Foolestroupe -

I've had very little success with DVDs for my data files, partly due to unreliable burning but also because the DVD file system makes accessing files on the disk extremely "clumsy."

Since most DVD burners will also burn CDs, one must be careful about reading the "specs." A 1x DVD speed is the same actual spin speed as a 4x(?) (or is it 9x??) CD. A burner with a 36x CD rating may not be reliable above 1x for DVDs. The ratings sometimes seem to be based on the fastest burn you can get with "10% good."

For burning a TV/movie disk, you can have a lot of small to moderate errors, and the next frame will hide any local write glitches. For a data CD/DVD every bit has to be right (almost).

John