What are your fav. brands for reliable DVD DL media?
Just burnt 4 coasters out of a pack of 5.

The best: Verbatim*
The worst: Imation*

*Purely on my experience.

Interesting - I used to rely on Verbatim DVD media for work, but they either went off the boil or it was just a bad patch.
I've actually just ordered a 25pk of dual layer DVDs on Amazon for £18, so I'm going to give them another go anyway, but nice to hear.

Never used DL, but anytime I got a series of coasters it seemed to be more of a software problem (hello Nero/Roxio), just resetting the PC sorted it IME. Though I have seen discs that obviously had defects...

Indeed. IME:

K3B = WIN
Brasero = WIN
Nero = Hit & miss but restarting helps a bit.
Roxio = Uber FAIL

TDK

Hated Roxio. Nero is better but not perfect. Works for my needs though. Surprised Verbatim discs were patchy. There used to be an awesome website I once found about disc quality, reliability etc. Might've been a forum but they rated Verbatim too. Didn't look around for DL discs as they weren't around I think.

Most of my coasters have been down to hardware. I have two internal drives, one LG and one NEC and they both do something similar. They'll burn one disk no problem, although sometimes they struggle if it's over half full. Once they're hot, the second disk writes and verifies but then won't read when it's cold.

However, my external Iomega drive can read the "coasters" burned on the LG. I discovered this by accident.

Usually my Iomega can play everything, but my LG is the only one which can play back some of my commercial region 0 DVD videos. I can play old DVD videos on every player in the house, but even the DVD video player under the TV won't play back some modern ones.

I really hate physical media. Even some of my old CD-RWs won't read any more, and my floppies are very unsatisfactory.

I used to swear by them, I needed them to be reliable as it cost me time if they weren't, or worse, failed on a clients machine.
However, about 4-5 years ago, every pack I bought for the office, we started to get an alarming number of coasters from both the XP office box (I'd usually just burn a showreel from an image) or from the Mac.

This it? Found it handy down the years for all sorts of things:

http://forums.afterdawn.com/forum_view.cfm/47

Not whatever a guy from the office replaced mine with. Not sure what make they are, but haven given up after burning three coasters. Annoying as the verbatims he used up that necessitated the replacement always burnt fine.

The ones he bought weren't cheap either. About 1.50 a disc. Quite depressing when three of them have to go straight in the bin.

It's right up there with the ink cartridge on the franking machine playing up and wasting a four quid airmail postage. That's where they make their money!

I prefer TDK and Verbatim. Won't touch anything else.

I avoid discs now, just a waste of time and effort. Memory sticks/cards seem to work for me. I know they don't suit every occasion, but its the way i am trying to standardise here.

It's as much about the drive as it is the discs though. My mate made seven straight coasters on a, then, award winning LG drive. He handed me the rest of the pack (43) to see if I could use them on my trusty old NEC drive - not one coaster.

But...

This.

Verbatim of TDK here although I've never tried a DL disk.