Whatever you choose for a thesis, I wish you luck. What you did not want is a weak or spurious topic, nor a starting argument. That was my main fear here.

I lack time to comment further here, but you’re already making some bad conclusions, and that’s not your role right now. Question everything.

For example, it’s not really about temperature. The main enemy of optical media is air, especially moisture in the air. I can leave a CD-R in a car (properly stored) that is 160 F inside in the summer, 2 F in the winter, and then disc is still fine 10 years later. Or I can put it in the (non-food) freezer, thaw it back out, and it’s fine. The main issue with freezers is frozen moisture from food.

This is a great example of how easy it is to be wrong.

About forums, mentioned above, realize that some of us also had “day jobs” in media (not just our passion hobby), or contracts, some of which may include NDAs. So we don’t speak in some official capacity, because we can’t. However, we can give out info in these unofficial locations, in an unofficial capacity, often behind avatars / usernames. You just have to know how to find us, and know how to ignore mouthy pretenders (like The Digital Dolphin / Dolphinius_Rex was in the 2000s, the short-lived Naked Geek, and some others). But again, most of what you’ll see is old content, backward looking, because optical media is really replaced now, by a mix of SSD and cloud. Much of the crowd is gone now, to the point where I’ve now lost many of my contacts.

Not to give you ideas, but I think a better thesis would be to imagine new media, that looks at strengths and weaknesses of extant media. A wish list of sorts. And I doubt you’ll be the first to do it, so locate others doing the same. For example, optical media that spins sucks. Spinning sucks, period. Perhaps a sort of “optical SSD” for archival? Since you like Jobs, think different. ;)

Well, that reply was longer than I intended.

Blu-ray is not archival. The fatal flaw is in the construction, essentially an inverted CD with extra goo “protection” on bottom. And CD-R is not archival either. Sadly, HD-DVD had a sandwich platter construction like DVD, which could be considered the most archival of optical media to date.

“burn quality” is not some sort of singular measurement, but rather a simplistic (or simpleton) reference to multiple aspects. For example, how well the disc balance allowed burn accuracy without too much wobble. But also how properly “deep” the burn was in the dye, in conjunction with the reflectivity of the dye, thus affecting readability. Even something as overlooked as the temperature of the drive can affect burn quality, in subsequent burns in short time windows.

Optical media from two manufacturers? Uh, no. Not a relevant statistical sample.

Multiple optical drives must also be used, with multiple known-good software (Imgburn, etc).

Terms like “consumer grade” and “professional grade” are all nonsense in the realm of optical media. At best, it refers to the surface, like lacquer only (ie, intended for screen printing), or inkjet or laser. Any suggestion that some such “grade” refers to the burn quality is bullplop.

There is a LOT of media testing, vastly more than most people realize. It’s not about “batches” (which are 10k to 100k discs, not a dozen spindles), or misunderstood Datarius drives. cdfreaks/myce had a groupthink problem, and was the source of several myths (ie, “RitekG03 = best”, etc). Too much of that got parroted around online in the 2000s, so watch out for that. IBM also had anti-optical pro-HDD propaganda at the time, some 20 years ago.

I’ve helped students write optical media theses multiple times in the past 15+ years, though my available time is not what it used to be (health). At very least, I can wish you luck.

I do wonder, however, if your adviser will approve such a topic, since it tends to be more backward looking than forward. A thesis is generally intended to be current or forward looking, even a thesis in history or medicine. So you’d have to find a way to take optical media, and make it still revelant into the future, beyond just weak arguments. I’m not sure even I can do that.