just because of the file structure, having said that though I still have my launch dreamcast and it still works fine with prolly thousands of hours used with burnt media

[05SRT4]

I was mad at the new donkey kong for raping my childhood

I know right!! I tried so hard to enjoy the game but it didn't stick. I had more fun running the original on the SNES emu.

[Howard_Casto]

Kills lasers?  No.. that isn't really possible... at least not for a noticable degree.  Remember that all the laser is is a light source.  It doesn't read anything, rather the optical sensor does.  You could stick a piece of cardboard in there and it wouldn't effect the lasers life span....  it'll be on during the whole read regardless and the optical sensro is incapable for getting more laser light than what it gets from a pressed disc, seeing as how rewriteable media is duller. 

Now it's very well possible that when people make this claim they are referring to the drive assembly and not the laser itself (as I'll explain below) but when someone can't even get the terminology right, it kind of invalidates any credability. 

Now as for the drive assembly, I suppose it's theoretically possible.  The tracking motor, unlike the laser and sensor, has moving parts.  When a dvd player can't read media it makes several attempts before giving up, so if you put media with errors in it in a drive I suppose the motor would get used more often.  I don't really think that it would be a significant amount though, unless you are constantly putting in bad discs and trying to play them.  Also keep in mind that any extra wear and tear balances out.  While the startup sequence might take more passes for a RW disc, once it gets started, the disc spindle will spin at a much lower rate because writeable media has a slower read speed than pressed discs.  So you are trading off stress on one motor for stress on another.

I think the Wii just has a cruddy drive myself.  Although I played my wii a TON, I babied the thing, and my drive has gone bad.  You've got to remember how many of these puppies nintendo churned out... the quality has to be questionable, especially the earlier ones.  It could be worse... it could overheat and kill the console, forcing you to buy another one. 

[Yenome]

today he says his brother did something to the laser to make it last longer. I told him if he adjust the voltage pot it would end up burning his laser out faster. He just said his brother did something to it and neither one  know what he did but it will last longer. I don't see why this guy hasn't caught on to the fact that i already know everything he is trying to tell me cause i did it all when the wii was new. alas the wii is the only new system they have so. I forgot to mention before that he said his brother(who didn't know how to softmod the wii) modded Black ops to have better gfx. Nvm the fact that the gfx on the wii are like they are cause of the hardware limitation with the wii compared to the ps3/360. Man I heard some tall tales before but this guy is the new jack with his Lil bean stalk. I should start a website. crazyshitthisguysays.com

[ark_ader]

I know some burners have alignment issues with other readers when burning at high speeds.

If we went back to the old Pioneer SCSI 1x CDR days it was pretty much hit or miss if it read on other cdrom drives.

DVDs suffer the same problem, and the dyes are so bad that I am starting to see rot on 18 month Ritec discs.

I only use DVDs for college everything else gets put on flash drives with backup.

[RandyT]

Kills lasers?  No.. that isn't really possible... at least not for a noticable degree.  Remember that all the laser is is a light source.  It doesn't read anything, rather the optical sensor does.  You could stick a piece of cardboard in there and it wouldn't effect the lasers life span....  it'll be on during the whole read regardless and the optical sensro is incapable for getting more laser light than what it gets from a pressed disc, seeing as how rewriteable media is duller.  

Actually, it is possible.  Lasers have a lifespan, just like a lightbulb, LED, or any electronic item which generates light.  If the laser is having a hard time reading a disc, that laser is on longer.  If it takes twice as long, due to re-attempts to read the data, the lifespan is halved.  When the power output pot is tweaked to read media for which the unit was not designed, this also accelerates the demise of the laser, as it is usually tweaked for higher output.

Now as for the drive assembly, I suppose it's theoretically possible.  The tracking motor, unlike the laser and sensor, has moving parts.  When a dvd player can't read media it makes several attempts before giving up, so if you put media with errors in it in a drive I suppose the motor would get used more often.  I don't really think that it would be a significant amount though, unless you are constantly putting in bad discs and trying to play them.  Also keep in mind that any extra wear and tear balances out.  While the startup sequence might take more passes for a RW disc, once it gets started, the disc spindle will spin at a much lower rate because writeable media has a slower read speed than pressed discs.  So you are trading off stress on one motor for stress on another.

Again, the longer it spins while trying to read data, the more wear and tear on all of the components.  The focusing mechanism, the head motor, the cheap plastic rails, ....everything.  Also, when the device has difficulty reading a disc, it will try altering spin speed, up and down.  The PSX would notoriously go into a high speed spin and lock up with some media.  This is something it would not normally do, so wear would be increased.

I have an earlier Pioneer DVD-R set-top recorder which hates just about any media other than Verbatim.  A fresh drive will work for a while with anything, but dies pretty quickly with the cheap stuff.  I replaced the mech twice before deciding to only feed it Verbatim media.  It's been fine ever since.

I voted "1", not because I'm a "sheep", but because I know better from much experience with such issues

[SavannahLion]

What sucks is when a once reliable brand is no longer because of manufacturing changes. I bought a spindle of my usual only to find my DVDR refused to even acknowledge the media. It acknowledge some of the older, left over media of the same brand just not the recent batch. Turns out the company moved their operations and began to subcontract manufacturing while selling their original equipment without a single comment from them.

Apparently reliablility and consistency is not high on nearly anybodies list

[Howard_Casto]

Kills lasers?  No.. that isn't really possible... at least not for a noticable degree.  Remember that all the laser is is a light source.  It doesn't read anything, rather the optical sensor does.  You could stick a piece of cardboard in there and it wouldn't effect the lasers life span....  it'll be on during the whole read regardless and the optical sensro is incapable for getting more laser light than what it gets from a pressed disc, seeing as how rewriteable media is duller.  

Actually, it is possible.  Lasers have a lifespan, just like a lightbulb, LED, or any electronic item which generates light.  If the laser is having a hard time reading a disc, that laser is on longer.  If it takes twice as long, due to re-attempts to read the data, the lifespan is halved.  When the power output pot is tweaked to read media for which the unit was not designed, this also accelerates the demise of the laser, as it is usually tweaked for higher output.

Now as for the drive assembly, I suppose it's theoretically possible.  The tracking motor, unlike the laser and sensor, has moving parts.  When a dvd player can't read media it makes several attempts before giving up, so if you put media with errors in it in a drive I suppose the motor would get used more often.  I don't really think that it would be a significant amount though, unless you are constantly putting in bad discs and trying to play them.  Also keep in mind that any extra wear and tear balances out.  While the startup sequence might take more passes for a RW disc, once it gets started, the disc spindle will spin at a much lower rate because writeable media has a slower read speed than pressed discs.  So you are trading off stress on one motor for stress on another.

Again, the longer it spins while trying to read data, the more wear and tear on all of the components.  The focusing mechanism, the head motor, the cheap plastic rails, ....everything.  Also, when the device has difficulty reading a disc, it will try altering spin speed, up and down.  The PSX would notoriously go into a high speed spin and lock up with some media.  This is something it would not normally do, so wear would be increased.

I have an earlier Pioneer DVD-R set-top recorder which hates just about any media other than Verbatim.  A fresh drive will work for a while with anything, but dies pretty quickly with the cheap stuff.  I replaced the mech twice before deciding to only feed it Verbatim media.  It's been fine ever since.

I voted "1", not because I'm a "sheep", but because I know better from much experience with such issues

I think you missed the part about "not to a noticable degree".    I've had some dvd drives for 5, 10 even 15 years and they work just as good now as they did when I bought them.  A few of them almost exclusively had re-writeable media in them.  My point was exactly your point actually.... a laser is a lightbulb, so it doesn't matter if the room is painted balck or white, it is still on the same amount of time and will burn out at the same time.

Also I think you are assuming that a re-writeable drive has trouble finding the data.  As far as I know this just isn't true.  The initial seek time might be longer (because it's looking for a specific read speed and isn't finding it) but once all the ducks are in a row it'll read just as well as any other disc.

Yeah, longer read times will wear on the components, but not as much as higher rpms will.... things that spin tend to shake things apart.

I get what you are saying with the old drive you have, and I've ran into that issue myself, but the flaw in your logic is that you are equating one problem with another.  The drive is going to wear down over time regardless and pressed discs just have a clearer image.  Your drive isn't having trouble reading a burned disc because burned discs are wearing it down, but rather it's wore down on it's own and thus the burned discs are harder to read.  Either that of it's just a crappy model drive.... that happens too.

It's like a guy that regularly eats steak saying that steak made him weaker because he could lift 75 lbs when he was 30 and only 45 lbs when he was fifty.  The think the fact that he's 20 years older might have something to do with it. 

The kind of wear and tear you are talking about (trouble reading the disc, longer read times, ect) would come from a disc that the machine can't read well and/or is damaged.  Well what do you do to a disc like that?  That's right, you throw it out!  And since we all know one or two bad reads isn't going to make a significant difference, the only way to wear a drive down would be consistently and regularly feed it unreadable or barely readable discs for it's entire lifespan.  Absolutely nobody does that. 

Finally just put it into context.  This was a Wii we are talking about there.  So at the most it's 5 years old.  It was around a year before they got rw media working on them and even then it was anther 6 months to a year before softmodding came into play.  So the guy was saying that using burned media on a drive that's accepted burned media at the most 4 years was killed by using burned media.  Nah that's a bit of a stretch.

 I"mnot disagreeing with any of the pionts you made, I just don't see how one thing relates to the other.

[AtomSmasher]

Reminds me of how my grandparents refused to rent VHS movies because they believed rented videos would make their player wear out faster.

[Vigo]

Reminds me of how my grandparents refused to rent VHS movies because they believed rented videos would make their player wear out faster.

Well, if the person beforehand slathers peanut butter up and down the magnetic tape, it might. 

[northerngames]

Kills lasers?  No.. that isn't really possible... at least not for a noticable degree.  Remember that all the laser is is a light source.  It doesn't read anything, rather the optical sensor does.  You could stick a piece of cardboard in there and it wouldn't effect the lasers life span....  it'll be on during the whole read regardless and the optical sensro is incapable for getting more laser light than what it gets from a pressed disc, seeing as how rewriteable media is duller.  

Now it's very well possible that when people make this claim they are referring to the drive assembly and not the laser itself (as I'll explain below) but when someone can't even get the terminology right, it kind of invalidates any credability.  

Now as for the drive assembly, I suppose it's theoretically possible.  The tracking motor, unlike the laser and sensor, has moving parts.  When a dvd player can't read media it makes several attempts before giving up, so if you put media with errors in it in a drive I suppose the motor would get used more often.  I don't really think that it would be a significant amount though, unless you are constantly putting in bad discs and trying to play them.  Also keep in mind that any extra wear and tear balances out.  While the startup sequence might take more passes for a RW disc, once it gets started, the disc spindle will spin at a much lower rate because writeable media has a slower read speed than pressed discs.  So you are trading off stress on one motor for stress on another.

I think the Wii just has a cruddy drive myself.  Although I played my wii a TON, I babied the thing, and my drive has gone bad.  You've got to remember how many of these puppies nintendo churned out... the quality has to be questionable, especially the earlier ones.  It could be worse... it could overheat and kill the console, forcing you to buy another one.  

actually yes there is moving parts in the the laser unit itself also.

the lens on the top with the coils running to it also moves up and down and it does get tired and wear out and it is caused from not being able to read disk correctly and why it is bouncing up and down is becuase it is increasing it's own voltage trying to read/focus on the disk and that is what makes it go up and down.

I have littery rebuilt hundreds of drive's and have a good hands on knowlege of them and their moving parts and most common issue's.