PS2 Media issues

[beermonster]

hi im relatively new to the scene, so bear with me, i have a v5/6 pal ps2 with what i believe is a magic 3 modchip, its been playing original DVD games/films no problem, i since got a dvd burner nec 1100a ive gone to backing up dvds, being new to this i bought some mirror DVD+Rs and its fine with DVD films but struggles like hell with PS2 backups, i tried the laser adjustment wheel to some degree of success, but it still takes 5 attempts to even boot the game, a mate of mine copied the disk onto a philips +R for me to see if it was a media problem and it boots 1st time every time and is much quicker/quieter in accessing it, now from all the this concluded that my laser is ok, the chip is ok and its either my burner or my media, i obviously need to give him one of my disks to burn on his burner to eliminate this but wont see him for a few weeks, i dont really want to get a new chip/ps2 but a multi format burner is reasonable now so would i be better switching to -r media? or can someone recommend me some +R media, the philips ones are very expensive btw
thanks and sorry for the long post