I threw out 150 blank Linkyo DVD-Rs today. The order form says I bought 400, which is hard to believe. But that's what it says. I've been using these discs for a while. I'm not sure if I used them for the Empire release.

I bought a new burner too, just in case - my third. Yet another reason you always go broke at some point doing this kind of thing. Do you need the other two dozen reasons?

I'm lucky in that a lot of people asked for this Jedi disc, and I just got a good steady job in Hollywood, so those two things worked together to make sure my bank account didn't get overdrawn this time. As long as I can avoid taking that hit, I come out safely at the other end.

Anyway.

I feel really bad wasting all that $$ and throwing out all the Linkyo discs, but I did have some problems with them. Personally I couldn't get them to play half the time. Even the burners at work had trouble with them.

The weird thing is, the couple of complaints I've gotten don't match at all what the problems were on my end. This time round I tested every disc. I didn't send out a single disc if it didn't play in at least the Sony player in the other room, if not my Panasonic. If they worked in the Sony but not the Panasonic, they were marked "questionable."

I thought that the Star Wars discs would probably have problems. But basically all the Jedi discs I sent out had tested fine even in the Panasonic. I wanted the Jedi run to be perfect, and I threw out a lot of otherwise fine discs. Some of the Empires were good on the Panasonic, some of them weren't.

So anyway, I get this letter today saying that hey, the Star Wars disc was fine, but the others played halfway and locked up after a certain point etc ...

.....

The hell?

Sooo, none of the discs had compatibility problems. The Star Wars disc which shouldn't have been good was. The other discs which should have been good played and then stopped.

There is NOTHING in the tests I did on these discs to support any of that. When I tested the discs I tested them to the end. They all played on the Sony to the end. The only problem would be if they didn't play at all.

Oh, to hell with this. DVD duplication is a voodoo science with no rhyme or reason to it.

But whatever the problems are, I still blame the Linkyo. I never had a problem with the Ritek discs - very rarely anyway.

Guess the Ritek discs will be in on Monday ...

I'll hold off burning til then. Y'all deserve that.