In recent months, Pro Disc has become the goto media for me. Fujifilm used to rebrand Riteks, now they use Pro Disc. They have a better dye than Riteks now.
Fact. TY is better than everything else out there when it comes to optical media. Verbatim is a close second.
Newegg has some Taiyo Yuden DVD-R's. Official Riteks are really middle of the road, disc life AFTER burning is questionable. Ricoh discs made for Ritek are what you want. 4x Ritek DVD+R's are still Ricoh (at least at newegg) I believe, and they can be written to at 8x without problems if you have a good burner with a good wriitng strategy (NEC, Plextor, Pioneer... NOT lite-on, Sony).
Can you actually get Taiyo Yuden's in a brick and mortar store? I haven't stumbled upon any yet...
Also, on this subject, does anyone know the best price for dual-layer discs? I just got the new 716A Plextor dual layer burner and the damn thing didn't come with any media. I'm assuming they're going to be quite expensive at this point but I don't know the specifics.
Good Quality is Fry's housebrand of media. They're typically, ah, not so great. My last spindle was a 50-pack of Ritek G04s that I got for like all of 20 bucks. Yeah, I could probably find something a little cheaper, but these discs have never gone all chirp city on me and have worked consistently well...
Yeah, the Riteks seem to get good reviews. To me, the thing is finding a disc that works for you -- if you've got something good, roll with it. The first DVD-Rs I bought were Maxell. They worked great in my burner, so that's still what I'm using.