Well they do keep doing it faster and faster until they blow....

Actually its the media that is inferior that breaks. If you use cheap media and burn at top speed you may get a wobbly disc and at 52x speeds that wobbly disc will break.




Tyler!

Mine wasn't being burned it was being read.

The same thing applies. If you read cheap media at top speed you run the risk of it busting up due to wobbles.





Tyler!

This is why we always recommend the best media even if the price varies slightly higher than the local crap of the mill k-mart/wal-mart brands.
Fugi, Memorex, Maxell, and other Generic no-names may or may not work for most backups/applications. Some users will even say these brands work well for them, but the consiquences are at your own risk. If the hardware/drive lasers gets damaged or wear out quicker, usually it is due to bad media.
If you truely want the top quality media, stick to the recommended brands like verbatim (cd-r) and Ritek (dvd-r).
This could be why I have never had any problems in regard to the "Booooooooooom!!!!!!" topic.

Check this out, play.com (only for uk) does 100 cd tower 700mb 48x (VERBATIN) for 18 quid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i bought one :)

Tdk's
 

would you say TDK's cd's and DVD's are a good brand? R's & Rw's?