Interesting stuff. The defective DVD-Rs were Imation from Lulu. I got some DVD+/-RWs from Carrefour (or another store) that worked fine.

I was able to write to the ones from Lulu, with great difficulty, but they made a whole lot of noise and aren't readable. Rather than only lasting 8 months, they didn't even last 8 minutes. What a major hassle.

Any have you noticed the shoes there are cheap crap from India (no offense to any Indians) and totally overpriced. This place really needs some competition.