i dont understand, what exacly does a mid do? and what exactly does a fake mid do?

I believe they stand for "Media ID" or in other words, when you use certian products (most are freeware) they tell you a ID so you can see who produced the disk. Most people recommend Ritek and Verbatim but, I forgot what there IDs are.

If they fake the ID, people will think "I have a spindle of Ritek CDs (or DVDs more likely) and they suck, they are worse then Princo" (IMO, the WORST brand of CDs/DVDs ever made) because some company put the Ritek ID on the disk and it is really a Princo.

Quote:

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...manufacturers are using false MID´s in order to get more compatible.

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Is that true? Does a standalone dvd player read the media ID to determine whether or not it will play the dvd? I'd never heard that before.

I think that has to do with DVD-+R drives recognizing the disc, not standalones.

Media id applies to dvd burners. From memory it is written into firmware. Thats why drives like the A08 can write to 16x on 'selected' discs

And they do this so, what, people don't have to update their firmware as often? More likely so the company doesn't have to spend the extra money to update and test their firmware or eat up bandwidth from people downloading the new firmware from their site. What can you do?

It's a question of money. You can SELL discs of 8X media , a lot easier than discs of 2X . And , many people will figure it's their writer , not the media. They will be happy , if it just burns right.
With the double layer media just around the corner , in terms of price , manufactures may want to unload stocks of old media , at higher prices.